Language Research - Articles List

Research Paper

Analysis of Human-Nature Interaction in the Persian Proverbs: An Ecolinguistics Perspective

Tahereh Afshar; Maryam Abdi Bloukani

Volume 11, Issue 2 , February 2021, Pages 1-24

https://doi.org/10.22059/jolr.2020.307695.666628

Abstract

The environmental crisis is one of the most important issues of the 21 st century. Eco linguistics explores the causes of this crisis in language. The purpose of this study was to investigate ... Read More The environmental crisis is one of the most important issues of the 21 st century. Eco linguistics explores the causes of this crisis in language. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effective linguistic factors in the eco - unfriendliness, to explore human interaction with nature, in Persian proverbs, which have high frequency in everyday conversations. The research was conducted using analytical, descriptive and library methods. In the first step, 373 proverbs, randomly and based on Morgan's table, as a suitable statistical society, from the total population of 10, 000 cases, were educed from the e-book “Ten thousand Persian proverbs and twenty five thousand equivalents”, the compilation of Dr. Ibrahim Shakour zadeh Bolouri. Then, the two concepts of anthropocentrism and anthropomorphism, based on the Eco linguistics criteria, were examined. The results of the research showed that the majority of the studied samples transmitted the anthropocentric concept, with negative affective meaning. anthropomorphism, is sometimes referred to as a way to avoid anthropocentric insight to nature, but this study showed that in Persian proverbs, human beings in the attribution of their own characteristics to nature allocate negative ones to non-human species. This insight to nature divides the world into “us” and “others” poles. The bipolar view of the world in this age may be the source of many important global issues. Part of the proverbs referred to other concepts, except for the two above- mentioned concepts, such as specialism, eco centrism, and environmental metaphors, which were used in statistical sections. Using the same pronouns for human and non-human beings, collocations of verbs such as (know, believe, etc) with non-human species and the concept of eco centrism with positive affective meaning, were observed in Persian proverbs. The use of proverbs of this kind can have a positive effect on human attitude toward nature. Language speaker should consider negative dimensions of language use. Therefore, it can be said that speakers need to identify the harmful aspects of using language and be careful in using it.

Research Paper

There is no Stem: the Distribution of Verbal Allomorphs, a Distributed Morphology Analysis

Mazdak Anushe

Volume 11, Issue 2 , February 2021, Pages 25-48

https://doi.org/10.22059/jolr.2020.294729.666564

Abstract

It is widely accepted by traditional grammarians and linguists that Persian verbal roots fall into two forms depending on their tense feature: present stem and past stem. In contrast ... Read More It is widely accepted by traditional grammarians and linguists that Persian verbal roots fall into two forms depending on their tense feature: present stem and past stem. In contrast to this traditional view, the present study considers an alternative notion of allomorphy, indicating that a few verbs use a basic form, called “morph”, in all morphosyntactic contexts while some other roots allow for having two or more allomorphs. Within the framework of Distributed Morphology, especially on the basis of underspecification condition, I will review the empirical evidence adduced in favor of the hypothesis that the tense feature has no role in producing and selecting the so-called present and past stems. In this approach, the systematic distribution of verbal allomorphs like /suz/ and /sux/ (derived from “ÖSUZ” = burn) is constrained by some other formal features, such as adjacency to the morphophoneme {D}, absorbing the causative suffix (“-ān” or its free variation “-un”) or appearing in the boundary of a word. Finally, to avoid terminological and empirical confusion, I will suggest that we should avoid the use of the term “stem” altogether and speak of root, morph and allomorphs only. It should be added that the different variations in phonetic shape of lexical roots are divided into two classes: the first one follows from the phonological rules and the second one is affected by the morphophonological (or readjustment) rules. Phonological changes are predictable and produce automatic alternations, but unpredictable morphophonological changes lead to non-automatic alternations. Following the general trend of DM, I restrict the term “allomorphy” to those cases in which the variation in phonetic shape of a morpheme does not follow from the automatic phonological rules of the language. This analysis raises the theoretical question of whether language-specific readjustment rules (i.e. the alteration of root or affix phonology) are needed for morphological theory. Rejecting readjustment rules, I show that allomorphs of verbal roots are independently stored in Vocabulary.

Research Paper

Grammaticalization Process of engâr / engâri

Fahimeh Tasalli Bakhsh; Ehsan Changizi

Volume 11, Issue 2 , February 2021, Pages 49-72

https://doi.org/10.22059/jolr.2020.295879.666571

Abstract

In Modern New Persian, two adverbs “engâr” and “engâri” are used to represent irrealis modality when the speaker introduces a simile or a parable ... Read More In Modern New Persian, two adverbs “engâr” and “engâri” are used to represent irrealis modality when the speaker introduces a simile or a parable or expresses doubt and uncertainty about what he/she says. Some grammarians consider “engâri” as two other adverbs “guyi” and “pendâri”. They believe that these adverbs are originated in second-person singular verbs which have acquired adverbial function. In this article, we will discuss the process of grammaticalization of the two adverbs “engâr” and “engâri” using evidence from ancient texts written in Persian (either verse or prose post-Islamic texts) and Middle Persian, focusing on semantic changes the verb “hangār- / hangārd” has gone through: In Middle Persian, “hangār- / hangārd” is a lexical verb meaning “to consider”. After going through certain semantic changes, the verb obtains the meanings “to count” and “to assume”. Later on, the second-person singular imperative form of the verb shifts to the beginning of the clause which leads the noun phrase object to be replaced by a subordinate clause. Such changes speed up the progress of grammaticalization and make it easier for “engâr” to be reanalyzed as an adverb. After being decategorized, “engâr” is used as a modal adverb to indicate hypothetical actions and irrealis modality. On the other hand, there is a grammatical rule in Middle Persian according to which, the morpheme “ē” can be added to present stem of the verbs to construct the optative mood mainly functioning as a device to imply irrealis modality. This applies to “engâri” which is reanalyzed as an adverb indicating simile, allegory, doubt and uncertainty since in New Persian, modality is more expressed by linguistic devices such as modal verbs and adverbs than the verb moods. Phonological changes lead speakers to reanalyze “engâri” and consider it to be originated from second-person singular verb due to resemblance in orthography and pronunciation.

Research Paper

Apology or Non- apology: An Interfacial Approach to the Discourse Analysis of Official Apologies in the Iranian Media

Hadaegh Rezaei

Volume 11, Issue 2 , February 2021, Pages 73-95

https://doi.org/10.22059/jolr.2020.306113.666621

Abstract

Apology has been mostly studied from a pragmatics standpoint and as a frequent speech act, especially in Persian language. This paper, however, aims at a discourse analysis of apology, ... Read More Apology has been mostly studied from a pragmatics standpoint and as a frequent speech act, especially in Persian language. This paper, however, aims at a discourse analysis of apology, taking as its framework, the interdisciplinary approach introduced in Lakoff (2015). The data are collected form official apologies in the Iranian media between 2015- 2018. The results show that firstly, without taking an interdisciplinary stance many interactional aspects of this speech act is neglected. This is because apology is one of the face- saving speech acts in the representation of which contextual and interpersonal factors, and the speaker’s and addressee’s perspective play an important role in the ways preferred by the speaker to apologize. Moreover the nature of public and political discourse multiplies the complexities and forces the speakers get the benefit of all linguistic and extra- linguistic means at different levels to achieve their communicative goals. Secondly, the prototypical explicit apologies in public discourse are rare, so that most of the cases studied are instances of non- apology rather than apology. The reason behind this fact can be traced back to the nature of public and political discourses in which apology would bring about negative consequences for the apologizer. Also, one of the main presuppositions of this speech act is that the apologizer implicitly accepts the responsibility of the wrongdoing and her reluctance to apologize explicitly in public and political discourse is a conscious or unconscious attempt to avoid the negative consequences of shouldering the responsibilities in these formal settings. Accordingly, different representations of apology can be placed somewhere on a continuum with prototypical apology at one end and non- apology at the other one. This paves the way for considering apology as a radial category at the level of discourse and for adding a cognitive level of analysis to the framework at hand.

Research Paper

Cognitive Semantics of "GAH" from the Perspective of Semantic Conflict and Resolution Hypothesis

Ali Alizadeh; Hamed Akbarpour; Faranak Jamaleddin; Mohammad Reza Dehghanzadeh

Volume 11, Issue 2 , February 2021, Pages 97-119

https://doi.org/10.22059/jolr.2021.314951.666676

Abstract

The aim of this study is to carefully examine the morpheme "GAH" in order to enumerate the concepts contained in and to discover the mechanism of conversion between these concepts from ... Read More The aim of this study is to carefully examine the morpheme "GAH" in order to enumerate the concepts contained in and to discover the mechanism of conversion between these concepts from the perspective of Cognitive Semantics in the context of Talmy’s Semantic Conflict and Resolution hypothesis. To achieve this, we extracted all the entries of this morpheme from the Two Volume Persian Dictionary of Sadri Afshar et al. (2009). We examined each of them in an analytical-research way from a qualitative perspective presented in the introduced theoretical framework. After the autopsy of the nature of the open and closed classes and creating a correspondence between their concepts and types of uses of the morpheme "GAH" and proving that this morpheme does not follow a fixed pattern in belonging to the open or closed class, followed by dissection of the Semantic Conflict and Resolution hypothesis under the presentation of a series of Cognitive processes under the headings of shifts, blends, juxtaposition, juggling and blocking and their exact subsets, we put the body of research in the benchmark of these criteria to determine with which morphemes, via which processes and by which functions, the morpheme of “GAH” is combined, and the final output belongs to which Cognitive process and what conceptual domain it includes. The concept of "basicness" was recognized as TIME and the cognitive process through which this concept converts to "SPACE", as a new achievement in this research was established as “Replacement of whole the basicness concept of a spectrum (open/closed) class by a component of open-class side features.” Also, the cause of this gradation in the nature of "GAH" was identified through another Cognitive process called Reification. In addition, according to what we obtained in the data analysis, the outputs of "GAH"’s compounds were not out of 4 modes: location of the process, location of the effect of the process, location of an object/mass, and location of the effect/direction/extension of an object. A commixture of the modes also appeared.

Research Paper

The Role of Syntactic Head and Constituent Position in Processing Root Compound Nouns: Evidence from People with Broca Aphasia

Mousa Ghonchepour; Shahla Raghibdoust

Volume 11, Issue 2 , February 2021, Pages 121-145

https://doi.org/10.22059/jolr.2020.299780.666593

Abstract

This study investigates the way head initial and head final root compound nouns comprising of noun-noun constituents are processed. It also investigates the role of their syntactic ... Read More

Research Paper

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.

Research Paper

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.

Research Paper

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.

Research Paper

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.

Research Paper

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

Research Paper

The Evolution of Verbal Prefix mi in Persian Language

ّFataneh Yousefi; Mojtaba Monshizade; Farah Zahedi

Volume 11, Issue 2 , February 2021, Pages 271-285

https://doi.org/10.22059/jolr.2020.310217.666642

Abstract

This paper explores the evolution of the inflectional verbal prefix mi and its diverse roles from the Old Persian through the Middle Persian language, to the New Persian. In the earlier ... Read More This paper explores the evolution of the inflectional verbal prefix mi and its diverse roles from the Old Persian through the Middle Persian language, to the New Persian. In the earlier stages of Persian, verbal prefixes played varied roles, such as the adverbial function. Verbal prefixes could extend or restrict the principal meaning of the verb, or even change it altogether. The majority of verbal prefixes could originally be used both as adverbs and prepositions. However, the middle period of the Persian language witnessed a gradual reduction in the functional roles verbal prefixes played, as the language drifted toward analyticity. For this reason, verbal prefixes were no more able to change the verb meaning as they used to in the earlier stages. In other words, they changed to be fixed prefixes which were not generative anymore in middle Persian and the later stages of the language. In fact, verbal prefixes were grammaticalized and accepted various grammatical roles. This prefix is the contemporary Persian mi that represents the durative or habituative aspect. This inflectional prefix mi originates from old *ham-aiwa through the middle Persian hamē which means “always” in Middle Persian. Hamē also represents continuity and habits, while it does not have a fixed place in the sentence having been attested in a variety of places. In classical Persian literature texts, hamē is attested in the forms of hami and mi. The two classical Persian forms gradually moved closer to the verb, and were finally attached to the verb to be grammaticalized as an inflectional prefix. Contemporary mi represents not only continuity and habit, but also plays a modal role to signify unfulfilled wishes and unrealized assumptions by prefixing a past verb. Thus, the adverbial *ham-aiwa has gone through a long process of grammaticalization, and has become an inflectional prefix to signal continuity and habits aspect and also irreal modality.

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Volume & Issue: Volume 11, Issue 2, February 2021, Pages 1-280

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