نشریه علم زبان
پیاپی 18 (پاییز و زمستان 1402)

This study investigates the thematic structure in Middle Persian Texts based on Halliday’s approach. Accordingly, it could be investigated that what changes have happened in the thematic structure during the process of Language development. Halliday and Matthiessen (2014) claim that the theme is the point of departure. In order to do this study, two texts of kārnāmag i ardešir bābakān (Text 1) and dinkar šašom (Text 2) were chosen. The results suggest that the highest occurrence of themes belongs to the unmarked multiple theme (almost 65% in both texts) with the pattern of “Textual theme + Topical theme” (70.27% in Text1 and 60.83% in Text2). Based on this fact it could be claimed that in that era this pattern was used to transfer the message.

Color terms are radiation of the human conceptual system that represents a reflection of his cognitive and linguistic features. The human conceptual system is fundamentally metaphorical in nature. Metaphor is a cognitive mechanism and one of the linguistic strategies that can play a part in color term formation and categorical extension of colors. This study has taken metaphor in Persian color terms and the metaphorical structure of color categories in the Persian language into consideration. In this study, based on cognitive lexical semantics, 910 color terms in Persian have been analyzed. After describing semantic domains in the metaphorical formation of Persian color terms and analyzing the metaphorical structure of Persian color terms, the frequency of semantic domains’ application in Persian color terms and color categories’ tendency for participation in the metaphorical structure of Persian color terms have been investigated. Metaphor is one of the cognitive mechanisms that have a significant role in forming color categories and their conceptual extension in Persian. The domains whose phenomena have been observed in the metaphorical structure of Persian color terms are plant domain, animal domain, food domain, body domain, mineral domain, natural phenomenon domain, and object domain. The frequency of application and distribution of these semantic domains in Persian color categories is not equal. Besides, the rate of color categories’ participation in the metaphorical structure of Persian color terms and their tendency to the source semantic domains vary in metaphorical mapping.

In the present study, the subject of “passive voice in Persian language” has been analyzed and studied in a minimalist approach Bowers (2010; 2018). This approach is one of the latest adjustments made in the framework of the minimalist program, in which the shortcomings of the previous theories have been eliminated and the most important achievement is to provide the universal order of merge; An arrangement that, according to Bowers, can be used to organize the merge process in different languages. In this article, with reference to the linguistic data extracted from “the corpus of syntactic dependency of Persian language”, while showing how this universal order of merge works; we will examine a part of the corpus with the label “passive sentences”. Also, by using Bowers’ latest theoretical framework, which is also effective in Persian, we analyze the active constructions that are present in the corpus as a passive sentence. Determining the syntactic position of noun phrases according to their distinct semantic roles, the position of by-phrase in passive sentences, examining the floating quantifier category and differentiating in the way of merging of predicate sentences and passive sentences in Persian are the results of this research in the framework of the minimalist program.

Parallel merge generates a structure that contains a double symmetric relation, in which the shared object has two mother nodes. Naturally, the Linearization of multidominant structures derived from parallel merge will face challenges. The purpose of this study was to analyze and dissect the algorithms that have been proposed in the relevant literature to address the challenge of the linearization of multidominant structures. Specifically, in this research, the content of the proposed algorithms regarding linearization of multidominant structure was qualitatively examined using graph and set notations. The empirical and computational quantitative approaches, in relation to the existence of this type of structure, showed that multidominant structure was the natural result of the function of merge in the workspace rather than the consequences of parallel merge. To shed light on the performance of merge in the workspace, putting order into set merge was raised. Hence, part of the linearization took place in narrow syntax.

Today, we see fruitful efforts in the field of Persian language teaching; however, there are still shortcomings due to a lack of sufficient studies as well as fundamental research in this field. Word selection and scientific teaching of words are those areas that have ambiguities, such as the principles of selecting Persian language teaching words, word leveling, and how to teach them. lexical frequency and word applicability are two principles in teaching second or foreign-language words. This research aims to compare the frequency of educational words in the Shiraz and Parfa series, as well as the frequency with which their educational words appear. As a result, the lexical frequencies of these two sets were compared. The word frequency of these two sets was then compared to three lists of words. Data was analyzed using Microsoft Excel software, pivot tables, and formula writing methods. The results show that a total of 864 words, or more than 30% of the words in both sets, are shared. The Shiraz series contains 47.15 percent of its vocabulary in at least one list, while the Parfa series encompasses 38.75 percent of its vocabulary in at least one list. When the results are compared, the Shiraz series outperforms the Parfa series in terms of lexical frequency, with roughly half of its educational vocabulary appearing at a minimum in one of the selected frequency lists.

Among new achievements of cognitive linguistics some have resulted from returning to the concepts of literary traditions, from which one can mention the participation of metaphor, metonymy, and allegory in the process of cognition, and metaphor and metonymy have always had a place of significance. In the history of Western rhetorics the relation between these two was not at issue as they are disconnected in nature. In subsequent eras, they were even regarded as having a confrontational relation. Unlike Western rhetoricians, Muslim rhetoricians have always maintained a close relation between metonymy and metaphor. They considered metaphor as a type of metonymy. In this paper, we are going to show that the metonymic basis of metaphors, as the Muslim rhetoricians believe, is a provable matter of fact. For this purpose and as the first step, we deal with the evolution of approaches towards metonymy and metaphor in Western and Islamic rhetoric history. Then, we will discuss how the confrontation of these two concepts fades as cognitive studies come to work. Still, the cognitivists mostly do not believe that all types of metaphor rise from metonymy, while the Muslim rhetoricians firmly believe that all types of metaphor have a metonymic basis. We are going to show that not only some but all kinds of metaphors have a metonymic basis and all types of conceptual metaphors are constructed upon conceptual metonymy. The theory of Categorization which is one of the most significant ones in cognitive studies has been part of our argumentation framework.

Given the importance of sight, which is one of the most important human senses regarding receiving environmental data, and its fundamental role in the recognition and processing of many behaviors, such as observing movements, events, and emotional states in individuals, as well as tracking and orientation, it should be expected that the performance of the blind in the process of language acquisition and learning cognitive skills was different in many aspects when compared to sighted individuals. Therefore, this study aimed to investigate and compare the metaphorical concepts of love in the daily speech of Kurdish-Persian bilingual sighted and blind adults. To this end, research data was gathered using interviews with 50 bilingual Kurdish-Persian informants aged 18-70 from the Ilam province.
Data analysis was done using descriptive and inferential statistics methods in SPSS software version 22. The results showed that, regarding the frequency of metaphors, there were no significant differences between the performance of the blind and the sighted adults. However, the frequency of the utilized sensory sources for the source domains of love was different in the speech of the two groups, where the blind used the sense of hearing significantly more than the sighted people to express love (P<0.05). Moreover, the subjects used certain source domains to express love which seemed to reflect cultural influences. In addition, the results of this study can lead to more interaction of blind subjects with society through solving their language problems. 

Gender as a nominal inflectional category is found in some modern Iranian languages, although they differ in the way this concept is realized. Abyānaʾī, belonging to the Central Dialects of Iran, does not have a grammatical way of marking the gender. In other words, there are no individual formal markers (except for some nouns ending in vowels) distinguishing between the two genders. In order to determine the status of gender in this dialect, based on Corbettʼs (1991) theoretical framework, agreement was taken as the criterion for distinguishing masculine and feminine genders. By instantiating dialect materials collected by fieldwork and through interviews with four informants, the present article seeks to determine the scope of gender agreement, namely the elements showing agreement in gender with their head noun. This study showed that Abyānaʾī has an agreement on both the noun phrase and clause levels. The grammatical gender of the head noun determined the morphological form of some of its dependents, such as the numeral "one", attributive adjectives, demonstratives, predicative adjectives ending in /-ɑ/, ordinal numbers, definite article, comparative adjectives, and the quantifier "more". On the clause level, on the other hand, only the third person singular form of past verbs agreed in gender either with the subject (as in the case of intransitive), or with the object (as in the case of transitive). Because the gender distinctions appeared in the singular but not in the plural, the gender system of Abyānaʾī should be considered as a convergent type.

Ethnic diversity in Iran results in language variety and it affects education from the first year of school; therefore it is necessary to take heed of this matter and to prevent disturbing bilingual children’s education progress for lack of deficiency in the Persian language. This study has been done to analyze the language skills of bilingual and graduated Persian speakers. Statistical society was the students of twelfth grade and the sample has been chosen with the cluster sample and random multistage method among these cities: Arak, Tabriz, Sari, Sanandaj, Shiraz, Yasouj, and Yazd. The research methodology was based on a survey. Besides descriptive statistics, in the inferential statistics part, the non-parametric tests of Mann-Whitney U and KruskalWallis and the parametric test of t-test and ANOVA were employed. Examining the quantitative and qualitative data proved that the results of evaluating Persian and bilingual graduates were meaningful in reading, writing, listening, and speaking skills and the Persian students functioned in all of the skills better than the bilingual students. These outcomes were exact even with adding gender, major, and comparison between the best score of bilinguals and the weakest score of Persian students. The meaningful differences between all of the skills demonstrated that the efforts made in the formal education years were not efficient enough. Based on language variety in Iran, the recommendation of this paper is a reconsideration of current educational programs, especially with paying attention to preschool and the first-third grades of elementary school.

The cerebellum is linked to all the key regions of the language control network. Currently, the cerebellum is recognized to be involved in the networks that handle grammatical aspects. Clinical and neuroimaging studies have confirmed cerebellar contributions to grammar processing. The present study intended to investigate the activity of the cerebellum in alternating L1-L2 processing in balanced bilinguals. We selected 35 Turkish-Persian bilinguals (21 women) who had learned their second language at the age of 7. Based on the Bilingual Dominance Scale, there was no significant difference between the high proficiency levels of the participants in L1 (Turkish) and L2 (Persian). Participants carried out an auditory grammaticality judgment task in an alternative language-switching paradigm while fMRI images were acquired using a standard protocol. Combining a whole-brain and regions-of-interest (ROIs) approach, we examined event-related fMRI during syntactic processing. Following the identification of the activity of the bilateral cerebellum at the whole-brain level according to the Harvard-Oxford Atlas in FSL, percent signal change was extracted per participant as an intensity measure in the cerebellar region and statistically analyzed in SPSS. The results indicate a right hemispheric superiority in bilingual language processing, confirming that the right cerebellum is more involved in language control. Furthermore, bilinguals have shown stronger activation for L1 as compared to L2 in the cerebellum, substantiating the reversed language dominance effects.

This research has investigated the topic in commercial advertising from the perspective of Lambrecht information structure framework by a descriptive -analytic method. 282 commercial advertisements have been collected from TV, radio, internet, commercial posters and street billboards. The main question of this research is how the Lambercht’s framework accounts for the representation of topic in advertising. Results showed that from 288 advertisements, 155 appeared as topic in form of nouns or pronouns, 86 in zero form, and 41 as antitopic. In terms of function, content and statistics there was no significant difference between television and internet advertisement. On the other hand, in posters and billboards advertising, no difference was found. That is to say, in both of them audio-verbal factors are not involved and only the visual factor has an effective role on the addressee.

This investigation aims at examining the diachrony of so-called ‘compound verbs’ in Iranian languages. To this end, a number of texts were selected from the three periods of Iranian languages. From Old Iranian period, some Avestan texts as well as all Old Persian inscriptions, from MI period some Zoroastrian Middle Persian texts as well as from a Sogdian text were picked up and searched for instances of complex predicates, including prefixed verbs, incorporational verbs, combinational verbs, etc., which were then analyzed. The data show that in OI the majority of complex predicates consist in prefixed verbs, thus, maybe ‘compound verbs’ were not much needed to be formed. Nevertheless, ‘compound verb’ patterns did exist since that period. With verbal prefixes being inseparably attached to verb stems OP, the existent patterns for formation of complex predicates increased their productivity, the verb kar ‘do’ playing a major role as the verbal element of complex predicates. In Middle Iranian, loss of productivity of some verbal prefixes as well as inseparability of many prefixed verbs increasingly led to formation of more complex predicates, with more light verbs recruited into the construction. In New Iranian, specifically in New Persian, in addition to a decrease in number of prefixed verbs, as well as an increase in number of complex predicates, two other factors prompted the formation of new ones: first, an emergent need to produce verbs out of loan elements, and second, a tendency to morphological leveling of irregular simple verbs by converting them into complex predicates.