Kervan (1825263X)24(1)pp. 107-122
This study aims to comparatively investigate the semantic frames of motion verbs in Persian and English within the framework of the frame semantics theory (Fillmore 1977; 1982; 1985). As far as motion verbs are concerned, Manner is considered as one of the motion components expressed by either the verb or any element other than the verb. In English — a satellite-framed language (Talmy 2000b) — Manner is shown by motion verbs, whereas in Persian it is typically indicated by non-verbal elements, although there are also some verbs via which Manner is encoded. Within this study, thirty English verbs of manner were selected from among the ones Levin (1993) has introduced and then the verbs were translated into Persian and looked up through the Persian Corpus of Bijankhan to achieve their contexts of use. Next, FrameNet was asked for the semantic frame each verb evoked. Thereafter, comparing the semantic frames in the two languages, it was revealed that not every verb of manner does exist as a Lexical Unit in FrameNet. Likewise, not for every verb was a specified semantic frame either. Moreover, the frames for some other verbs have been defined in such a way that they cannot semantically distinguish those verbs from each other, whereas such distinctions are prominent in both manner verbs and the frames they evoke especially in Persian. © 2020, Universita degli Studi di Torino, Facolta di Lingue e Letterature Straniere. All rights reserved.
Voprosy Jazykoznanija (0373658X)2019(3)pp. 101-124
This paper is an attempt to evaluate "manner of motion salience" in Ilami, a southern dialect of Kurdish. Manner components can cross-linguistically be encoded by main verbs, manner verbs, manner preverbs, and ideophones, among other linguistic devices. First, we will discuss the ways this semantic component is expressed in Ilami Kurdish. Then, in order to assess the salience of the manner component, a dictionary-based lexical survey and several experimental trials will be carried out. Following a study by F. E. Cardini ("Manner of motion saliency: An inquiry into Italian", 2008), we will conduct a vocabulary investigation to calculate the number of manner verbs in Ilami Kurdish, and then compare the statistics with Italian (a verb-framed language) and English (a satellite-framed language) to measure manner salience in Ilami Kurdish in comparison with other languages. We will also perform several experimental trials, aimed at evaluating manner salience in the actual use of this dialect. Accordingly, the experiments will be carried out to assess "ease of lexical access", which helps us to understand how readily participants (children and adults) can retrieve manner verbs from memory. Cross-linguistic analysis of Ilami Kurdish shows that this dialect is a relatively highly manner salient language, in which the elaboration of the manner component is rich and pervasive. This finding is supported by the dictionary-based lexical survey as well as ease of lexical access trials. Use of various strategies by Ilami Kurdish speakers to express manner sheds some light on the fact that manner salience is not solely affected by the lexicalization patterns of languages, as this component can also be encoded regardless of the path coding position. © 2019 Russian Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved.
Language Related Research (23223081)8(7)pp. 233-264
Spelling is one of important skills of the second language learning, which deserves to be considered due to its importance and its impact on reading and writing skills. However, this language aspect has been less considered by educational planners and teachers. Learning spelling is a completely systematic process that is influenced by learners’ knowledge on different aspects of language (including phonological, morphological and orthographic knowledge). Through investigating the spelling errors of Persian learners, it is possible to achieve their real understanding from the second language structure at each stage of their linguistic development. Thus findings of such research are useful for teachers, curriculum and textbook designers who are eager to identify problematic areas for Persian spelling learners. The data of present research help them find in which linguistic aspect of spelling, their learners need more training. The significance of this issue and the lack of literature in this field have led the authors of the present paper to analyze the spelling errors of Arab learners of Persian language by using contrastive and error analysis approaches. The data collected from 105 of learners’ intermediate and final spelling tests in three levels of beginner, intermediate, and advanced. The population of the present research has been selected by simple random sampling among Farsi-learners at Jam’at-al-Mostafa-al-Alameyyeh, Ghom branch. Regarding errors’ sources, the data obtained divided into three groups of intralingual, interlingual and ambiguous and based on their category, they are classified as consonantal, vowel and form errors. The results indicate that categorically, the errors related to vowel system have the highest frequency (47%) and there aren’t much differences between consonantal (26/8%) and form (26/4%) errors. Also according to the source of errors, the inter lingual errors with the source of mother tongue with 56% have the maximum frequency and ambiguous and intra lingual errors are in the second and third places (26% and 18% respectively) (table 1). Therefore, it can be said that the most important source of spelling errors of Arab learners of Persian is the interference of learners’ mother language on Persian spelling learning. These kinds of errors are resulted from trivial differences between Arabic and Persian phonemic systems. This matter confirms with the moderate version of contrastive analysis. © 2018, Tarbiat Modares University. All rights reserved.
Language Related Research (23223081)7(7)pp. 125-150
In this article, considering syntactic and semantic behavior of central modal verbs (Bayestæn, Šodæn) in Persian, we try to make a suitable decision about these verbs by demonstrating whether they are control or raising verbs. Based on previous point of views, we proposed three hypotheses: a) epistemic modals are raising and root modals including deontic and dynamic modals are control verbs b) epistemic and indirect deontic root modals having external participant are raising but dynamic and direct deontic root modals having internal participant are control verbs c) all kinds of models are raising verbs. In this article, using semantic and syntactic accounts, we concluded central modals which all of them are propositional in Persian, whether epistemic or root and whether internal or external participant are raising. © 2017, 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(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 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.
