Language Research

Abstract Modality is a semantic category which allows the speakers of a language to express their viewpoints on linguistic propositions and talk about the possibility and necessity of potential events. The present article attempts to investigate the interaction between tense and modality in Mukriyani Kurdish. Mukriyani is a subdialect of Sorani Kurdish which is spoken in some of the Kurdish-speaking cities in Iran such as Mahabad, Bukan, Sardasht, Piranshahr, Naqadeh, Oshnavieh, Miandoab, and Shahin Dezh. In Mukriyani, two words which are frequently employed by speakers as a means of expressing modality are “dabe” and “dabɑ”. They belong to the verbal category and are the equivalents of “bɑjad” and “bɑjesti” in Persian. These modal verbs convey strong necessity (in terms of modal force) and thus are used to express deontic and epistemic modal flavors. The current research indicates that the difference between these two modal verbs lies in the grammatical category of tense, such that “dabe” is marked for the present and “dabɑ” for the past. The results of this paper point to the fact that tense plays an integral role and exercises an important influence on the modules of syntax and semantics. In the domain of syntax, the tense of the modal verb determines the tense of the main verb. Otherwise phrased, the [present] feature of “dabe” dictates the main verb to appear in the present tense as well. In the same fashion, the [past] feature of “dabɑ” causes the main verb to appear in the past tense. In the semantic domain, grammatical tense is instrumental in rendering the modal interpretation of these verbs. More specifically, our findings indicate that “dabɑ” can only be used in order to express deontic modality in the past, whereas “dabe” can be utilized in order to express deontic modality in the present or future as well as epistemic modality. In this context, grammatical aspect is the underlying element which lends us support in distinguishing between the deontic and epistemic interpretations. If “dabe” is accompanied by the perfect aspect, the interpretation is going to be epistemic, but if aspect is lacking in the sentence, the interpretation is going to be deontic

Abstract Rhythmic characteristics of speech based on consonantal and vocalic intervals as well as syllabic intervals vary between speakers of the same language. Nonetheless, the rhythmicity of a speech signal is not solely dependent on the durational variability of phonetic intervals but it is also associated with the variability of the intensity patterns as well. Acoustic parameter of intensity is largely determined by the articulatory behaviors of the speech organs such as lip movement or mouth aperture. Therefore, it is plausible that speaker idiosyncrasy in movement of speech articulators and anatomical differences in individual’s vocal tracts may influence the energy distribution across a speech signal which subsequently leads to the variability in the values of the intensity measures. Using experimental phonetics tools and from an explicitly speaker-specific perspective, the present research attempts to explore potential speaker-specific acoustic parameters of speech rhythm which are extracted from the intensity contours across Persian speakers. This research aims to discover whether intensity-based measures of speech rhythm are able to discriminate between speakers in Persian. Two types of acoustic rhythmic measures based on the mean syllable intensity (stdevM, varcoM, rPVIm, nPVIm) and peak syllable intensity (stdevP, varcoP, rPVIp, nPVIp))  were selected for this study. Speech data from 12 Persian male speakers were recorded non-contemporaneously in laboratory environment on two different occasions separated by one to two weeks. Speech tokens were acoustically measured with PRAAT version 5.2.34 and statistical analyses were carried out with SPSS version 21 and R version 3.3.3. Results of the study indicated that speech rhythm measures based on intensity fluctuations play an important role in between-speaker rhythmic variability. In addition, discriminatory power of intensity-based measures is not affected by the language-dependent characteristics of Persian. The results also showed that the peak syllable intensity measures carry more speaker-specific information compared to the mean syllable intensity measures

Abstract How the brain encodes the speech acoustic signal into phonological representations is a fundamental question for the neurobiology of language. The following paper is aimed to investigate the relationship between the phonological and phonetic properties of Persian simple vowels and neurophysiological events corresponding to them. To achieve such goal, we employed electroencephalography to map the Persian vowel system onto cortical sources using the N1 auditory evoked component. We found evidence that the N1 is characterized by asymmetrical indexes in the auditory areas of the cortex, structuring vowel representations. Properties of these ERPs were analyzed and modelled on one hand by the landmarks in the spectral window of their respective stimulus (such as F1, F2 and F2-F1) and on the other hand by the phonological distinctive features categorizing them (namely, height and place). The results revealed that the responses contain at least two distinguishable modulations of N1 components: a symmetric N1a which peaked between 113 to 149 milliseconds after the onset of the stimulus and a heavily left-leaning N1b which peaked between 149 to 170 milliseconds thereafter. Both N1a and N1b subcomponents showed strong correlations with a variety of parameters of both phonological and acoustic nature of the respective stimuli. However, N1a was significantly better modelled by acoustic factors while N1b displayed a better fit to a model based on phonetic factors. Based on such results, this paper argues that firstly the perceptual procedure of vowel categorization is a gradient process starting from demarcation of the stimulus signal according to acoustic landmarks which is done almost symmetrically then the processing load shifts significantly to the left hemisphere for the categorization of the input based on its perceived distinctive features. And secondly, that such information can be exploited to draft a ‘tonochronic’ map of such perceptual processes and define a perceptual field for every vowel and distinctive feature in the tonochronic space.

Abstract In Nanosyntax theory, terminal nodes contain syntactico-semantic features which are smaller than morphemes. Most of the morphemes are spread over several terminal nodes. Therefore, morphemes project on subtrees rather than the terminal nodes. Each terminal node comprises one specific feature. The features are arranged in a universal hierarchy namely functional sequence and follow the principle one morphosyntactic property-one feature-one head. In this theory, following cartographic approach, the universality of underlying syntactic structures and the fixed order Determiner-Head-Complement are adopted. Also, the lexicon encompasses subtrees which contain conceptual and phonological information. In this regard, a lexical entry will be minimally of the form: . In addition, Spell-out is an operation through which the derived syntactic trees are linked with saved subtrees in the lexical entries in lexicon. This article analytically studies the syntax and semantics of some Kurdish simple prepositions based on nanosyntax. As morphological complexity mirrors the syntactic complexity and in some languages the relationship between the morphemes and the syntactic head/semantic features representing them is one to one, this relationship should be induced in the underlying syntactic structure of all languages. Studying the present research data according to Baker’s mirror principle and Chomsky’s uniformity principle shows that though simple prepositions in Kurdish are monomorphic, all of them, except for the preposition l{ (at) with one feature (Place), include more than one feature, that is, there is no one to one relation between their syntactic head/semantic features and their morphology. The preposition bO:  (to) contains Place and Goal, the preposition l{ (from) contains Place, Goal and Source, the preposition b{r{w (towards) includes Place, Goal and Scale and the preposition  ta (till) is made up of Place, Goal and Bound features. The preposition w{/b{ (by, to) as an instrumental preposition contains instrument, dative, genitive, accusative and nominative features  and when denoting dative, it includes dative, genitive, accusative and nominative features. The present study also presents the feature arrangements of these prepositions and the reasons of syncretism in l{ and w{, as well.

Abstract In this paper, the Mukriyani’s layered structure of NPs (one of the Surani’s Kurdish dialects) has been examined according to Van Valin’s (2005) framework. In this framework, NPs consist of two projections: a constituent projection consisting of a Nucleus and a Core plus one or more Peripheries for each of them, and a grammatical projection consisting of operators. This research is a descriptive-analytic one in which the  data have been extracted from the written sources of Mukriyani dialect, and also from the intuition of one of the researchers who is a native Mukriyani speaker. These data have been analyzed according to the mono-layered pattern of RRG and finally the proposed Mukriyani’s NPs pattern has been offered. Among the results of this research, we can refer to the independence of NPs’ structure from the linier order of their elements; however, the enclitics attached to the NUC_N reflecting the number or definiteness are among the Core or NP operators. Another result of the research shows that in Mukriyani, the post-Nucleus adjectives make the Nucleus peripheries and the pre-Nucleus adjectives are among the Core operators.

Abstract In this paper, we will study the lexical aspect in Persian deadjectival complex predicates. Hence, we firstly review different kinds of aspect. Then, we will succinctly review three common viewpoints in the study of aspect in Persian complex predicates. According to the first viewpoint, light verbs play the major role in the telicity of the complex verbs; the second considers preverb to be determinant and regards all of the deadjectival complex predicates to be telic; and finally, the third viewpoint, although pointing out to the non-homogeneity of  Persian complex predicates, does not provide us with an explanation behind such inconsistency. It is argued in this paper that approaches based on the scalar structure of the verb, in which the lexical properties of the base adjective is considered to be of great importance, stand in a better position in accounting for the aspectual properties of Persian deadjectival complex predicates.

Abstract This paper, based on nanosyntax, studies the semantico-syntactic contribution of Kurdish circumposition [elements (l{ ...(d) a, l{ ...{w{, w{...(d) a, w{ ...{w{) and their movement inside the containing PP. Contrary to minimalist, nanosyntax is non-lexicalsit and the terminal nodes contain elements smaller than morphemes i.e. morphosyntactic features. In this theory derivation begins with merging features and the lexicon is presyntax and syntax generates all items from morpheme to clause. Nanosyntax also follows the rigid universal functional sequence order of  Specifier – Head - Complement that is based on the principle one morphosyntactic property - one feature-one head. For instance, morphemes are, in a binary way, derived from merging morphosyntactic features, and then they are mapped on lexical entries stored in lexicon. If they match with lexical entries that contain , they will spell out. Studying the data in Kurdish shows that -(d)a in l{ ...(d)a represents Place and in w{ ...(d)a  Genitive. -{w{ in l{ ...{w{ shows Ablative including the feature/ head Bound and in w{ ...{w{ spells out Comitative. Stuying the Kurdish data also shows that the complement of the circumposition based nanosyntax movent principles moves lefteward and locates between the elemnts of the circumposition in a way that assymetrically c-commonds its bound part. As a result, according to Kayne’s Linear Correspondence Axiom (LCA) all terminal nodes dominated by DP precede all terminal nodes dominated by the bound element of the circumposition.

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Abstract In this article, the causative alternation in Persian is discussed. First, it is shown that Persian anticausative verbs involve a CAUSE component and an implicit external argument. Second, we claim that causative alternation arises when a single change-of-state verb invokes more than one semantic frame (Fillmore, 1985): causative frame and anticausative frame. These semantic frames are the result of focusing a special part of the schematic scene described by the verb and together with the relevant syntactic frame, they are represented as lower level constructions (Iwata, 2008). Third, the role of arguments in participation in causative alternation can be accounted in a usage-based model of grammar. Based on this view, constructions sanction linguistic expressions as a whole.