Department of Linguistics The Department of linguistics is a leading center for education and research in linguistics. With expert faculty, modern facilities, and a strong focus on innovation, we prepare students for successful careers and academic excellence. Join us and be part of a dynamic learning community shaping the future.
filter by: Publication Year
(Descending)
Studies in Pragmatics (1750368X) 10pp. 247-266
This paper will investigate a number of issues related to the contact situations between Mazandarani and the standard Persian in Iran. It aims to explore the ways in which Mazandarani, a variety spoken in northern Iran, has been, over the last few decades, converging towards modern standard Persian. The changes induced in the recipient dialect as a result of this convergence involve the phonological, lexical, and grammatical levels. Nonetheless, the current paper will mainly describe and analyze the lexical borrowings, noun phrase, and ablative post-position of Mazandarani. © 2013 by Nova Science Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved.
International Journal of Cultural Studies (13678779) 7(2)pp. 147-174
This article focuses primarily on pictorial metaphors used by advertising firms in pre-and post-revolutionary Iran. By comparing the two sets of data, it argues that one of the main functions of pictorial metaphor in the post-revolutionary period is to reconcile two types of competing and conflicting ideologies: one based on advertising and the other inspired by Islamic values. Advertisers are not allowed, in post-revolutionary times, to manipulate the picture of women for their intended publicity of commercial products. However, they do employ some pictorial metaphors to redress the balance. The article also addresses other issues related to cultural and social aspects of contemporary Iran as reflected in Persian commercial advertisements. © 2004, Sage Publications. All rights reserved.
Studia Linguistica (14679582) 60(1)pp. 97-120
The aim of this paper is to investigate the ways in which the Persian past tense form is projected into the future to designate events, states, and processes. While it must be admitted that the phenomenon under consideration is by no means confined to Persian, its examination in this language will reveal certain characteristics which are likely to contribute to a better understanding of how temporal deixis, together with aspectual and modal meanings, interact with contextual factors to yield socio-culturally relevant utterances. Of special theoretical interest in this respect are the semantic-pragmatic constraints levied, in varying degrees, on the projected tense in terms of negation, pronominal choice, speech act assignment, aspectual character, modal status, and pitch contour. Fundamental to the present study are three assumptions. First, the deictic projection at issue has pragmatic motivations, and, in addition, stems largely from the ontological asymmetry between pastness and futurity. Second, it has an indisputable edge over the other future-indicating devices available to Persian speakers in that it denotes factivity with respect to the occurrence of a situation. And third, it is stylistically marked as it digresses from the normal function of the past tense. © The Editorial Board of Studia Linguistica 2006.
Journal of Language and Politics (15692159) 7(1)pp. 53-70
This paper aims to investigate the language used by newspapers in post-revolutionary Iran. More precisely, the paper sets out to analyze how such a language is deployed to represent relevant hegemonic ideologies. The approach adopted for this purpose draws inspiration mainly from critical linguistics, where it is hypothesized that, as far as the pertinent metadiscourse goes, media genres serve to activate and perpetuate social power relations. In keeping with this theoretical stance, the paper argues that socially constructed texts can be said to perform two complementary functions; on the one hand, they shed light on the realities experienced in social life; on the other, they reveal such aspects of those realities as are constructed through the use of language. It is thus in this context that the media language used in the post-revolutionary Iran lends itself to analytical investigation, where the available data reveal the co-existence of three competing discourse processes of 'Islamization', 'Iranian Nationalism' and 'Western liberalism', relating to the third stage development of post-revolutionary Iran. © John Benjamins Publishing Company.
Language Sciences (03880001) 31(6)pp. 853-873
The present paper sets out to focus on an aspect of the modal system of Persian which, despite its crucial role in interactive discourse, has not received the treatment it deserves. More precisely, the paper seeks to investigate how the simple past is deployed to express subjective epistemic and deontic modality within a future-oriented framework. This apparent clash between tense and time can be explained in terms of a set of recognition criteria: tense-distinction, interrogation, conditionality and modal harmony. The clash is also explicable pragmatically in that it is heavily context-dependent. In both cases, the underlying assumption is that the modality under consideration is invariably construed as indicating certainty, disbelief, challenge, nonchalance or obligation with respect to a particular state of affairs. © 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Language Sciences (03880001) 32(4)pp. 488-504
The goal of this paper is to investigate the syntax and semantics of obligatory control predicates in Persian. After reviewing present syntactic approaches to control, the facts of Persian are shown to lead to the conclusion that it is not possible to identify the controller in Persian on purely syntactic grounds. Rather, the properties of obligatory control constructions in this language provide evidence for the necessity of considering semantic factors in the proper analysis of this construction. These properties are shown to follow a semantic treatment along the lines of Jackendoff and Culicover (2003) and Culicover and Jackendoff (2005). We propose that in Persian obligatory control constructions, the control predicate licenses an event complement with the controller being the argument to which the control predicate assigns the role of actor for the action stated in the complement clause. Classes of exceptions, not to be discussed in this paper, may be treated as coercion in the sense of Sag and Pollard (1991), Pollard and Sag (1994); followed by Jackendoff and Culicover (2003) and Culicover and Jackendoff (2005), in which internal conventionalized semantic materials, not present in syntax, are added. © 2009.
Languages in Contrast (15699897) 10(1)pp. 54-75
This paper investigates how English influences the Persian scientific language. By analyzing parallel corpora of English and Persian texts from the areas of education and psychology, the paper seeks to reveal that translation as a language contact phenomenon influences not only the grammatical and semantic categories of the target language, it also leaves some traces of the impact of the source language on the discourse-pragmatics of the target language. This in turn leads to a kind of stylistic variation triggered by the source language. One of the main arguments adduced is that such a replication is based on the cultural filters operating in the replica language. In other words, the borrowed elements show a kind of innovative adaptation to the new environment to resolve their clashes with the target language. Thus the paper primarily focuses on the influence on Persian, through translation, of the English passive construction, as well as its deictic terms of first personal pronouns. © John Benjamins Publishing Company.
Asian EFL Journal (17381460) 13(3)pp. 153-183
The current study sets out 1) to investigate the strategic needs of participants in reading literary and non-literary texts; and 2) to shed light on the differences of reading literary and non-literary texts. To achieve this aim, thirty participants read three literary and two non-literary texts and wrote down the questions for which they could not find any answer.Next, these questions were categorized in five groups: Scripturally implicit, textually implicit, textually explicit, linguistic and miscomprehension. The findings suggest that the dominant problem of participants lies in textually implicit aspects of the text. Finally, a Kruskal-Wallis test was applied in order to compare the frequency of question types across literary and non-literary texts. The difference of all question types proved to be statistically significant across both literary and non-literary texts.
English Language Teaching (discontinued) (19164742) 5(8)pp. 130-145
The studies regarding information structure and its distribution in sentences are traced back to works of Prague School linguists such as Mathesius in 1920s. Recently, the issue of information structure has been dealt with by functionalists. In Role and Reference Grammar (RRG), information structure constitutes one of the main components of syntax. In this theory, information structure is mainly based on the Lambrechtiyan information structure which regards the formal structure of sentences as highly related to the discourse-pragmatic functions. Information structure investigates the way information is structured in clauses and sentences. This paper aims at dealing with information structure in interrogative sentences according to RRG. At first a brief introduction to works on information structure and RRG is presented. Then the theory is applied briefly to Persian language declaratives and dominantly to interrogatives.
Mediterranean Journal of Social Sciences (discontinued) (20392117) 3(2)pp. 479-486
This article provides a syntactic analysis of Topicalization and Focalization processes in Persian within the framework of minimalist syntax. According to Haegeman and Gueron's Split CP Hypothesis (1999), Topicalization is a recursive process and can apply to more than one constituent in a sentence, while Focalization is unique and therefore appears in a single projection. In this paper we argue that in Persian more than one constituent might undergo focalization. This implies that Focalization cannot be unique. Thus, we first propose two Focal Phrases in the periphery position of a clause. The specifier positions of the two Focal phrases are the landing sites of the focused constituents. Then we suggest the relative position of focal phrases with topic phrases in Persian. It will be concluded that the first focus phrase appears immediately after the complementizer phrase before the first recursive topic phrase followed by the second focus phrase and recursive topic phrase respectively.
Theory and Practice in Language Studies (20530692) 2(9)pp. 1828-1834
Some syntacticians claim that a non-referential second argument of an activity predicate expresses an intrinsic aspect of the meaning of the verb and does not refer specifically to any participants in the event denoted by the verb. The aim of this paper is to examine activity predicates in Persian to see whether they follow this proposal or not. Presenting the properties of two-place activity predicates in Persian, and their accomplishment counterparts, I argue that the second argument in activity verbs of consumption, creation, performance, etc. is an inherent argument of the predicate. Indeed, they are part of the predicate, rather than the participants in the event. Moreover, it is shown that if the second argument takes a referentiality marker, the verb class is changed to accomplishment. Finally, it is concluded that Persian supports the RRG treatment for two-place activity predicates. © 2012 ACADEMY PUBLISHER Manufactured in Finland.
Language Related Research (23223081) 3(4)pp. 169-191
Some studies of complex predicates suggest that light verbs are bleached semantically and are unable to bear the role of an autonomous predicate (Jespersen, 1965; Cattell, 1984; Grimshaw & Mester, 1988). Although it is accepted that the semantic content of light verbs is deficient, we address the issue that such a claim ignores the semantic relation between light verbs and the corresponding main verbs. The claim in this paper is that light verbs preserve the force-dynamic schemata of the corresponding main verbs totally systematically but the concept area is transferred from physical to abstractpsychological domain. Indeed, it is claimed that, although light verbs do not have totally predictable meaning, their contribution to the meaning of the predicate is completely systematic and to some extent clear. The present study focuses on two light verbs “ KARDAN” (to do) and “ DASHTAN” (to have) to indicate somewhat this systematization. © 2013, Tarbiat Modares University. All rights reserved.
Theory and Practice in Language Studies (20530692) 4(3)pp. 551-561
Object indexation is a grammatical phenomenon in which a clitic pronoun, co-referential with the free nominal object, appends to the verb. Optionality of indexation in Persian leads us to consider the role of pragmatic factors in its occurring. The present study aims at investigating the influence of information structure on direct object indexation in Persian. To do this, the data of standard spoken Persian including 540 cases were extracted from various resources and then analyzed within the framework of Role and Reference Grammar. The high frequency of topical direct object indexation confirms the role of information structure in direct object indexation. Analyzing the few cases of focal direct object indexation indicated that all cases of both topical and focal object indexation necessarily involve identifiable referents. Hence, the basic requirement in direct object indexation in Persian is identifiability of its referent. Considering the syntactic position of direct object in Persian clauses shows strong overlap of topical and focal objects. The post-core slot only belongs to the topical direct object and focal object cannot be placed there. Therefore, in order to identify the pragmatic relations of direct object in a clause, considering the context of the discourse is highly important. © 2014 Academy Publisher Manufactured In Finland.
Language Related Research (23223081) 5(1)pp. 63-88
Generally speaking, cleft constructions are marked syntactic structures, which represent a simple logical proposition by two clauses. The relation of these constructions to more basic structures is determined in regard with the theoretical framework chosen for the analysis. In the one hand, transformational studies try to determine the underlying structure through using cleft construction features. If copular sentences were considered as the basic structure for cleft constructions, the chosen analysis would be an extrapositioal one, and in the case of relating these structures to non-cleft structures, expletive analysis would be given. Recent efforts on studying cleft constructions will not be accommodated in none of the approaches above, on the other hand. Eventually, this paper indicates that transformational approaches can not well afford explaining these sentences, and thus a non-transformational approach must be chosen. © 2014, Tarbiat Modares University. All rights reserved.
Language Related Research (23223081) 5(3)pp. 55-80
The present research deals with the investigation of subject-intransitive verb agreement in the Persian language. The corpus of this research has been extracted from articles as well as spoken and written utterances. The data are analyzed based on Minimality and Optimality approaches each of which has been explained under generative framework. The research intends to show the exception cases of agreement in the traditional Persian grammar based on Chomsky's recent Minimalist approach which is syntactic-based and the optimal theory which is constraint-based. The reason behind selecting these two approaches is to determine as which one of them explains the exceptional agreements better. In the minimality, subject-verb agreement involves a relationship between probe and goal in order to determine the unvalued features. But in the optimality, the interaction of constraints influences the choice of optimal agreements. The findings demonstrate that all the exception cases of agreements are explained based on the minimal approach; in honorific or polite application, the presence of the feature [+HON] causes plural agreement on verb. In the subject-less verbs, the probe agrees with null PRO. Moreover, in optimality, the optimal choice is determined following the Extended Animacy Hierarchy. The results show that the minimal approach is much more efficient than the optimality theory in explaining the subject-verb agreements. © 2014, Tarbiat Modares University. All rights reserved.
Language Related Research (23223081) 6(1)pp. 253-280
Deriving the distribution of PRO and Obligatory Control (OC) in finite contexts has been a topic of considerable debate. Evidence coming from different languages shows that there is OC in finite contexts, then the theories of “Government and Binding “(GB) and “Minimalist Program”, which analyze control structures based on nonfiniteness of the complement, need to be refined. Landau (1999, 2000, 2004, 2006) proposes an alternative approach in which the distribution of PRO is more directly linked to tense/agreement properties of infl. He claims to get a generalization to account for the distribution of PRO in finite and nonfinite contexts in all languages. However, this article shows that while Landau’s model is effective for justifying exhaustive and non-obligatory or non control constructions in Persian, it has some deficiencies in accounting for non-exhaustive control in Persian. Then it is proposed that building upon Jackendoff and Culicover’s (2003) semantic analysis of control, we can solve inadequacies of purely syntactic analysis in justifying the distribution of PRO and overt DPs in the subject position of the embedded clause in Persian control structures. Therefore, in this article, the importance of semantic factors to solve this problem is proved. © 2015, Tarbiat Modares University. All rights reserved.
Language Related Research (23223081) 6(1)pp. 87-110
This paper aims at investigating the communicative functions of eloquent silence in Persian. It also investigates how contextual and pragmatic factors pave the way for silence to have such functions. In this regard, “A Separation” (2011), a widely known Oscar-winner Iranian movie by Asghar Farhadi was selected, and analyzed. This movie has been met with universal acclaim from film critics, and seemingly has utilized silence successfully in order to carry and convey some hidden messages. Instances of eloquent silence were collected and then analyzed based on Ephratt (2008) in an attempt to determine the communicative functions of each case. Our main argument has been that eloquent silence can convey different communicative hints in the course of linguistic exchanges in Persian. The results showed that eloquent silence usages do play a key role in communication in this movie and accordingly in Persian. These usages also have different types of function for the realization of which different contexts of situation seem to be at work. We also tried to analyze and explain the way contextual and pragmatic factors impact upon determining these communicative functions. In this regard, the study depicts that aim of communication, context of situations, target of communication, and power relations between interlocutors, as well as cultural and social norms are among the most important contextual and pragmatic factors, active in preferring silence over speech. © 2015, Tarbiat Modares University. All rights reserved.
Language Related Research (23223081) 5(4)pp. 149-170
This paper aims to investigate the ways in which socio-linguistic parameters such as gender contribute into the turn organization of defense sessions. Interruption plays an important role in the organization of turn taking in the interactions of defense sessions. The current paper is then primarily focused on the description and analysis of interruptions in the interactions of dissertation defense sessions of Persian speakers using the “community of practice” approach. A number of discourse and pragmatic functions (e.g. defense, directiveness, cooperation, competition, etc.) have been identified for interruptions in relation to the power relations of interlocutors in the interactions. Apart from qualitative analysis, some quantitative findings have been provided for further clarification. The analysis of data shows that it is mainly the social status of a speaker that influences the types and frequency of interruption rather than his/her gender. In other words, the social variable does not play an important role in the interruption for turn organization in the defense sessions of Persian speakers. © 2015, Tarbiat Modares University. All rights reserved.
Language Related Research (23223081) 6(3)pp. 293-313
Noun incorporation is considered as a word formation process which is not treated similarly in different languages and has various representations. The incorporated noun is unmarked for features of definiteness and specificity; it does not take definite article, demonstratives or case marking. This study aims at finding an explanatory account for this phenomenon in Persian in order to decide whether a particular structure involves incorporation or not. To do this, incorporation is examined with respect to its relation to transitivity as a prototypical phenomenon. In this regard, it may be analyzed according to the notion of the degree of transitivity and the presence or absence of different transitivity parameters. The results show that the two parameters of individuation of object as well as affectedness of object specifically have role in the occurrence of incorporation. Aspect, also, has some effect through its relation to affectedness. Therefore, incorporation is better to be considered as an instance of transitivity decrease which occurs due to the lack of object individuation and object affectedness in a transitive clause. The deviation from the prototypical transitive clause due to the absence of these features is responsible for the structural differences of the incorporated clauses with that prototype. © 2015, Tarbiat Modares University. All rights reserved.
Language Related Research (23223081) 6(4)pp. 122-152
The contrastive function of [spread glottis] in the description of stops and fricatives has been approved in many languages, such as English, but its role in the phonological behavior of Persian stops, not fricatives, has been discussed yet. This paper based on Glottal timing theory shows that regarding this laryngeal feature in the description of Persian fricatives has got phonetic plausibility. By taking its contractiveness into account, Persian phonetic possibilities, then, regarding this feature has been dedicated in the framework of derivational approach. The results also show that applying this feature brings more economic and efficient analyses about some superficial unrelated phonological processes such as spirantisization of velar stop, fricativization of aspirated onsets and postfricative voicing based on autosegmental and optimality theoreis. This is why this paper suggests that voiceless fricatives together with voceless stops would form a natural class based on the shared feature, that is [+spread], and their voiced counterparts form a natural class due to shared [-spread] as well. © 2015, Tarbiat Modares University. All rights reserved.
Language Related Research (23223081) 6(5)pp. 191-213
The present study investigates the auxiliary selection in the languages which use this way to encode perfect and progressive aspect, future tense and passive. In other words, it investigates how Persian makes use of the universal auxiliary categories, be and have, and then it attempts to find out the similarities and differences between this language and others with regard to the selection of these verbs. In the next step the gathered data is analyzed within the framework of croft (2003). The study of various languages showed that the selection of each of auxiliary verbs is not an accidental matter but represents different grammatical and historical development. It is concluded that Persian tends to select the verb be for the perfective aspect and in this way it is more similar to Germanic languages rather than Romance ones. With regard to progressive aspect this language uses the verb have and used to select the verb be before with respect to passive voice although it now uses another auxiliary verb as the production of language invention. For future tense the concept of volition remains in its auxiliary verb. Thus some Persain language usages of the auxiliary verbs follow the universal markedness hierarchy while others are restricted to a few number of world’s languages. © 2015, Tarbiat Modares University. Created by sinaweb.
Language Related Research (23223081) 6(7)pp. 219-236
This paper set up to investigate the word “didan” (see) based on frame semantics to explore how the sense of words can be traced back through human’s experiences and background knowledge. In other words, the purpose of this paper is to clarify such delicate meaning distinctions, which are mainly overlooked in dictionaries. To solve this problem, we started this study by searching different texts and corpus so that we could find semantic frames for “didan” from one hand, and extract differences between the verb “didan” and other partially synonymous verbs such as “moshahede kardan” (observe), “tamasha kardan” (watch), etc, on the other hand. Then, we try to determine how polysemous verb of “didan” is analyzed in terms of semantic frames. By analyzing data, we have found out that the relationship between different frames with that of “base sensory-eye” frame is the cause of polysemy. Furthermore, the partially synonymous verbs are differentiated from the verb “didan” based on ‘aim, target, etc. variables’; last but not least we have put forward a model that shows how “didan” and its different frames are related and how partially synonymous words are differentiated from it. © 2016, Tarbiat Modares University. All rights reserved.
Language Related Research (23223081) 7(5)pp. 309-341
The aim of this study is to determine the underlying laryngeal feature of Persian obstruents in final position and their neutralizations based on the concepts of Laryngeal Phonology and acoustic measurements. Four female speakers read the words inserted in three carrier sentences. Hence the effect of three environments on neutralization phenomenon has been investigated: pre-silence word final position, pre-vowel word final position, pre-obstruent word final position. Applying Praat software (version 5315) seven acoustic correlates of voicing distinction have been extracted from the data: vowel duration, consonant duration, voice bar duration, voice rate, voice onset time, burst duration and intensity of burst. After statistical analysis, underlying laryngeal feature has been specified based on the concepts of laryngeal phonology. The findings show that the distinctive dimension in Persian obstruents is GW which is not neutralized in final position. Furthermore, Persian unmarked phonemes are passively voiced in inter-sonorant position. Thus Persian, like other Germanic languages, is an aspiration language in which GW is phonologically specified. © 2019 University of Minnesota Press. All rights reserved.
Language Related Research (23223081) 7(5)pp. 91-118
The present study, using some morphological Persian constructions, explores Morphological Doubling Theory (Inkelas and Zoll 2005, henceforth MDT) and its essential claim as regards resulting reduplication when the morphology calls twice for a constituent of a given semantic description. In contrast to the previous theories and approaches categorizing reduplication as phonological duplication, MDT categorizes it generally as reduplication of given morpho- semantic features. To answer the research question and know whether the formation of Persian reduplicated constructions are explainable and justifiable in MDT framework or not, using two categories of semantic and morphotactic evidence, some Persian data are analyzed in MDT framework. Semantic evidence such as root allomorphoy, synonym constructions, echo reduplication, medial full reduplication and antonym constructions together with morphotactic evidence such as ezafe vowel, indifference-ke construction, interfix, linker or enclitic and melodic overwriting are some pieces of used evidence for exploring MDT framework in the studied constructions in Persian. The present study, with a descriptive-analytic method, has been carried out by studying some Persian data gathered through people’s daily natural conversations, written works on Persian morphology and authors’ intuition. Analyzing the gathered data reveals that adopting MDT, in addition to presenting a comprehensive description and analysis of Persian reduplication, makes it possible to describe and study the structure and semantic of the reduplicated constructions that were not appropriately analyzable previously. © 2016, Tarbiat Modares University. All rights reserved.
STUF - Sprachtypologie und Universalienforschung (09422919) 69(3)pp. 411-435
This paper attempts to assess motion events in Ilami Kurdish through Talmy's binary typology (1985. Lexicalization patterns: Semantic structure in lexical forms. In Timothy Shopen (ed.), Language typology and lexical descriptions: Vol. 3. Grammatical categories and the lexicon, 36-149. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; 2000a. Toward a cognitive semantics. Vol. 1: Concept structuring system. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press; 2000b. Toward a cognitive semantics. Vol. 2: Typology and process in concept structuring. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press) according to which, languages could be classified as "Satelliteframed" or "Verb-framed". Following Berman and Slobin's approach (1994. Relating events in narrative: A crosslinguistic developmental study. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum) in using "The Frog Story", which paved the way for evaluating numerous languages in terms of their motion verbs, we used this elicitation tool for gathering Kurdish data. Results reveal that Ilami tends towards Satellite-framed languages as the concept of Path is often expressed by the use of satellites. As far as analysis of Path in Kurdish is taken into account, this concept has been analyzed with the help of different criteria proposed by Ibarretxe-Antuñano (2008. Path salience in motion events. In Jiansheng Gu, Elena Lieven, Nancy Budwig, Susan Ervin Tripp, Keiko Nakamura & -eyda Özçalý\+kan (eds.), Crosslinguistic approaches to the psychology of language: Research in the tradition of Dan Isaac Slobin, 403-414. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum) and typologically compared with other languages too. It seems that in addition to the oral nature of Ilami and its contact with Persian language, "the syntactic sensitivity of satellites" as a new motivation, also affects the amount of details accompanying the Path concept in this dialect.
Language Related Research (23223081) 8(8Tome38)pp. 43-66
In the present paper, we aim to apply the Conceptual Blending Theory proposed by Fauconnier and Turner (2002) to the analysis of one poem by Garous Abdolmalekian. Our hypothesis rests upon the fact that the same cognitive operations which occur in everyday construction and understanding of language as put forth by Blending theorists, occur also at the construction and interpretation of a literary work by authors and readers alike, operations like setting of input mental spaces, cross-space matching, blending clashing material and creating emergent structure. The poem examined in the paper, "lahzeye sheni" ("the sandy moment") is quite a long poem divided into five stanzas. The method used in the examination is a descriptive-analytic one. To use conceptual means of Blending, each stanza is a blend behind which stands an integration network composed of two input spaces which have projected selective structure onto the blend leading to emergent structure in it. For example, in one stanza, what is presented is an image in which black pieces of paper thrown out of the window turn into crows and fetch on the tree branches. This is a blend created out of two inputs of crows and black pieces of paper which are integrated together through the compression of the vital relation of Change. In general, it can be assumed that the poet, while creating the work, has passed through theses mental stages before he comes up with the present form of the poem; that is, he has formed two mental input spaces, and then merged them together only to bring about a novel concept, some emerge structure, which is the poem itself. The assumption can be extended so as to include the reader on the other side of this act of communication: the reader also, on their encounter with the poem, in order to make sense of it, has to unpack the blend which is presented to him in the poem. The reader, through the mechanisms of disintegration and decompression, try to reconstruct the mental phases the author has gone through while creating the work, and thus to gain an interpretation of it. In conclusion, what this paper reveals is the fact that literary works depend upon the same basic mental operations, here the operation of blending, which are at work in like non-literary works. Moreover, a good reader is who is able to follow the author, in a reverse manner, in his act of creation, and to achieve an active participation in his act of reading. The Blending Theory, by analyzing the cognitive processes a work of art passes through, helps readers reach higher levels of the participation of the sort mentioned. © 2017, Tarbiat Modares University. All rights reserved.
Language Related Research (23223081) 8(4)pp. 239-262
This paper sets out to investigate the feasibility of replacement of restrictive and non-restrictive relative clauses at discourse level in Persian. Givon (2001) believes that proper names, pronouns and unique definite nouns cannot be modified by restrictive relatives. On the other hand, it is usually stated that the modification of indefinite nouns by non-restrictive relatives would result in ungrammatical sentences. This study, however, provides examples from the Persian language arguing against such propositions. Furthermore, there are also evidences in Persian showing that the emotive and expositive information, which are usually expressed by non-restrictive relatives, may also be expressed by restrictive relative clauses. The main inquiry will, then, be how such discourse possibilities would be accounted. To this end, the current paper aims to study and analyze the above-mentioned discourse situations within Discourse Grammar (DG) framework, as introduced by Heine and et al (2013). For the analysis, the empirical data are gathered from the different spoken and written sources in Persian as well as some other instances based on the authors’ own observations and their intuitions. In short, on the basis of Discourse Grammar, this paper argues that the discourse situations allowing such possibilities can be explained in terms of Cooptation mechanism, an important notion in Discourse Grammar which explain the interaction between sentence grammar and thetical grammar. Furthermore, unlike Heine and et al (2013), it is shown that Cooptation may be a bidirectional operation. In a sense, the paper provides some examples and explanation for the non-unidirectionality of cooptation mechanism such as appositive phrases and Ezafe constructions in Persian. © 2017, Tarbiat Modares University. All rights reserved.
Acta Scientiarum Language and Culture (19834675) 39(2)pp. 191-201
This paper aims to investigate the stress patterns of Ilami Kurdish, a southern variety of Kurdish language, based on the criteria proposed by Kager (1995) and also Hayes (1995) regarding the stress patterns of human languages, including 'boundedness', 'quantity sensitivity', 'word headedness', 'foot headedness' and 'directionality'. After analyzing Ilami Kurdish data and specifying the stress patterns of this dialect of Kurdish, we adopt Optimality Theory framework, which is a modern perspective towards phonology, to show how the optimal candidates are in conformity with the universal phonological constraints in Ilami dialect. All in all, it can be said that Ilami is a right-bounded quantity-sensitive variety as far as monomorphemic words are considered.The next part of the research is devoted to the study of the stress pattern of compound words in Ilami Kurdish. In order to evaluate the stress pattern of these constructions, we use PRAAT software program to analyze the data collected from native speakers of Ilami. Concerning the stress pattern of compounds, it was observed that this is always the rightmost syllable of the final morpheme that bears the strong stress, regardless of the length of word and the number of morphemes. Actually, this tendency always violates the main-left (C) universal constraint according to which a clitic group (c) is left- headed.
1 2 3
