نشریه زبان و زبان شناسی
پیاپی 13 (بهار و تابستان 1390)

The purpose of this study was to investigate the impact of laryngeal features on the contrastive system of the plosives in Standard Persian. First, the underlying structure of the features was examined based on the derivational approach. Then, descriptive generalization observed in the data was formalized by inviolable constraints of the filter theory and violable constraints of the optimality theory. Based on conspiracy among phonological rules, the contrastive role of the features was explained according to four violable constraints. The results showed that neutralization of the features can be explained by dominance of context-sensitive markedness constraints over faithfulness constraints of voicing and aspiration, while explaining the contrastive role of the features requires a reverse order of dominance relation mentioned above.

The way speakers react towards modal structures basically differs from the way they treat independent constructions. The most common means of expressing modality are modal components such as modal verbs, sentence adverbs and certain lexical verbs. The present paper focuses on modal constructions and aims at analyzing modality, its functions, types and degrees in modern Persian. It also makes a distinction between formal and semantic dimensions of modality in this language. This paper demonstrates, for the first time, that xâstan, in addition to its role as a future tense auxiliary, can be considered a modal auxiliary which entails a proposition. This means that the modal auxiliary xâstan is a proper means of expressing a strong degree of modality in Persian, a fact unnoticed in previous studies. Accordingly, one can claim that Persian benefits from all the three degrees of modality, i.e. weak, moderate and strong. As for types of modality, the paper provides examples of all the three types, i.e. epistemic, dynamic and deontic in sentences extracted from Iranian daily newspapers.

Phonological processes comprise a conceptual function causing the use of more simple category of sounds instead of sounds that are more difficult to produce. As the child grows older, his/her phoneme inventory and speech skills develop, and this leads to the gradual reduction in the number of the processes. The purpose of this study was to search for the phonological processes of word utterance in Persian and their decrease in children aged four to six. The sample consisted of the speech of 48 Persian-speaking children in Tehran, aged 4-6, collected through the use of 106 pictures. The results showed that cluster reduction starts almost after the age of 6, and that as the child grows older, the number of phonological processes decreases. This may be an indication of the development of phonological conception in older children and the greater mastery of older children over pronunciation.

This paper focuses on the structural properties of quantified noun phrases in Persian. Based on Giusti's hypothesis, two arguments are raised. The first is that quantified noun phrases are of QP category in Persian, i.e. the quantifier (Q,) on a par with the determiner(D), is a functional head which always dominates a definite nominal (DP) and an indefinite one (NP) or a prepositional phrase (PP).1 The second is that a certain number of quantifiers act as adjectives.

The present study is an attempt to describe DP in Shirazi dialect (a dialect of Persian spoken in Shiraz) within the framework of Larson(1988)’s proposal concerning VP shell, proposed to solve the problem of double object construction in binary system, particularly X`-theory. The study demonstrates that generalizing VP shell to DP can account for the splitting of DP head in Shirazi dialect. It argues that there are two shells with two heads for a DP in this framework. The head of the outer layer consists of pronouns and numbers while the head of the inner layer consists of articles. The definite article /-u/ in Shirazi dialect is a piece of evidence to support NP movement and merge in DP structure. Generalizing VP shell to DP in the dialect, as generalized to NP, DP, PP in Mansouri (2006), is an evidence of the generalizability of the concept of Shell to XP or all other maximal projections within X'- Theory.

Previous studies on clocks have mostly worked on the development of clock knowledge. It is implicitly assumed that there seems to be no basic difference in the way people read a clock. This study highlights a big difference found in the language of a home signer. She reads the clock by referring to midnight and midday. For example when we say “nine o’clock in the morning” she would say – or rather gesture - “three to midday”, or when we say “two o’clock in the morning” she would gesture “two after midnight”. This study explores the root of this difference and suggests that it is influenced by religious beliefs.

The present paper studies the phonological process of metathesis in Persian. Metathesis is usually considered an irregular, sporadic and marginal process in some languages, but regular and rule governed in some others. It seems that metathesis can be regular when serving a "specific structural purpose". This structural purpose may be of a phonological nature. The analysis of metathesis in Persian shows that it used to be regular in Middle Persian and resulted in phonologically well-formed words. But in Modern Persian data, analyzed here, metathesis was found to be not regular. There are of course instances of metathesis that have resulted in phonologically well-formed structures, but there are, at the same time, some other instances of metathesis which have resulted in phonologically ill-formed combinations. It must be mentioned that in the data analyzed here, metathesis leading to phonological well-formed structures showed greater frequency.