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This study investigates rhythmic patterns in Persian-English bilingual speech, focusing on duration-based measures in a sample of late bilingual adult males. Using various rhythmic measures, including consonantal and vocalic duration, we explored cross-linguistic differences, individual consistency, and speaker identification potential. The results revealed significant differences between Persian (L1) and English (L2), particularly in vocalic measures, whereas consonantal measures exhibited greater consistency. Cross-linguistic correlations were stronger for consonantal measures than for vocalic measures, suggesting higher individual consistency in consonant timing. Speaker identification, conducted through linear discriminant analysis, achieved the highest accuracy with consonantal measures, with stronger performance in L1 than in L2. These findings indicate that while bilingual speakers adjust their rhythmic patterns to suit L2 demands, they retain individual characteristics, especially in consonant timing. This research has implications for understanding bilingual speech production and enhancing speaker recognition technology.

Previous studies have demonstrated the efficacy of speech rhythm measures in speaker identification across various languages with different phonotactic structures. In Persian language, in particular, two categories of speech rhythm metrics were examined: duration-based and intensity-based metrics. Building upon these prior works, the current study delves deeper into the discrimination capabilities of the mentioned measurement types—duration-based versus intensity-based—in the context of Persian speakers. To achieve this, a multinomial logistic regression model was employed on a dataset comprising 20 male Persian speakers, each reciting 100 sentences at a normal speaking pace. Findings revealed that, when distinguishing between Persian speakers, duration-based measures outperform intensity-based ones, however, this excellence is very slight. This observation is significant, as it sheds light on the suitability of specific rhythm metrics for Persian speaker identification. I postulate that this discrepancy in performance may be attributed to the simple syllable structure of Persian and the lesser reliance on intensity as a primary indicator of lexical stress. This research contributes valuable insights into the choice of rhythm metrics for optimal Persian speaker identification and underscores the importance of considering linguistic features when developing speaker recognition systems.Top of Form

Using forensic analysis, this study attempted to investigate the influence of the Persian language on the quality of Khoramabadi Luri vowels. This research tried to find the answer to whether Persian can affect the acoustic features of Khoramabadi vowels or not. To do so, data from 20 Khoramabadi Lur participants (10 males, 10 females) were recorded; the first group of whom lived in Khoramabad and the second group lived in Tehran. 54 sentences including the selected words were read by participants. The total number of phonetic sample tokens analyzed was 3240, including /ɑ, y, ø, o, u, ə, a, e, ʏ, ɪ, i/ vowels. Phonetic samples were analyzed phonetically and statistically. The acoustic parameters, fundamental frequency, and the first formant frequency to the fifth formant frequency were chosen. Data analysis showed that fundamental frequency, fifth formant frequency, third formant frequency, and by a wide margin second formant frequency had the highest capacity to distinguish Luri samples articulated by male speakers who lived in Tehran and Khoramabad. For female speakers, only fundamental frequency and by a wide margin, the fifth formant frequency of Khoramabadi Luri had this capacity. As a result, fundamental frequency and higher formant frequencies had the highest capacity to distinguish the speakers.

Human voices are unique, and for this reason, speakers can be identified by their voices. This shows that speech sounds contain speaker-specific information that can be reflected in the acoustic properties of speech signals. There are many individuals around the world who speak two or more languages, adding a fascinating dimension of variability to language perception and production. However, it remains unclear whether bilinguals alter their voice when switching between languages. A holistic view of bilingualism suggests that bilinguals are an integrated whole that cannot be separated into distinct parts; instead, they possess their own specific linguistic configuration (Grosjean, 1989). Moreover, languages differ in their segment inventories, rules of segmental combinations, as well as spectral and rhythmic characteristics of speech. Speaking styles can also contribute to within-speaker variability in acoustic parameters. Despite these factors, little is known about the influence of language and speaking style on within- and between-speaker vocal variability. This study aims to investigate how acoustic features, specifically long-term F0 and long-term formant frequencies (F1-F4), contribute to speaker individuality in Persian-English bilingual speakers and to what extent these features can discriminate between bilingual speakers.

The present research aims to investigate child-directed speech vs. spontaneous speech in Persian-speaking men based on Acoustic Phonetics. The method is descriptive-analytical benefiting from qualitative components and quantitative approach (descriptive & inferential statistics using R version 4.1.0). The Data included the recorded speech samples of 10 Persian-speaking men aged 25-45 years for 200 minutes. Five acoustic parameters including F0, F1, F2, F3 and F4 were extracted from the speakers’ speech tokens and measured with PRAAT version 42, 1,6. The results showed that the values of all acoustic parameters, except for F1 changed significantly between the two styles and most of the inter-stylistic variations were observed in parameters of F0 and F2. Furthermore, the acoustic analysis of between-speaker variabilities showed that the changes of the two styles were different. More precisely, F0 and F3 in spontaneous speech and F0 and F1 in child-directed speech had the highest rate of between-speaker variability.

This study investigated the acoustic parameters of the fundamental frequency, first and second formant frequencies, duration and intensity in KhoramAbadi Luri vowels. 10 participants (5 male, 5 female) produced 1620 tokens, including /ɑ،y،ø،o،u،ə،a،e،ʏ،ɪ،i/ vowels. The result showed that /a/ has the lowest fundamental frequency; /e/ and /ʏ/ have the highest amount of this parameter in male and female speakers, respectively. /a/ and /i/ are the open and close vowels in KhoramAbadi Luri. /i/ and /o/ are the front and back vowels. /ø/ and /ɑ/ have the highest vowel duration amongst other vowels; /ʏ/ and /ə/ have the lowest vowel duration in male and female speakers, respectively. /e/ has the highest intensity in both male and female speakers; /a/ and /u/ have the lowest intensity in male and female speakers, respectively. Generally, female speakers have higher fundamental frequency, first and second formant frequencies and duration, but intensity is higher in male speakers.

Rhythmic characteristics of speech based on consonantal and vocalic intervals as well as syllabic intervals vary between speakers of the same language. Nonetheless, the rhythmicity of a speech signal is not solely dependent on the durational variability of phonetic intervals but it is also associated with the variability of the intensity patterns as well. Acoustic parameter of intensity is largely determined by the articulatory behaviors of the speech organs such as lip movement or mouth aperture. Therefore, it is plausible that speaker idiosyncrasy in movement of speech articulators and anatomical differences in individual’s vocal tracts may influence the energy distribution across a speech signal which subsequently leads to the variability in the values of the intensity measures. Using experimental phonetics tools and from an explicitly speaker-specific perspective, the present research attempts to explore potential speaker-specific acoustic parameters of speech rhythm which are extracted from the intensity contours across Persian speakers. This research aims to discover whether intensity-based measures of speech rhythm are able to discriminate between speakers in Persian. Two types of acoustic rhythmic measures based on the mean syllable intensity (stdevM, varcoM, rPVIm, nPVIm) and peak syllable intensity (stdevP, varcoP, rPVIp, nPVIp))  were selected for this study. Speech data from 12 Persian male speakers were recorded non-contemporaneously in laboratory environment on two different occasions separated by one to two weeks. Speech tokens were acoustically measured with PRAAT version 5.2.34 and statistical analyses were carried out with SPSS version 21 and R version 3.3.3. Results of the study indicated that speech rhythm measures based on intensity fluctuations play an important role in between-speaker rhythmic variability. In addition, discriminatory power of intensity-based measures is not affected by the language-dependent characteristics of Persian. The results also showed that the peak syllable intensity measures carry more speaker-specific information compared to the mean syllable intensity measures

Based on source-filter theory, the present research attempts to investigate between- and within-speaker variability in simple vowels of Persian using experimental phonetics tools. This research aims to discover which of the simple vowels of Persian represent more speaker-specific information and which acoustic parameters can better distinguish Persian speakers. To test between- and within-speaker variability, two types of acoustic parameters, one related to the larynx, i.e. fundamental frequency, and the other related to the vocal tract, i.e. formant frequencies, were selected. Fundamental frequency as well as formant values were extracted from the steady state point of the vowels uttered by twelve Persian-speaking male speakers. Speech data were recorded non-contemporaneously in laboratory environment on two different occasions separated by one to two weeks, thereby allowing for analyzing occasion-to occasion withinspeaker variability. Speech tokens were acoustically measured with PRAAT version 5.2.34 and statistical analyses were carried out with SPSS version 21 and R version 3.3.3. Results of the study indicated that the low front vowel /a/ and the third formant frequency convey more speaker-specific information compared to the other vowels and formant frequencies. In addition, discriminatory power of fundamental frequency was reported to be stronger than formant frequencies. The results also revealed that fundamental frequency is correlated with the first formant frequency which is subsequently indicative of interdependence between the source and filter sections.

Fricatives not only differ in their acoustic structures from one language to another, but also they vary considerably from individual to individual. Acoustic correlates of fricatives are sensitive to the shape and size of the resonance cavity in front of the oral constriction. It is therefore conceivable that any physical change in the length and place of constriction during production of fricatives may alter the resultant acoustic signals. This research attempts to explore potential speaker-specific acoustic parameters of voiceless fricatives in Persian based on experimental phonetics. Therefore, acoustic parameters of center of gravity and fricative duration are investigated for each voiceless fricative in Persian. This research aims to discover whether voiceless fricatives and selected acoustic parameters are able to discriminate between speakers in Persian and whether these fricatives and acoustic parameters are of assistance in segregating speakers in Persian. According to the aforementioned considerations, the following questions are presented in this paper: Do the selected acoustic parameters (center of gravity and duration) of voiceless fricatives have capacity to differentiate speakers in Persian? Which acoustic parameters and which voiceless fricatives discriminate Persian speakers the best? Furthermore, we will compare the results of the present study to the findings of previous studies to see in what way Persian has been similar or different from other investigated languages. In order to analyze between- and within speaker variability of voiceless fricatives, 24 Persian speakers (12 male, 12 female) on two separate occasions were recorded in the sound proof booth at phonetics laboratory of Alzahra University. Non-contemporaneous recording of speech material allows us to measure the degree of within-speaker variability across each speaker. The speech material consists of a read passage which contains 54 Persian sentences including relevant voiceless fricatives Speech tokens were acoustically measured with PRAAT version 5.2.34 and statistical analyses were carried out with SPSS version 21 and R version 3.3.3.Results and Results of this study indicated that for female speakers, center of gravity of /S/ and s/  have the best performance in showing between-speaker variability. For male speakers, center of gravity of /s/ is the most highly discriminant acoustic parameters across speakers. Moreover, fricative duration was not reported as a promising acoustic parameter. Center of gravity is directly linked to the size and length of the vocal tract. The longer is the length of the vocal tract, the higher is the center of gravity and vice versa. This indicates that anatomical differences between speaker’s vocal tract influence the acoustic properties of fricatives and ultimately make them distinctive. In the future studies, additional parametric potential speaker-specific features will be examined in order to determine a set of well-established discriminant parameters for voiceless fricatives in Persian.

Discourse, as a system of signs, generally constructs individual and social behaviors. In every order of discourse, a collection of rules and conventions is stipulated in order to construct discourse principles. In regard to their ideological purposes, social actors tend to import signs into their discourse framework. Simultaneously, language as a significant constructive component appears and begins to establish the intended meaning of social actors in a soft manner. Thus Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, at an international level, utilizes language facilities for representing political facts. According to sociopolitical events and governing atmosphere, he attempts to establish signs in his discourse framework. In a semiotic model of this discourse framework, axiomatic signs are set into the center while the others are around the central point. Accordingly, this research focuses mainly on how foregrounding and backgrounding function in foreign policy discourse of Shah. Then in this way, hegemonic and dominant signs have been specified. Moreover, according to dominant discourse features, five periods are determined as follows: first period: 1320-1324, second period: 1325-1332, third period: 1333-1344, fourth period: 1345-1352, and fifth period: 1353-1356; furthermore, a discourse framework is determined for each period. The results show that notorious incidents occurred at certain junctures not only stir "self" and "other" identities within the realm of otherization, but it will also lead to alteration of shah's framework as well as displacement of signs.

This research focuses mainly on how foregrounding and backgrounding function in the foreign policy discourse of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi between the years 1320-1356. In this way, "otherization" as well as "self" and "other" identities have been specified. In this research, "self" and "other" identities as well as their general criteria are determined according to systemic-functional linguistic theory via lexical analysis. The corpus examined includes all the texts of Shah regarding the foreign policy between the years 1320-1356. These texts are incorporated in an eleven-volume book titled A collection of compilations, speeches, messages,interviews and remarks of his imperial majesty Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, shahanshah and aryamehra of Iran. This research shows that polarity of identities in Mohammad Reza's discourse is not binary; rather it is a continuum including middle poles as well. "Self" and "other" poles are formed into the general discourse framework according to the shared ideological features. United Nation, United States of America and world nations are stable poles of "self" while Mohammad Mossaddeq, Jamal Abdul Nasser, communism, Tudeh Party and colonialism (without referring to any specific country) are stable poles of "other". The Soviet Union and Israel are also middle poles of this continuum. The results reveal that selection and activation of the words are in such a way that positive points of the "self" and negative points of the "other" are emphasized, whereas negative points of the "self" and positive points of the "other" are de-emphasized.

In this essay¡ we study transformation of linguistic representation of religion in thetexts of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. This research attempts to reveal what political events trigger the linguistic representation of religion by Shah and how these representations are used to foreground favorite concepts and background those which are not favorable. Thus¡ all spoken and written texts produced by Shah is studied. The results indicate that religion is not represented the same by Shah. Having studied the data¡ we reach to five historical periods which show the best the transformation of linguistic representation in the texts of Shah. These five periods respectively are: first period¡ religion for unity (1320-1332)¡ second period¡ 28 Mordad coup (1332-1334)¡ third period¡ Cento treatment (1334-1341)¡ fourth period¡ white revolution (1341-1348) and fifth period¡ Palestine issue (1348-1357). Among these periods¡ the most highlighted linguistic representation of religion belongs to the fourth period¡ i.e. white revolution.

1- This research attempts to investigate the effects of forensically-relevant facial concealment on voiceless fricatives /f, s, ʃ/ in Farsi. There are various types of face-concealing garments that are commonly worn by people for the occupational, recreational, religious, and cultural purposes .These coverings may be typically used as disguises during the commission of crime by delinquents. Among these face coverings, one can refer to surgical masks, motorcycle helmets, and niqāb. Certainly, face coverings have an effect on the way the speech is produced. The way we produce speech is likely to be modified when a mask is covering our face. In such situations, the default motor activity of certain articulators such as lips make an effect on normal facial surface behaviours and natural jaw motions. Llamas (2008) claims that even more minor modification to the articulatory gestures during speech production may alter the resultant acoustic signal. When a fabric or other material is covering the mouth and nose, the propagation of the sound wave will be impeded, and the sound energy of certain spectral components of the signal will be absorbed. Nowadays, forensic speech scientists are encountered with such cases. The purpose of this study is firstly is to contribute to facewar research within forensic phonetics and secondly to prepare the experts to take that knowledge into account during their analysis when they are working on speech materials produced through facewear. Therefore, the present study centers on this question: Are the acoustic properties of facewear speech different from those of control speech. Thus, the current study explores the acoustic properties of voiceless fricatives /f, s, ʃ/ in Farsi both in control and facewear conditions.
2- Five female speakers were recorded in a professional acoustic laboratory at the University of Alzahra. The mean age of the five selected speakers was 29.They aged from 27 to 31. The speech material consists of 18 non words. Each non word was repeated twice. These were extracted from the /CɑC/ syllables. The total data set comprises 900 tokens: 5 speakers × 18 non words × 2 repetitions × 1 facewear conditions. Five types of facewear including unconcealed face, motorcycle helmet, rubber mask, surgical mask, and balaclavas without mouth hole, were tested in this study. Phonetic samples were analyzed using PRAAT version 5,2,34 and the statistical analysis of the data was performed by IBM SPSS version 21.0. To examine the effects of facewear on the acoustic speech signals, intensity and spectral parameters including friction intensity, center of gravity and spectral peak were measured.
3- The statistical analysis of the intensity of data revealed that facewear significantly affected the intensity of all voiceless fricatives. The main effect of facewear on intensity was significant for /f/ [F (4, 595) = 56.198, sig= 0.000], /s/ [F (4, 145) = 41.424, sig= 0.000], /ʃ/ [F (4, 145) = 40.481, sig= 0.000]. The intensity of the /f/ was smaller than 50 dB; while the intensity of /s/ and /ʃ/ were higher than 50 dB. The intensity of /s/ and /ʃ/ were more similar to each other than the intensity of /f/. For all the three voiceless fricatives, the effect of facewear on intensity was most noticeable in case of the helmet condition. Furthermore, surgical mask didn’t provoke large intensity changes relative to the control condition.
The statistical analysis revealed a significant main effect of facewearon on the spectral peak of all fricative, namely /f/ [F (4, 595) = 20.319, sig= 0.000], /s/ [F (4, 145) = 11.476, sig= 0.000], /ʃ/ [F (4, 145) = 3.524, sig= 0.009].The peak measures for /s/ and /ʃ/ were similar across facewear condition. In general, the peak measures for /s/ and /ʃ/ have been minimally affected through facewear condition. The peak measures for /s/ and /ʃ/ were acoustically less affected than those for /f/ because /f/ has diffuse spectral pattern.
The statistical analysis indicates that there was a significant main effect of facewear on the COG of /f/ [F (4, 595) = 50.245, sig= 0.000], /s/ [F (4, 145) = 20.683, sig= 0.000], /ʃ/ [F (4, 145) = 5.992, sig= 0.000].The results revealed that when /s/ is produced through facewear, it has the highest level of variation. This implies that sound energy is absorbed in higher frequency bands of the spectrum. This effect was most prominent in the rubber mask and helmet condition. Moreover, for /f/, the highest level of variation was in the helmet condition. The result indicates that the COG was only minimally affected when /ʃ/ was produced through facewear.
4- This survey attempts to explore the effects of forensically relevant face coverings on acoustic properties of voiceless fricatives /f, s, ʃ/ in Farsi. The voiceless fricatives, namely /s/, /ʃ/ and /f/ were chosen in this study because of the importance of fricative analysis in forensic phonetic caseworks and also for their energy distribution in higher frequency bands of the acoustic spectrum. To examine the effects of facewear on the acoustic speech signals, the intensity and spectral parameters including friction intensity, center of gravity, and spectral peak were measured. Phonetic samples were analyzed using PRAAT and the statistical analysis of the data was performed by IBM SPSS.
Findings indicate that facewear can considerably influence the intensity and spectral features of the voiceless fricatives /f, s, ʃ/. This was likely to be the result of some changes caused by face coverings which alter the acoustic-phonetic characteristics of the voiceless fricatives /f, s, ʃ/. The outcome reveals that intensity measure for the motorcycle helmet and COG measures for several face coverings (motorcycle helmet and rubber mask) show the highest values of changes. Furthermore, spectral peak of /f, s, ʃ/ compared to the intensity and COG has shown the least variation.

Critical discourse analysis deals mostly with power and ideology. This approach attempts to detect unequal power relations and unravel the ideologies hidden behind texts. Accordingly, this article takes a critical discourse analysis approach to investigate how social actors are represented in the foreign policy discourse of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. The analytical model used is Van Leeuwen′s socio-semantic framework (2008). The main objective of this paper is to explore how these representations are used to foreground favorite concepts and background least favorite ones. The findings of this study indicated a differential representation of social actors by Shah according to his aims and goals in that "self" identities are depicted as positive and active actors, while "other" identities are depicted negatively. Moreover, the results showed that from among the features suggested by this framework, "association" and "relational identification" are mostly used for referring to "self" identities, while "appraisement" is mostly used for referring to "other" identities.

In this paper, we examine the treatment of Persian relative clauses in role and reference grammar. RRG is a structural-functional theory which has studied the syntax-semantics-pragmatics interface in human language systems. The main objectives of this article, on the one hand, are to elucidate syntactic, semantic and pragmatic properties of Farsi relative clauses, and on the other hand, to assess this theory in analyzing Farsi relative clauses. Modern Farsi written sentences were selected for analysis. The results show that restrictive clauses in Farsi are peripheral i.e. modifiers of the nominal and occur at the nuclear level. On the other hand, non-restrictive clauses are adjuncts at the NP rather than the nuclearN level. Like adjectives, relative clauses express attributes of the head noun and accordingly the semantic representation of the relative clause is represented as filling the same slot in an attributive predication that an adjective does. In terms of focus structure, relative clauses could be considered as an information unit. Hence, they can occur in actual focus domain. Moreover, relative clauses could be a presupposed element while they can present contrasts and focus to the interlocutor.

This article presents an introduction to an onomasiological theory of word-formation. Onomasiological theory presented by Pavol Štekauer is a cognitive theory which responds to naming demands of a speech community. The goal of this research is to describe the word-formation components of the onomasiological theory; meanwhile, we attempt to illustrate the fundamental principles of the theory via Farsi lexical units. The results stated that with respect to the seven levels assumed in the model of word-formation of this theory (i.e. speech community, extra- linguistic reality, conceptual level, semantic level, onomasiological level, onomatological level and phonological level) and five onomasiological types referred to as cluster types, the illustration of the word-formation systems is possible.

So far various researches about "Rā" have been conducted. "Rā" as a constituent has high frequency in Persian language. Nevertheless, there are numerous analyses with different perspectives about its function and position. In this way pure formal, discourse-based and integrated (formal and discourse-based) studies leading to different conclusions have been conducted. Considering solely colloquial genre, this article attempts to analyze "Rā" in contemporary Persian language. Prior works have considered "Rā" as solely one constituent whereas restricting "Rā" to only one function would result in neglecting other functions of "Rā". Thus, in this article, various functions of "Rā" will be analyzed. It has been shown that "Rā" is not one constituent, but it is several constituents having various functions. Moreover, one of the findings of this article is that, unlike many linguists and grammarians' standpoints, "Rā" could not be considered as a definiteness marker. The reason underlying this issue is mapping of object on one of the definiteness markers, which in discourse-based condition of Persian, has generated this ambiguity. On the other hand, one of the functions of "Rā" as another finding of this article is telicity function of "Rā" morpheme in Persian language.