Language Research - Articles in Press

Agglutinative-Analytic Morphology of Persian: A Distributed Morphology Approach

Shabnam Majidi; Mahinnaz Mirdehghan

Volume 11, Issue 2 , February 2021, , Pages 147-172

https://doi.org/10.22059/jolr.2020.304807.666611

Abstract

The present research is aimed to analyses the morphological typology of Persian on the basis of the framework of Distributed Morphology (DM). According to the findings of DM, the predominant ... Read More The present research is aimed to analyses the morphological typology of Persian on the basis of the framework of Distributed Morphology (DM). According to the findings of DM, the predominant tendency of Persian's morphological type is defined here on a two-dimensional chart; a chart provided by Aikhenvald (2007) from the conjugation typology of languages, which itself was defined on the basis of the criteria proposed by Sapir. The horizontal axis in this diagram deals with the degree of internal complexity of words and its horizontal axis includes the transparency of morphological boundaries between the morphemes within a grammatical word. Accordingly, the main research questions are to determine: the position of Persian language on the basis of “degree of internal complexity of words”, as well as, its typology on the basis of “border transparency criteria”. To analyses the grammatical structures of Persian, a variety of diverse structures, among different Persian text types, including stories, textbooks, scenarios, and research papers was gathered, which contained a total number of nine thousand and six hundred words. The investigation on the first question on the basis of Greenberg’s quantitative standards illustrates that, by achieving a number of one thousand and five hundred and six words from the above-mentioned index, the orientation of today’s Persian language, according to the “degree of internal complexity of words” or what is called as “word combinability criteria”, is towards “analytic” language type. Considering the second question, the research demonstrates that in view of the “border transparency criteria” for morphemes which indicates ways to connect morphemes, Persian language is more inclined towards “agglutinating” language type. Finally, it can be concluded that based on the findings of DM, the dominant tendency of morphosyntactic structures of Persian is towards “agglutinating-analytic” languages. Therefore, the research findings in considering Persian within the DM framework approves its grouping within agglutinating-analytic language types, though in comparison to the previous studies, the reduction of the statistical results here illustrates the main tendency of Persian's morphological type towards analytic languages and its movement towards becoming more analytic.

Verb Structure in Bactrian

Mahmood JaafariDehaghi

Volume 1, Issue 1 , November 2010

Abstract

Verb system and its construction are two of the most important issues in the grammar of Middle Iranian languages. Comparing the construction of verbs in Middle Iranian languages and ... Read More

Intonational Representation of Secondary Stress In Contemporary Persian Language

Amir Saeed Moloodi; Mahmoud Bijankhan

Volume 2, Issue 2 , March 2011, , Pages 127-146

Abstract

In the theory of phrasal phonology and on the basis of the leveling rule, Kahnemuyipour (2003) claims that in the stress representation, the words with? symbols in the intonational ... Read More

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negin elkhanipour; gholamhossein karrimi-Doostan

Volume 5, Issue 1 , September 2014, , Pages 129-133

https://doi.org/10.22059/jolr.2014.52664

Abstract

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Bēstūn; Yesterday … Today

Azhideh Moqaddam

Volume 7, Issue 1 , September 2016, , Pages 137-156

https://doi.org/10.22059/jolr.2016.59420

Abstract

“Bēstūn” other than a place name is the name of a noble lady mentioned in the Pahlavi book of Ayādgār ī Zarērān. This article presents the author’s revised ... Read More

Comparison of Linguistic Categories Usage and Distribution in Blind and Sighted Students

Tahere Mahmoodi Ahmadabadi; Mansureh Alsadat Sadeghi

Volume 4, Issue 2 , March 2014, , Pages 141-159

https://doi.org/10.22059/jolr.2014.50278

Abstract

Langacker provided new schema-based descriptions of linguistic categories when he was questioning traditional theories of categorization. Langecker's model of grammar deals with the ... Read More

Syntactico-Semantic Study of Some Kurdish (Sorani Dialect) True Prepositions Based on Nanosyntax

Ebrahim Moradi; Abbas Ali Ahangar; Gholamhosain Karimi doustan

Volume 10, Issue 1 , June 2019, , Pages 141-160

https://doi.org/10.22059/jolr.2019.72005

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, ... Read More 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.

Swear Speech Act in a Community of Practice: A sociolinguistic study with an emphasis on the Pragmatics of the Discourse of Iranian Modern Market

Hossein Talebzadeh; Mehdi Bazyar; Reza Ghafar Samar

Volume 9, Issue 2 , January 2019, , Pages 151-169

https://doi.org/10.22059/jolr.2018.69533

Abstract

In spite of the significance, frequency, and function of swearing in many discourse communities and cultures, swear speech act has not been adequately studied with regard to Linguistics ... Read More

Identification of Neural Mechanisms in Ambiguity Resolotion of Pronominal Anaphor in Persian Language

Mina Karimian; Mahmood Bijankhan; Ahmadreza Khatoonabadi

Volume 10, Issue 2 , March 2020, , Pages 153-170

https://doi.org/10.22059/jolr.2019.283339.666519

Abstract

This article is an EEG/ERP study based on psycholinguistic models of reference resolution to study the discourse comprehension and coherent contexts through co-referencing between an ... Read More This article is an EEG/ERP study based on psycholinguistic models of reference resolution to study the discourse comprehension and coherent contexts through co-referencing between an anaphor and its antecedent in the same spoken context. How brain is able to establish reference between an anaphor and potential antecedents in discourse has become of great interest. Based on Informational Load Hypothesis by Almor (1999), an auditory task using participants with no neurological or medical disorder was designed to compare coreference resolution of a referential pronoun and its acceptable antecedent in two-sentence discourse context. Based on this theory, and considering the morpho-syntactic limitations of Persian language for processing the information comes from the pronominal anaphor, discourse function and processing cost of reference resolution analysis was examined by situations such as ambiguity in referring expressions. Research method in this study is based on psycholinguistic experimental model which indicates the sub-processes of brain functions responding to co-reference resolution. The model used in this research represents the balance between discourse function and processing costs of reference resolution between referential coherence and referential ambiguity conditions. The ERP components shown in this project indicate that the processing of anaphor resolution in different situations imposes different processing cost on working memory. The two components Nref and Left Anterior Negativity (LAN) in frontal lobe were elicited during referential ambiguity of the pronominal anaphor (third person) which has no gender feature. Nref is a sustained referential negativity which indicates the ambiguity of the referring anaphor. (LAN) in previous researches has shown the increasing activity of working memory. This result which is incompatible with previous studies, has indicated that lower salience of the antecedent can cause higher processing cost for the working memory in order to establish a cross-reference bridge between the new information and the already existing representations of antecedent.

Stylistic Discourse Analysis of Short Story of "Atrium" from the Perspective of "Ideational" and "Textual" Metafunctions Based on Halliday's Systemic Functional Grammar

reza Ghanbari Abdolmaleki; Ailin FiroozianPooresfahani

Volume 12, Issue 1 , July 2021, , Pages 169-192

https://doi.org/10.22059/jolr.2021.317625.666693

Abstract

The present study analyzed Houshang Golshiri’s discourse style in his short story of "Dehliz (=Atrium)", and the use of language in this text considering systemic functional grammar. ... Read More The present study analyzed Houshang Golshiri’s discourse style in his short story of "Dehliz (=Atrium)", and the use of language in this text considering systemic functional grammar. The main question in this paper is: To what extent have the linguistic elements of the story been successful in representing political and social realities? In order to answer this question, the authors examined the text of the story according to the metafunctions to reveal how Golshiri's mental images of reality were coded in the language of his writing. In this story, 239 processes have been found and examined based on Halliday’s model, but due to limitations, only a few examples of each process are mentioned. The method of this research is descriptive-analytical. In this way, all verbs in the text have been extracted and the frequencies of the processes were identified. Then they were grouped and analyzed according to Halliday’s method. Among the three metafunctions, the focus of this article is on ideational and textual metafunctions. The findings demonstrate that material, behavioral and relational processes have mostly been applied and existential, mental and verbal processes have rarely been used. The high frequency of the material process in the story reflects its relevance to the historical context of Golshiri-era society, which coincided with the growth of capitalistic thought and the development of industry in Iran. Also, it shows that in his realistic discourse, the writer seeks to represent his attitude toward the political situation of the society. Compared to the material processes, mental processes have less frequency. It indicates that the writer has seldom involved his own and his discourse addressees’ feelings, and mental characteristics in the discourse of this short story. The processes and texture of the text fit together. The high frequency of use of past tense is a factor that has increased the degree of certainty in discourse.

Syllable Structure in Central Kurdish Language Revisited

Azad Mohammadi; Mahmood Bijankhan

Volume 11, Issue 2 , February 2021, , Pages 173-198

https://doi.org/10.22059/jolr.2021.303522.666606

Abstract

In this study, the syllable structure in Central Kurdish (Sorani) language has been phonologically investigated. In this investigation, the syllable structure has been compared with ... Read More In this study, the syllable structure in Central Kurdish (Sorani) language has been phonologically investigated. In this investigation, the syllable structure has been compared with the views which are based on orthography believe in CGVCC, CCVC and CCVCCC syllable structures (based on the frequency of occurrence in previous studies). This study examines the presence of a high front lax vowel /I/ in underlying representation or its epenthesis in surface representation during derivational stages. For this purpose, both internal and external linguistic evidences are employed. An audio corpus of the speakers of Mariwan and Sulaimani, along with a questionnaire for determining the native speakers’ intuition in counting the word syllables have been employed as the research data. Evidences from vowel changes in cognate and borrowed words, diachronic data, the application of phonological rules in the syllable domain, sonority sequencing principle and selection of the most sonorous element as syllable nucleus and consonants as onset and coda, along with acoustic cues for the presence of this vowel in phonetic representation explain the phonological syllable structure in Central Kurdish. Basic tenets of generative phonology like referring to two levels of representation, and the phonotactic rules on the distribution of building blocks of syllable form the theoretical framework of this study. The results show that from two opponent hypotheses regarding vowel /I/ existence in phonetic form: 1) existence in UR and faithfulness mapping to SR; 2) lacking in UR and emergence in SR as result of vowel epenthesis rule, regarding above-mentioned phonological arguments, the former is confirmed. By accepting the presence of vowel /I/ in underlying representation and the similarities between glides and other consonants as the second member of the onset, the syllable structure in Central Kurdish, like standard Persian, is CV(C)(C). In phonetic representation onset clusters of consonant-glide is the result of vowel deletion due to the shared place of articulation with the following glide.

The morphology and semantics of the diminutive suffix “cheh” in Persian

Reza Moghaddamkia; Akram Shafiei

Volume 4, Issue 2 , March 2014, , Pages 161-180

https://doi.org/10.22059/jolr.2014.50280

Abstract

The diminutive function is defined as any morphological device that adds the meaning "small" (in size) and some other connotative meanings such as expressing emotions, contempt, imitation, ... Read More

The Corpus-Based Study of Ezafe Construction in Persian

minoo nassajian; Razieh Shojaei; Mohammad Bahrani

Volume 10, Issue 1 , June 2019, , Pages 161-182

https://doi.org/10.22059/jolr.2019.72007

Abstract

Ezafe construction is considered as one of the most important issues in various linguistic theories including phonetics, morphology and syntax and many Iranian linguists have analyzed ... Read More Ezafe construction is considered as one of the most important issues in various linguistic theories including phonetics, morphology and syntax and many Iranian linguists have analyzed this phenomenon from these different aspects. Ezafe marker is usually not written in Persian text. So, not only does it result in a high degree of ambiguity in reading, analyzing, and understanding Persian documents, but also it causes serious difficulties for a large number of natural language processing tasks (NLP) such as part-of-speech (POS) tagging, Named-Entity Recognition (NER), Co-reference Resolution, Converting Text to Speech, Machine Translation, syntactic parsing and so on. As a result, determining the positions of Ezafe in a given sentence is viewed as a controversial and challenging issue especially in these applications. Using a corpus-based analysis and dependency grammar, the current paper sets to study Ezafe positions. Due to the fact that dependency grammar applies a simple parsing, uses low memory and speeds up computer operations, this grammar is regarded as one of the important and practical grammars in the field of computational linguistics. Accordingly, this study will use a rule-based method within this framework to recognize Ezafe positions. For this purpose, all Ezafe constructions which are provided in Uppsala Persian Dependency Corpus (UPDC) are analyzed based on dependency relations. In the next step, only seven Ezafe rules are formulated consisting of such non-verbal phrases as noun phrases, adjective phrases, prepositional phrases, adverb phrases, phrases with more than one post-modifier, phrases with more than one post-modifier as a phrase and co-ordinations. The proposed rules can be used in Persian dependency corpora and a great number of language processing tasks which are based on dependency relations. In addition, in the present research, Ezafe positions which have not been mentioned in previous theoretical and computational studies will be elaborated.

A Task-Oriented Perspective of Temporal Fluctuation of Motivation for Learning Persian among Foreign Students in Iran

Zahraa Abbasi; Hadi Yaghoubinezhad

Volume 9, Issue 2 , January 2019, , Pages 171-194

https://doi.org/10.22059/jolr.2018.69534

Abstract

Motivation for learning a new language is both self and time-oriented. The language learner’s motivation experiences gradual fluctuation over time and the view of oneself is different ... Read More

Critical Analysis of Bargaining

Ladan Javaheri; Ronak Moradi

Volume 10, Issue 2 , March 2020, , Pages 171-192

https://doi.org/10.22059/jolr.2019.282199.666511

Abstract

Discourse analysis examines the impacts of human, gender and cultural interactions and social values on discourse, and studies the way these relationships are presented in the text. ... Read More Discourse analysis examines the impacts of human, gender and cultural interactions and social values on discourse, and studies the way these relationships are presented in the text. Hence, in this article, which deals with the phenomenon of bargaining in an Iranian culture, Kermanshah, the approach of critical discourse analysis is used to study the discourse of bargaining regarding the mind control process of the audience. According to Foucault, power has a non-predetermined structure, hence because of its elusive nature, participants in a discourse can play different roles. This research data is gathered utilizing a questionnaire (164) and recording some conversations (850 minutes), in three different social class areas in Kermanshah. The analysis of the data shows that discourse participants use different linguistic mechanisms to reach their goals in bargaining, such as topicalization, short single sentences, exclamatory, imperative and interrogative structures, besides prosodic prominence strategies such as changes in stress, intonation and juncture which can end in shifts in the focus of the information structure of the sentences. However, simple words with ideological connotative meanings have the highest frequency. Moreover, according to the findings, three highlighted behavorial strategies frequent in bargaining include the usage of religious beliefs, having ethnic tradition biases, and stating economic, social, and class problems. The results indicate that the various roles pertaining to the bargaining participants –buyers and sellers- put bargaining in the category of reverse discourse, as Foucault calls it. The seller, in the power hierarchy, is the superordinate through the ownership position, while the buyer is the subordinate. However, in mind controlling, the buyer’s attempt to control the seller secretly makes them the controller, the one who applies power in a bottom-up order. Given that it is impossible to control the seller's mind without persuading them or without changing their worldview, bargaining is categorized as a rhetorical task, and the buyer, in this discourse, is the rhetor.

A Psycholinguistic Study of the Effect of Grammatical Aspect on the Interpretation of Ambiguous Subject Pronoun and Discourse Relations in Persian

Ramin Golshaie; Behnaz Mokhtari; Farideh Haghbin

Volume 12, Issue 1 , July 2021, , Pages 193-218

https://doi.org/10.22059/jolr.2021.314515.666673

Abstract

Grammatical aspect encodes temporal features of a situation mainly as completed (perfective) or incomplete (imperfective). In the present study, the effect of perfective vs. imperfective ... Read More Grammatical aspect encodes temporal features of a situation mainly as completed (perfective) or incomplete (imperfective). In the present study, the effect of perfective vs. imperfective grammatical aspects on highlighting different participants of an event has been investigated by means of exploring the role of aspect on the interpretation of the ambiguous third person singular subject pronoun and discourse relations in Persian. To this end, 75 native speakers of Persian participated in a story completion task. After reading a simple transfer-of-possession sentence in each of the three aspects, namely perfective, imperfective, and progressive, they wrote natural continuations to the sentence. The second sentence, which was to be completed, began with the Persian third person singular pronoun /u:/ (“he/she”). The task sentences consisted of 18 critical and 20 filler sentences. Filler sentences were used to disguise the purpose of the task. The acquired data were analyzed using chi-square significance test in SPSS. Results showed that: First, Source/subject preference has outnumbered Goal preference in all the aspectual conditions. This finding was interpreted as confirming the first-mention bias in the interpretation of ambiguous pronouns in Persian. Second, Source vs Goal preference of pronouns is significantly affected by the grammatical aspect such that the perfective contexts produce less Source preference but more Goal preference when interpreting pronouns compred to the imperfective contexts. Third, there is a significant relationship between the aspect type and the type of the discourse relation connecting the two sentences. In fact, the perfective aspect seems to bias the second sentence in the direction of shifting its focus to the Goal of the first sentence and extending the effect of the first event. Also, the imperfective aspect seems to bias the second sentence in the direction of focusing on the Source of the first sentence and providing explanations and details to the first event. Overall, the findings are in line with the predictions of the first-mention bias and the event structure hypothesis in the interpretation of ambiguous pronouns.

A Cognitive Study of the Construction of Euphemistic Meaning Via the Process of Negation in Persian

Sadjad Mousavi; Arsalan Golfam; Ferdows Aghagolzadeh; Aliyeh Kambuziya

Volume 11, Issue 2 , February 2021, , Pages 199-222

https://doi.org/10.22059/jolr.2020.296445.666574

Abstract

The aim of this article is to explain the construction of euphemistic meaning via the process of negation from the perspective of cognitive linguistics. The main question of the present ... Read More The aim of this article is to explain the construction of euphemistic meaning via the process of negation from the perspective of cognitive linguistics. The main question of the present study is how the cognitive mechanism of negation acts for constructing euphemistic meaning and consequently for motivating euphemistic linguistic structures. The present research explains euphemism in Persian by a descriptive-analytical method. Data were also collected manually from mostly library resources containing several Persian-language dictionaries. In this study, it is shown that the cognitive process of negation is volitionally applied to a conceptual content by the conceptualizer and consequently a pleasant conceptual content is activated and attention is drawn toward it. Based on the negation process, the negated pleasant concept is represented phonetically and the strength of attention over the unpleasant content which has not been represented at the linguistic level will decrease. Due to the representation of the negated pleasant concept at the linguistic level and based on the type of guided attention distribution pattern encoded in the negative linguistic forms, the speaker tries to distribute a portion of the listener's attention sources over the pleasant content and he/she tries to decrease the strength of attention on the unpleasant concept. In fact, instead of directly encoding an unpleasant concept at the linguistic level, the speaker uses indirect methods and encodes "the negated pleasant concept". By this indirect reference, lesser attention is assigned to the unpleasant concept than when the concept is directly represented in the language. Therefore, linguistic negations structure the concepts in such a way that the window of attention does not open on the unpleasant aspects of the entity in question and does not put them at the center of attention, and through this way, euphemistic meaning will be constructed. It should be noted that the present study re-emphasizes on the interaction and overlap of language and other general cognitive abilities.

A psycholinguistic view to recognition of derived words in Persian mental lexicon and its application in term selection

Arezoo Najafian

Volume 4, Issue 2 , March 2014, , Pages 181-198

https://doi.org/10.22059/jolr.2014.50281

Abstract

One of the basic questions in the domain of lexical access and the process of word recognition in mental lexicon is how the native speaker can access the meaning of new complex words ... Read More

Selection of the Request Speech Act Strategies in Kurdish Regarding two Social Factors: Gender and Power

Chiya Sheykhmohammadi; Nahid Yarahmadzehi; Amir Mohamadian

Volume 10, Issue 1 , June 2019, , Pages 183-202

https://doi.org/10.22059/jolr.2019.72008

Abstract

This research, conducted in the field of pragmatics and sociolinguistics, aims at the describing and analyzing the type and number of request strategies in Kurdish, Mokri dialect, regarding ... Read More This research, conducted in the field of pragmatics and sociolinguistics, aims at the describing and analyzing the type and number of request strategies in Kurdish, Mokri dialect, regarding the effectiveness or non-effectiveness of social factors as the gender of user and the power of addressee. To this end, for data collection, a revised version of Discourse Completion Test (DCT) including 12 situations was distributed among 130 (65 males and 65 females) Mokri Kurdish speakers in Mahabad city located in the southern of West Azabayejan province. They were in the age range of 25 to 35, holding at least a bachelor degree. Besides the questionaire, direct observation consisting of 7 hours of everyday normal conversations in various situations and different contexts was employed to collect more natural and reliable data. As the main theoretical framework for the present study, Cross-Cultural Speech Act Realization Project (CCSARP) coding scheme used by Blum-Kulka, House and Kasper (1989) was employed and Brown and Levinson’s (1987) politeness theory was used as the peripheral framework. Results of the research showed a significant difference across genders in selection of the type of request strategis and the power of addressee had a significant effect on choosing the strategies. It was also shown that power and gender had an interactive effect on the selection of these strategies. According to supporting strategies of the "negative and positive faces" in Brown and Levinson’s (1987) theory, it was found that Kurdish people as the members of one cooperative group mostly employed positive face saving acts in their communications and interactions. The research findings indicate that it is about time for linguists as educational planners to consider these sociolinguistic differences in teaching Kurdish language to non-Kurdish people in order to prevent any probable mishaps in their communications and interactions with Kurdish speakers.

Verbal Ellipsis without Linguistic Antecedent: Iḍmār, from Taqdīr to Indirect Licensing

Anis Vahid; Farideh Haghbin

Volume 10, Issue 2 , March 2020, , Pages 193-217

https://doi.org/10.22059/jolr.2020.270002.666428

Abstract

This article investigates the verbal ellipsis (iḍmār al-fi’l) in Sībawayhi’s (c. 760–796) Kitāb. First, the terminology of this research domain has been explicated ... Read More This article investigates the verbal ellipsis (iḍmār al-fi’l) in Sībawayhi’s (c. 760–796) Kitāb. First, the terminology of this research domain has been explicated and it is stated that the term “ḥaḏf” (deletion) in the medieval Arabic (Sībawayhi era) is often dedicated to the phonological level of the language whereas the term of “iḍmār” (suppression) belongs to the syntactic (and pragmatic or even cognitive level). For this reason, the term “iḍmār al-fi’l” is used in this article to refer to the (verbal) ellipsis. Thereafter Sībawayhi’s data are introduced and a new classification of them has been proposed (based on the ellipsis ground). The presence of the speaker and the hearer in a common situational or cultural context and the presence of a grammatical reason can be accordingly enumerated as the grounds for ellipsis. Moreover, the data are investigated differently, i.e. in the framework of the Parallel Architecture of the Grammar (PA) which is a formal model to analyze the natural language. Although the data are historical, each modern language includes similar ones that can be compared with our data and therefore the proposal which is made here, can also be used to analyze them. For the analysis of these data which don’t have linguistic antecedents, it has been proposed to consider an intermediate cognitive tier which binds the elliptical utterance with its non-linguistic antecedent so that its minimal syntax will be licensed. This mechanism of licensing which is known as “indirect licensing” makes this binding possible. It looks similar to an interpretive process in medieval Arabic grammar which is called taqdīr (suppletive insertion). Our proposal is also compatible with a more general model, the structure of the mind, proposed by Jackendoff (1997, 2002, 2010) and can clarify some aspects of contextual ellipsis in the medieval Arabic which is imparted by the term “ḥāl” (discourse equivalence).

Lexical Functional Grammar Levels of Representation in Certain Persian Syntactic Structures

Sare Abdollahi; Farideh Haghbin; Masood Ghayoomi

Volume 9, Issue 2 , January 2019, , Pages 195-214

https://doi.org/10.22059/jolr.2018.69535

Abstract

Lexical Functional Gramma (LFG) is a non-transformational generative grammar, which excludes concepts such as deep structure, surface structure and transformation. Rather than shifting ... Read More

The Morphology and Meaning of the Pārs (Parsumaš) Based on the Linguistic Evolutions and Historical-Mythological Traditions

Behzad Moeini Sam; Sara Mohammadiَ Avandi

Volume 12, Issue 1 , July 2021, , Pages 219-243

https://doi.org/10.22059/jolr.2021.309524.666639

Abstract

It is necessary to study the vocabulary of the Indo-European and Indo-Iranian periods because the structure of most Persian words goes back to the Indo-European and Indo-Iranian periods ... Read More It is necessary to study the vocabulary of the Indo-European and Indo-Iranian periods because the structure of most Persian words goes back to the Indo-European and Indo-Iranian periods and their meanings show the beliefs of the earliest people and their views on the function of their morphology. During the recent centuries, comparative linguistics and mythology have facilitated the reconstruction of the words common between the two tribes. The Persians were the first Indo-Iranian tribes who established a world empire; nevertheless, there is no reference to the meaning of the word Pārs, which has an ancient construction, in historical documents. Consequently, linguists have different opinions about its meaning, and their views are just based on the linguistic document. So, in addition to linguistic and historical issues, one should also look at linguistic, mythological, and cultural exchanges with Mesopotamian civilizations because, after migrating to the Iran plateau and replacing the Mesopotamian states, the Persians owed them in many respects, including the fact that the word Pārs together with the word Medes, has been mentioned in their documents for the first time. This research aims at studying the structure and meanings of Pārs based on linguistic documents and historical-mythological traditions. Therefore, this research seeks to look for the time of the formation of this word and its most probable meanings. Hence, the method is to study the linguistic structure and morphology of the primary form of the word Pārs based on Assyrian texts and Greek mythological traditions and then find the most probable meaning. Since each word must be interpreted according to its primary form, in the end, the meanings of corner, leopard, ax and sickle are considered for the primary form *parsu/va, based on linguistic and historical documents, and "sickle" has been assumed as the most probable meaning for Pārs.

Electrophysiological Evidence of Neurological Representations of the Phonological and Phonetic Properties of Persian Vowels in the Auditory Cortex

Abbas Nasri; Gholamhosain Karimi doustan

Volume 11, Issue 2 , February 2021, , Pages 223-245

https://doi.org/10.22059/jolr.2021.313724.666663

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 ... Read More 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.

The Effect of Prosodic Elements on Hearer’s Inference When Utterances Have Implicature

fateme yegane; farhad sasani; mandana norbakhsh

Volume 12, Issue 1 , July 2021, , Pages 245-268

https://doi.org/10.22059/jolr.2021.311844.666649

Abstract

The notion of implicature was proposed by Grice (1975) who introduced two kinds of implicatures. Implicature is the level of meaning beyond the semantic meaning of the words uttered ... Read More The notion of implicature was proposed by Grice (1975) who introduced two kinds of implicatures. Implicature is the level of meaning beyond the semantic meaning of the words uttered by the speaker or written by the writer. Neo-Griceans developed this notion more widely and proposed other types. An implicature is generated intentionally by the speaker and may (or may not) be understood by the hearer. Prosodic elements (pitch accent and its changes, pause, intensity, and duration) influence hearers' inferences in utterances having implicatures, and conveying different meanings. Therefore, we propose another class of implicatures namely “prosodic implicature”. It seems that some structures are grammatically underdetermined, i.e. the syntactic structure and lexical meaning are insufficient for determining their meanings, and the role of prosodic elements cannot be disregarded. Putting aside contextual effects, this paper argues in favor of the influence of prosodic elements. In a three-step experiment (a written test, and two listening tests with two different prosodic elements), 8 utterances having conversational or scalar implicatures were presented to 20 examinees whose first language was Persian, and all mastered the standard Persian. Findings show that in scalar implicatures, “duration” affects the hearer’s inferring the upper bounds (upper items in the scales) or the lower bounds (lower items in the scales). In conversational implicatures, “changes in pitch range” and “intensity changes” influence the hearer’s inference. Moreover, this paper shows that in absence of prosodic elements, i.e., in writings, some meanings are default for some structures, and readers base their inferences on those defaults. So, it seems that some meanings might be unmarked for some structures which leads to many misunderstandings in interpretation of written utterances as in text messaging like SMS and online chats.

Clausal Complements of Noun in Persian

Mona Valipour; َAli Darzi

Volume 11, Issue 2 , February 2021, , Pages 247-269

https://doi.org/10.22059/jolr.2020.304147.666609

Abstract

Clausal dependents of noun in Persian are divided into two groups: relative clauses (restrictive relative clause /RRC and non-restrictive relative clause /NRRC), and clausal complements ... Read More

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