علی افخمی

Recursive structures, structures whose representation is produced by the repeated application of a syntactic rule, have been observed and investigated extensively in languages. By means of an experiment, the present study investigates the acquisition of recursive locatives in Persian-speaking children and provides new evidence on the subject of children's learning path, which lends its support to theoretical insights about the representation of this structure in the mind. Different languages do not uniformly deem recursive structures well-formed. Furthermore, in languages that consider the same recursive structure well-formed, it is possible for the acquisition age of this same structure to be different in children speaking different languages. Experiments report differences in the age that English and Japanese speakers acquire recursive locatives. In these studies, early acquisition of locative structures that employ identical prepositions is observed, as well as early acquisition in the language that marks the recursive structure by an overt functional element, namely, Japanese. Explaining these observations, Nakato and Roeper (2021) propose a three-step path in the acquisition of recursion: 1. Search for overt morphological elements 2. Search for overt lexical elements 3. The ability to interpret recursive structures without the presence of identical overt elements. In the recursive structure of the locatives of Persian, similar to Japanese and contrary to English, we witness an overt functional element: Ezafe. The presence of Ezafe in this structure qualifies as the first stage of the proposed acquisition path, and therefore it is predicted that the acquisition of recursive locatives in Persian will occur early. This article takes advantage of the presence of the overt element in Persian recursive locatives and by designing and implementing an experiment in accordance with the previous experiments, investigates the acquisition of locative recursion among Persian-speaking children and by means of the collected data examines the proposed acquisition path above.

Dibaji dialect is one of the linguistic types along the Caspian Sea, which has a morphological and syntactic similarity with the Mazandaran language, which is one of the northwestern languages. Dibaji dialect is the language of the people of Dibaj, which is located between Semnan and Mazandaran provinces. In this research, by analyzing more than 140 verbs from the Dibaji dialect, we examine the prefix "/ba-/" and compare it with the standard Persian language. The method of this research is descriptive, analytical and comparative. To compare the grammaticalization procedure of the prefix "/ba-/" in both linguistic species, we have inevitably used ancient iranian language and the Middle and old periods sources and texts. In this research, we seek to discover the differences between this prefix in Dibaji and the standard Persian. To achieve this goal, we have categorized verbs with the prefix "/ba-/" in different verb paradigms. Then we have studied the role and function of this prefix in Dibaji verbs in comparison with Persian. The findings of this study show that the prefix "/ba-/" of Dibaji, like the Persian prefix "/ba-/", has undergone grammatical evolution;It means that this prefix has evolved from free polysyllabic morpheme in the role of adverbs to a dependent syllable, and in this path of change, it has been exposed to various grammaticalization mechanisms such as decategorization, desemanticization, phonological erosion, regidification and so on. Based on the evidences, we will compare the grammaticalization pattern of this prefix with Persian. We will also show that this prefix in Dibaji has not been eliminated by reaching the end line of the grammaticalization path, but by semantic fusion in the present simple form, it has figured out the phenomenon of lexicalization, which is a kind of degrammaticalization.

Mostly, several formal structures could be used to express a specific proposition. In fact, under different communicative circumstances, speakers choose a grammatical structure among different ones with the same proposition to express their idea. Different factors could affect such choice and in this research, we examine whether information structure has any effect on this matter. Generally, information structure focuses on studying paired sentences which are semantically identical, but not grammatically or pragmatically. One kind is multiple argument realization, in which a verb appears with its arguments in diverse formal structures with a single meaning. Therefore, we have analyzed some multiple argument realizations of two argument verbs in Persian based on the theory of information structure introduced by Lambrecht (1994). The data consisting of around 150 sentences in 50 multiple realizations, have been collected from a few Iranian newspapers and then studied in accordance with the mental states of the interlocutors and pragmatic relations, topic and focus. The analysis showed that the mental representation of discourse referents, pragmatic articulation of sentences along with different focus structures have an impact on shaping and using this kind of realization. Moreover, it has been found that processes such as preposition and topic promotion play an important role in this matter.

Abstract Language is a social phenomenon and coincided with the first human communities. Sociolinguistics analyzes the issues which are related to the relationship between the language and the community. The literature of sociolinguistics consists of plenty of studies about linguistic varieties which are correlated with social variables. In comparison to written form of language the variations in speech are more perceivable and some social variables such as gender, age, education and social class and situation cause these variations. In the present study, the authors examine the phonological changes in the Turkish dialect of Qazvin, according to the effects of social variables, such as age,and gender. The authors have used interview method and sample of population to evaluate the correlation between phonological changes and social variables. The findings of this study suggest that the age has the maximum impact and gender has the minimum impact on phonological changes in this dialect.

The current study investigates how Sadness is Conceptualized in Persian Linguistic Database. Analyzing the Corpus, the authors managed to extract 2098 lingusitic phrases, containing 529 metaphorical by searching several keywords pertaining to Sadness. Then, the metaphorical phrases were analysed according to Conceptual Metaphor Theory and Conceptual mappings were extracted. It was determined that source domains of Thing/Material, Location/Time, Animacy, Container/Contained material, Illness/Physical Damage are used more frequently by the Persian speakers in conceptualization of Sadness. As an important sub-findings of the research, it was also determined that the “Del” [heart] as a body Organ is much more frequent among Persian speakers in Conceptualization of Sadness.

The aim of this research is to study the borrowing of Persian conjunctions by speakers of Azerbayjani Turkish and its effect on their language. Data were collected from Azerbayjani Turkish resources and its speakers in Ardabil province. Data analysis based on linguistic and non-linguistic criteria of borrowing/code-switching differentiation shows that the majority of Persian conjunctions have been borrowed by Azerbayjani Turkish and some of them appear as code-switched elements in bilinguals’ speech. The findings correspond to Myers-Scotton’s view confirming borrowing/code-switching continuum as a mechanism for accomplishment of borrowing process. Speakers of Azerbayjani Turkish borrow Persian conjunctions to combine their language clauses. They do not substitute Persian compound sentence structures with those from their native language ones and they use the structures of both due to pragmatic reasons. The results match the second level of Thomason & Kaufman’s (1988) borrowing hierarchy supposing slight and limited changes to conjunction borrowing.

Racism is defined (Van Dijk,1993A) as a specific social system of domination in which ethnic groups and their members (i.e. majority) abuse their power in various ways in interaction with other ethnic groups and their members (i.e. minority).Modern racism is hidden, so finding racism needs special strategies in new texts and discourses. Elites have power, control and access to media and they influence people. Van Dijk represents structures and strategies (reproduction of racism theory,1993A) finding racism which consist of surface Structures and meaning (deep) structures. In this research, Donald Trump’s lectures in election (2016, SEP) taken from New York Times were analyzed based on Van Dijk’s Structures and Strategies.The findings of this research show that Trump considers religion, nationality and culture of immigrants. Moreover, many of surface and meaning structure are found in Trump’s lectures with different frequencies. Generally speaking, the results of this research are in concordant with Van Dijks’s researches on racism.

Motion is one of the most fundamental human,s experiences. So it seems to be expressed as a universal concept in all languages of the world. According to Talmy,s lexicalization patterns theory(1985, 2000), languages are divided into two types concerning motion expression: verb-framed and satellite-framed. In verb-framed languages the core component of motion event, path, is expressed in verb and the manner of motion in satellite but in satellite-framed languages the reverse of this happens. The aim of this paper is to study the position of the Hawrami language in Talmy,s two-category typology. For this purpose, 140 Hawrami motion verbs (simple and non-simple) have been collected through interview with 20 native speakers over 30 years old and analyzed. Data analysis indicates that the Hawrami language challenges Talmy,s two-category typology since the semantic elements of path and manner are lexicalized in the verb root nearly equally. In other words, Hawrami has the characteristic of both verb-framed and satellite-framed languages and so it cannot be placed exactly in one of Talmy,s two types. It is better that its behavior in expressing motion event be evaluated with regard to the continuum of manner salience (Slobin, 2004) and path salience (Ibarretxe-Antuñano, 2004). Thus Hawrami is placed in the middle parts of these two continuums. Moreover, as the pattern (motion path manner) is the third most frequent lexicalization pattern in Hawrami, this language also has the characteristic of equipollently-framed languages (Slobin, 2004).

Semantic comprehension of compound nouns is one of the subjects discussed in theoretical framework of cognitive linguistics. Compound nouns are divided into four groups based on the semantic relation of its components. According to the criterion of existence or absence of a semantic head, two main groups of endocentric and exocentric compound nouns are investigated in this study. A list of these nouns was collected as a library research from different texts and used to test this research. After examining multiple language comprehension tests, definition-word pairing test was used and in the form of an application on smart phones on Persian-learners of the middle level in Teaching Persian as a Second Language (TPSL) of Ferdowsi University of Mashhad was performed. Totally, 888 data were obtained from the test (37 subjects paired 24 definitions with compound nouns) described and analyzed by standard statistical tests. Finally, T and Pearson tests showed that due to the semantic head in endocentric compound nouns, the level of semantic comprehension of Persian-learners of endocentric compound nouns is greater than that of exocentric compounds. Besides, comprehension of Persian learners from Persian endocentric compounds is faster than exocentric compounds. Also, there is a correlation between the comprehension of Persian learners of endocentric and exocentric compound nouns. Therefore, the existence of a kind of relationship in endocentric compound nouns is understood more quickly than exocentric compound nouns. Therefore, the theory of Competition among Relations in Nominals (CARIN) is confirmed.

Critical metaphor analysis tries to be a multidisciplinary approach that studies the way social power abuse, dominance, and inequality are enacted, reproduced, and resisted by text and talk through metaphors in the social and political contexts.in the present research, through electing such approaches such as critical discourse analysis, cognitive linguistics, pragmatics and corpus analysis, instances of discourse metaphors extracted from opposing wings newspapers such as Keyhan and Mardomsalari in Iran and Telegraph and Mirror in England analyzed based on Lakoffs cognitive approach and Camerons discourse metaphor following Charteris-blacks integrative critical metaphor research. The aim was to investigate the similarities and differences between metaphors and conceptual metaphors in each discourse and subsequently in each language. To tackle this concern, considering each wings core principals, political parts of the intended newspapers were analyzed and to narrow down the research just five source domains including conflict, structure, journey, religion and plants were focalized. The results showed that the aforementioned languages and the political wings are different in terms of source domains and frequency due to multilingual factors including society, history and culture. The results also demonstrated the metaphorical features of the discourses in terms of source domains. In this study also each kinds of Lakoffs structural, ontological, directional metaphors and Camerons systematic metaphors were identified. Furthermore, this study showed how identical facts are demonstrated differently by opposing ideologies. Finally this eclectic approach came to known as an effective approach in demonstrating hidden power relations.

This paper examines the interaction between the visual and the verbal modes, that is, the multimodality of transferring the meaning in Persian visual poetry in terms of cognitive base of different types of integrations which occur in the brain after different sensory channels transferring the visual and verbal data. Although contemporary poetry is multimodal, the visual poetry is considered a type of poetry that has both the verbal and the visual as the dominant, mixed modes that tend to construct the poetic meaning. Different arrangement of words and images, which has a neurological ground, requires different kinds of cognitive processing and will therefore induce different feelings, impressions, and connotations. Consequently, the general meaning of a multimodal text goes beyond that of the combination of the two modes.
Drawing on cognitive semiotics, this paper demonstrates how the multimodal poem is conceptualized through embodied experience. Furthermore, it shows how various types of visual/verbal synthetization in a poetry text are differed by a number of distinctive features. Moreover, it is shown how the meaning-making process and the resulting affection become possible in each type of visual poetry. Through modifying Aarhuss model (2005, 2012), itself based on Fauconnier and Turners conceptual blending theory, this research puts forward twelve different types of interaction between the verbal and visual modes, which, in this paper, are mentioned just the three super basic classified categories due to the limitation of the journals space. In fact, the three super categories are:It is about the general relations among the two or more modes or media. In this kind of relation, each mode/medium comprises separable and individually coherent texts in different mode/media to improve the meaning space at the end. It is divided into two sub-groups, which are Mode-adjacency and Multimodality.
It is a kind of transformations from one medium to another. An inter-medial text could be divided into Duplicating and Iconicity (Image iconicity, Relational diagram iconicity and Structural diagram iconicity). Duplicating could not presents an indissoluble connection of diverse modes as a fusion of different modal processes, while in the second one (Iconicity), the verbal and visual modes are fused together to represent the similarity or adjacency. The Duplicating could also be based on similarity or contiguity as well, that is the whole or a part of the text could be duplicated due to similarity of the verbal mode to visual mode or the contiguity of both together.
The third and the last type of relation between verbal and visual modes is mix-modal text, which is the combination of modes in a way that the complex signs in different modes would not be coherent or self-sufficient outside of that context. It is divided into four groups which are called in this research Counter-iconicity (Counter iconicity of mis-matching and Paradox-counter iconicity), Mode-situational inclusion, Mode-overlapping and complementary relation. Cognitively, these three basic types are processed respectively as following: bottom-up, top-down and integrated processing. Furthermore, these types are based on the structure of human brain and the functions of neurological cells, to study multimodal, especially visual poetry. Since both brain and literature contain similar patterns, it is inferred that each type of verbal-visual interaction that is constructed through a particular cognitive process will necessarily form specific emotions and impressions.

The present research seeks the notion of the effectiveness of conceptual mapping instruction in reading comprehension skill comparing to the traditional instructions (e.g. teaching reading skills without using conceptual maps). Moreover, the various ways of using these conceptual maps are compared; there is a comparison between teacher-made conceptual maps and students-made conceptual maps individually or in the groups. By considering the issue, 126 Persian language learners were studied. These learners were learning Persian in International Imam Khomeini University (IKIU) and Tehran University of Medical Sciences. They were chosen after a pretest and they were categorized in four experimental groups (student activities were considered individually, or in groups, and the teacher made maps, and the students made maps were regarded), and two control groups (students in groups or individually). The experimental and the control groups were taught during 10 sessions. It is necessary to mention that those students learned the same materials during those sessions. But the teacher applied conceptual maps for experimental groups, while she used traditional instructions for control groups. Then, the learner's reading comprehension skills were evaluated by a post-test. The post-test was held to measure the effectiveness of conceptual mapping in improving reading skills. And the results were compared by using descriptive statistical methods and appropriate statistical tests (Levin, ANOVA and Scheffe post hoc test). The results of data analysis showed that there is a significant difference between the mean performance of the experimental group and the control groups. So it can be concluded that teaching based on conceptual mapping has a noteworthy role and impact on improving reading skills

Based on the theory of Laclau and Mouffe، the present paper attemps to investigate the status of women in two distinctive political discourses of the 1380s. To this end، the first step is to distinguish the two political discourses of the aforementioned period by means of discourse theory. In this period، two political discourses، namely reformist discourse with nodal points of reform، political development، freedom، law، and civil society as well as conservative discourse with nodal points of justice، kindness، progress، mental and physical elevation، and service providing were identified. Examining the signifiers shows that these two discourses are each other’s discursive others and as a result the discrepancies between the two should be seen in other fields as well. Investigating the texts indicated that with a modernist tendency، reformist discourse has women participation as the core of its articulation while the conservative one with its conventional tendency، considers the family orientation as its articulation point. Although both discourses find family orientation as one main signifier، the former views women in light of strengthening their skills، education and awareness، while the latter identifies women with religious beliefs deepening، Hijab and chastity.

The present article is a result of a study in the field of Critical Discourse Analysis. In this article an attempt ia made to analyze the Persian journalistic texts based on Norman Fairclough's approach in CDA. The data are collected from articles in five Iranian newspapers (Jamejam, Donyaye Eghtesad, Resalat, Shargh, Keyhan) published between 1388 and 1390 all of which are about social networks such as twitter, youtube, and facebook. The authors have tried to perform the data analysis, using linguistic methods and techniques in accordance with the adopted model, in the three levels of description, interpretation and explanation. So that we can find out, how the ideological point of view of the writers appeared in the journalistic texts. The results indicate that journalists express their view of cultural, religious, and political issues, by their choosing and utilizing particular words and semantic or syntactic structures.

"Dar" is one of the Persian spatial prepositions; its core/typical sense reveals a spatial-geometric relationship between a trajectory (TR) and landmark (LM). There are some other non-spatial senses which are associated with this lexical form, too. But, how does a spatial relation give rise to non-spatial senses The main purpose of this paper is to show that non-spatial senses of "Dar" are emerged from the usage of its spatial sense in different contexts. In fact, functional consequences of the usage of its spatial sense are the common points between spatial and non-spatial senses of "Dar". To clarify the above idea, we gathered different usage of"Dar" s spatial sense and their related functional consequences. Then, we recognized bridging contexts which lead to departure of functional consequences from their creating contexts. Finally, we explained that the departed functional consequences turn to independent parameters which contain linguistic contents of "Dar"s non-spatial senses.

Nearly 300 years ago، Shah Valiyollah Mohadess Dehlavi born in Delhi، India، translated Holy Quran so that even today we can find no more translations that are as fluent and precise as it is. Unfortunately، this valued work has، for some reasons، been remained unknown in Iran. In this article after introducing Shah Valiyullah Dehlavi، some characteristics of his translation from Quran is introduced and then by utilizing some comparatively syntactic criteria between Arabic and Persian، the accuracy of the translation is studied in more details.

One of the most important issues in relation with language & gender is the propagation of sexist ideologies through spoken & written discourse. Central to critical linguistic analysis is the notion of ideology. They believe that to the extent that the concepts in a discourse are related as a system, they are part of a theory or ideology, that is, a system of concepts and images which are a way of seeing and grasping things, and of interpreting what is seen or heard or read. All perception involves theory or ideology, and there are no “raw” uninterpreted, theory-free facts. It is the prime focus of critical linguistics to unmask those ideologies which seem to be hidden within language-use which poses itself as natural. The purpose of the present research was to provide some information about what constitutes a sexist language. In fact the effect of providing this information can help us to eliminate or reduce sexism in our language and our society. In the present research sexism in Persian language is discussed. At first sexist language is defined and the importance of its study is explained. Then a variety of instructional methods is applied to address the use of sexist language. After that by virtue of some criteria for language sexism and by examining different kinds of data from different parts of language (lexicon, grammar, proverb and so on), Persian language is examined.In sum, the results of the present study illustrated that:1- Persian language is an example of one sexist language. 2- This sexist language not only reflects the discrimination in society but also it is a powerful tool that creates it.

Based on how formal a conversation is, how much familiar the speaker and the listeners are with each other and how distant is the speaker's social status from the listener's one, the speaker uses certain forms of language known as styles of language. Linguistic styles are different from language varieties. Selection of the styles depends on definite social situations and the kind of relationship between the speaker and the listener. This article aims to represent a clear picture of different Persian linguistic styles and this can be useful in collecting and describing linguistic data for different researches. In addition, a framework is created for editing different texts regarding linguistic styles and also for literary criticism in the fields related to linguistic styles. This article studies the linguistic styles in Persian and introduces a style spectrum consisting of deferential, formal, semi-formal, colloquial and slang styles in Persian.