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All societies use kinship terms to address and refer to one’s kin. Most studies dealing with kin terms have been done based on consanguineal and affinal kin criteria. In some societies, kin relations are established by other criteria. Therefore, cultural differences must be taken into account but genealogical paths cannot represent this cultural knowledge. In this research, kin terms were considered as cultural elements. Using kin term maps, it is possible to formally represent how kin relations are calculated without reference to genealogical relations and to recognize primary kin terms. So, cultural differences can be represented as well. The framework used in this research provides a comprehensive basis for comparative studies of kin terms. This study diachronically explored kin term maps of Old Persian, Middle Persian and New Persian. The starting point was “self” in the maps, located in the center. Primary kin terms were identified according to their position relative to the “self”. A comparison of the maps showed that in Middle Persian grammatical gender has disappeared, but biological gender was still important in this period. Some kin terms were added and some were dropped in this period. The results showed that in New Persian the number of kin terms has increased. In the New Persian, there are now some loan kin terms, two-syllable kin terms are more frequently used, and biological gender has lost its importance in expressing kinship relations

This study aims to investigate the changing rates of "hopelessness" and "hopefulness" in Iranian society over the past fifty years, spanning from the 1970s to the 2010s. The study will rely on a selection of best-selling movies that reflect the social reality of any society and have the largest audience, consisting of six movies per decade. In fact, we identify the metaphors and linguistic constructions encoding "hopelessness" and "hopefulness" in the selected corpus. By comparing the token frequency of these metaphors and constructions over the fifty-year period, the study aims to quantify the rates of hopelessness and hopefulness, while analyzing them qualitatively to understand the cognitive patterns of Iranians towards hope over time. The results illustrate that "hopelessness" in Iranian society has generally increased significantly and steadily over the past fifty years. Furthermore, in terms of the cognitive pattern of hope, it can be argued that Iranians associate "hopelessness" with "inability" and characterize "hopefulness" by "dynamism" and "reliance on God."

Relative clause as a complex sentence has always been focused in cognitive linguistics. A relative clause construction (RCC) consists of four main parts: nominal head, main clause (MC), relative clause (RC) and a clause connector "keh". In exemplar theory all tokens of a RCC can be classified in a variety of examples. Exemplar is an individual trace from previous experience in memory. An exemplar-based representation indicates a list of words happening in a certain slot. (Bybee, 2013, p. 58). That is to say, an actual utterance of a RCC always simultaneously instantiates a number of lower-level constitutive constructions and their properties. (Wiechmann, 2015, p.3). Following the study of English RCCs in Wiechmann (2015), the present paper aims to introduce exemplar clusters (closely related to schemas in cognitive grammar) of Persian RCCs. However, this study has focused more on explaining schema occurrence. Furthermore, variables have been chosen based on RCC features in Persian.

In this study, the copula constructions in Gorani texts are investigated, as well as how the ergative system is reflected in them. The Divan of Mawlavi (also known as Kurdish Mawlavi) is one of the most authoritative Gorani manuscripts used in this study. To extract and describe the copula constructions, Dixon's (2010) approach is applied. The copula constructions in Gorani texts are classified into four types: nominal, attributive, existential locative, and existential possessive. In addition to the existential construction, the lexical verb "to have" has been employed to express possession. The agreement pattern of Copula verbs in nominal, attributive, and locative constructions follows the pattern of "S" in past ergative verbs, but in existential possessive constructions it follows the pattern of "A" in past ergative verbs. Despite the fact that lexical verbs have a split and tense-based ergative system, the ergative system in possessive construction is uniformly the same in the present and past tense. Although the existential construction is employed to show possession in both the Gorani texts and modern Persian, in modern Persian the accusative is reflected by the suffix "ra" whereas in Gorani texts the ergative is reflected by pronominal clitics.

This article studies semantic development of pronominal clitics in adnominal possessive constructions of New Persian (NP), i.e. 10th to 20th centuries. Although the structure of Persian possessive constructions has received attention in the previous literature, their semantic development is poorly noted. Since clitical possessors in adnominal constructions are not observed before NP, the investigation of their development will be beneficiary to understand semantic development of possession. A historical corpus of 500,000 words from prose texts of this period is investigated from which 1952 examples including clitical possessors are extracted. According to Heine (1977), Nikiforidou (1991), Koptjevskaja Tamm (2002), and Lehmann (2002), 21 meaning relations for possessive constructions with clitical possessors are introduced and the frequencies of each relation in the corpus and per century are represented. The diachronic investigation shows that the meaning relations are not distributed equally in various centuries but demonstrate a transfer from more concrete to more abstract relations. The body part and kinship relations are the most frequent which together with ownership are introduced as basic meanings of possessive constructions. Based on the semantic extension map of genitive structures introduced by Nikiforidou (1991), a map of semantic development of the above mentioned constructions is depicted with modifications. Moreover, the study shows that the third person singular and then first singular pronominal clitics have the most frequent usage in the corpus. In addition to contributing to understanding of semantic development of possession, the findings also represent linguistic criteria for stylistic analysis and dating of NP manuscripts.

This paper aims to investigate the pragmatic meanings of indefinite constructions in Modern Persian based on Construction Grammar. In Modern Persian, the pragmatic construction [(če) (Ɂajab)… [X]NPi=i] codifies three pragmatic meanings such as 'emphatic', 'appreciative', and 'diminutive'. Furthermore, the other indefinite constructions conveying pragmatic meanings in this era of Persian are as follows: [(ye) [X]seni]j encoding 'emphatic', [(ye) [X]NPi] conveying 'diminutive', [ye/yak[X]NPi=i] codifying 'appreciative', and [yak[X]APi] reflecting 'emphatic' meaning. Indefinite markers (=i, ye, and yak) in their pragmatic functions are stressed; In other words, in codifying the 'emphatic', 'appreciative', and 'diminutive' pragmatic meanings, they are more durative than their grammatical counterparts; in addition, it should be noted that in conveying 'emphatic' and 'appreciative' meanings, they are less durative than the 'diminutive' one and in the first two meanings a gradual increase in intensity and in the last meaning a gradual decrease in intensity can be observed. In order to investigate Modern Persian, a part of HAMBAM spoken Persian corpus, consisting of a 31-minute formal speech and several 40-minute informal interviews, and two books named Sir. Haji (Hedayat, 1951) and The Baboon whose Buffoon was Dead (Chubak, 2017) were selected as the corpus of the research. Phonetic analyzes of the "indefinite markers" existing in pragmatic indefinite constructions are provided using Praat 6.0.08 software.

An Associative plural refers to a construction where a nominal along with a (synthetic or analytic) marker refers to a human referent and other people associated to him/her. Unlike ordinary plurals, the set formed by associated plurals is comprised of some heterogeneous members. The aim of this article is to identify and describe associated plural constructions employed in selected Western Iranian languages. Furthermore, the sources from which the associative markers originate are also indicated. The bulk of the data analyzed in this study come from the spoken varieties while the grammaticalized associative plurals usually belong to the casual and informal speech. The findings of this study indicate that six different strategies are used to express associate plurals in Iranian languages. In some languages two complementary strategies are used with different subset of nominals (proper nouns, or kin terms) in the same language. Still in some others, the usage of the alternative strategies demonstrates some sociolinguistic implications not touched upon in similar studies on associative plurals.

One of the controversial issues in morphophonological studies is Phonologically-Conditioned Suppletion. Using a cognitive approach, the present study shows the existence of this phenomenon in Azerbaijani. Under Langacker’s (1987) Rule/List Fallacy, the lexicon contains unpredictable as well as predictable information. This paves the way for a better explanation of the lexicalization of phonological processes. Following Langacker’s Rule/List Fallacy and Bybee’s (2001) early morphologization (or lexicalization) of phonological processes, the authors believe that the lexicalization of such processes has occurred in Azerbaijani. Those processes are not productive anymore and they only exist as residues in the lexicon. In some cases, those residues are suppletive forms and the choice between them depends on the phonological context. The authors’ analysis is different from the other researchers’ generative analyses in which they have tried to explain such cases in terms of phonological processes. Nesset’s (2008) cognitive model is used to demonstrate the representations and relations between the allomorphs. This model is based on Langacker’s (1987) ideas and to date, it is one of the few “cognitive phonology” models in cognitive and usage-based linguistics. Wherever not referenced, the data in this paper is gathered by recording Azerbaijani speakers.

In addition to the grammatical weight and the nominal head thematic role effects on the processing of a relative clause, which has been dealt with extensively in previous studies, other factors influence the processing of the relative clause. In the present paper, the research data has been collected from TV and radio programs and the quantifier's role on relative clauses occurrence has been investigated based on Wiechmann approaches (2015). Wiechmann believes that each component in a relative construction can affect other components occurrence. Results show that ambiguity and generality in the meaning of the modified head, and occurring in special constructions affect the relative clause presence. This is compatible with exemplar–based theory in that components of a structure affect each other's occurrence. The result of this study can be used in determining the degree of ambiguity among Persian quantifiers and can explain how relative clauses are processed.   

A relative clause is a construction consisting of a nominal and a subordinate clause attributively modifying it. The nominal is called the head and the subordinate clause is called relative clause (henceforth RC). The attributive relation between head and RC is such that the head is involved in what is stated in the clause. As prenominal modifiers precede post modifiers, they can have certain influence on post- modifiers occurrence. It seems that indefinite pronouns occur with RCs more than any other prenominal modifier. Wiechmann believes that the more general the term, the greater the need (and hence the likelihood) for the additional material that enables the hearer to identify the intended referent of the complex. In this way, RC as a clausal post modifier is a good alternative for post modification of the expressions in the following list: anyone, anything, best everybody all, anybody, everybody, that thing, things, those, time, two, uncle, way, what, woman, women. Accordingly, in the present paper we are going to investigate the co-occurrence of quantifiers in expressions such as h{r ‘any , every’ k{s  ‘one, body’   ; h{r ‘any , every’  ,tSiz ‘thing’,… and relative clauses in Persian.   

In cognitive construction grammar, a relative clause is unified as a language sign which its processing procedure is highly the same as the lexicon’s. Linguistic signs are of different intermediate levels that have both fixed and variable parts. A complete characterization of a high level construction, such as an English RC, will have to take into account its constitutive constructions and their properties. That is to say, an actual utterance of an RC always instantiates a number of lower level construction simultaneously. Each grammatical unit is a routine process which speakers master it over repetition and they activate it as a predetermined assembly. Every experienced exemplar of an RC is involved in its cognitive representation. An exemplar-based representation indicates a list of words happening in a certain slot. When uttering a construction, we do not refer to a set of general features but analogically we refer to the memories of lexical items which have happened in that slot in previous exposures.   

The present paper is a descriptive - analytical research about RC s in spoken Persian. We analyzed each quantifier co-occurrence with RC and other post modifiers. Data for the current paper has been collected from 30 hours of conversations on TV and radio programs. 1200 relative clauses were extracted in addition to 500 sentences with a nominal head modified by other post modifiers to find out the difference between relative clause and other post - nominal modifiers. 

Prenominal modifiers behave differently in co-occurrence with RCs. The difference is displayed in the following hierarchy: h{r  ‘every, any’ 90.21% > Xeili {z  ‘many of’ 45.16% > h{me ‘all’ 30.20% > yeki{z ‘one of’ 27.88% > hitS  ‘no none’  21. 05% The results indicate that Persian quantifiers are of different characteristics. h{r ‘every, any’ refers to a singular head and it is used in conditional constructions to indicate general propositions. In fact, after some heads such as  h{r k{s ‘every one, any one’, h{r tSiz  ‘every thing, anything’ RC is more predictable to happen and easier to process. In the present paper, 3 constructions were introduced which included a nominal head modified with a quantifier: 1. RC construction with a nominal head modified with “h{r” implying a conditional proposition.  h{r‘every, any’ + head + RC + MC.  h{r   k{s  kar  n{-kon-e   be  s{lam{ti=e    Xod-eS   asib  mi-   z{n-e. any  one  work (exercise)  NEG- SUBJ. do- 3SG. to  health =of  self-3SG.CL  damage  PROG-PRES.hit. - 3SG. ‘Anyone who doesn’t exercise will damage his own health’    2. An extraposed RC with some nominal head modified with quantifier   Xeili {z ‘ many of ‘. in these constructions the verb is copular: Xeili {z   pezeSk-a   h{st-{n   ?{sl{n  did-e   ne-mi-S-{n  many of  doctor-PL PRES.be- 3PL never  see- PP. NEG- PRES- be- 3 PL ‘There are many doctors who are never seen’   3. An extraposed RC with  an indefinite quantifier hitS ‘ nothing’ According to exemplar-based theory, different components affect each other’s occurrence. Frequent use of these components leads to a pre-defined and entrenched construction which in turn increases RC usage in related contexts.   

As indicated in section 4, we introduced some intermediate levels of RC in Persian. These findings are in line with exemplar theory principles. In exemplar theory, different components of a construction affect each other’s presence. Frequent occurrence of these components leads to construction entrenchment in the speaker’s mind helping to predict next construction components. The results also show that pre-nominal modifiers display three different behaviors in occurrence with RCs: 1. Compared to all other quantifiers, the quantifier h{r ‘any, every’  is more used with RC in a way that all  the RC occurrence with other quantifiers is less than h{r ‘any, every’ occurrence with RC. 2. In Xeili {z ‘many of’ construction, RC is more frequently used compared to any of other post modifiers. 3. In  hitS ‘no, none’  and yeki {z ‘one of’ constructions  RC occurred less than other post modifiers such as  genitive and descriptive modifiers. It is recommended that the co-occurrence of quantifiers with RC be investigated cognitively in language laboratories.   Select Bibliography Bybee, J. 2013. Usage-based Theory and Exemplar Representations of Constructions, In: Thomas Hoffmann  and  Graeme Trousdale (eds.). TheOxford Handbook of Construction Grammar.,Oxford: Oxford University Press. 

This article studies the diachronic development of reflexive pronouns derived from xod in New Persian, i.e. 10th to 20th centuries. Not in all centuries of New Persian one can find the indexation of xod by pronominal clitics and it is mostly believed that the indexation is a characteristic of colloquial Persian. The current study, employing a typological perspective, tries to investigate the sequence of the emergence as well as the development process of the reflexive pronouns with different persons and numbers in New Persian. We assume that the process follows the universal referential hierarchies.In Persian, similar to for example English, Turkish and Finnish, one and a same set of reflexive pronouns show both reflexive and emphatic functions. The reflexive pronoun xod in New Persian is derived from xwad in Middle Persian with adverbial function (Mackenzie, 2011), and xwad is a development from the prefix uva with possessive meaning in Old Persian (Kent, 1950). New Persian uses xod as both emphatic and reflexive pronouns. Moyne (1971) considers possessive function of xod as emphatic. However, Davari (2016) points out that the use of xod as a possessor is to denote reflexive function and based on this concludes that the reflexive uses of xod in Persian precede the emphatic uses.Regarding person and number indexations of different grammatical categories, different hierarchies are introduced (Greenberg, 1966; Comrie, 1989, 1999; Woolford, 1999; Corbett, 2000; Croft, 2003). In some hierarchies (according to certain languages), animacy plays a bigger role, dominating first and second persons over third person. However, for some languages, animacy is indifferent and they follow the hierarchy with the domination of third person. Furthermore, specifically for the presence of reflexive markers with different persons among languages, Comrie (1989; 1999) introduces the hierarchy that dominates third person over first and second persons, and Faltz (1985) believes that second person also dominates first person in reflexive pronouns.This study aims to determine what referential hierarchies play role in the emergence and development of the reflexive pronoun xod into personal reflexive pronouns xodam, xodat, xodaš, xodemān, xodetān, and xodešān. It also takes a brief look at the influence of different functions of xod in the process.

Since the study is diachronic, the given data at first place are of written type and only the prose of this period is investigated. Among various available texts, three manuscripts are selected per century, in total 33 texts. The criteria of the selections are the simplicity of the language of the texts, the narrativity of the texts, and the certainty on the dates they were written. From each text, 15000 words are compiled which resulted in a half a million word corpus[1]. The corpus includes 192 constructions where the reflexive pronoun xod is used with one of the pronominal clitics. The current article takes a diachronic typological approach and regarding the frequencies of the personal reflexive pronouns in different centuries of New Persian, investigates the influence of different referential hierarchies (Greenberg, 1966; Faltz, 1985; Comrie, 1989a, 1989b Comrie, 1989, 1999; Woolford, 1999; Corbett, 2000; Croft, 2003), on their development. It also takes a look at the role of the emphatic and reflexive functions in the developments.

According to the corpus, the first uses of personal clitic pronouns attached to xod belong to the third person singular and are not older that 14th or 15th centuries (8th or 9th in Hijri calendar). The third person singular reflexive pronoun xodaš, in both sequence of emergence and frequency in different centuries, overtly dominates the first and second reflexive pronouns. As illustrated in figure 1, first person also dominates the second person and singular is placed over plural in the hierarchy of number. Furthermore, according to the figure 2, the first cases of personal reflexive pronouns are used in the corpus in possessive constructions. Then emphatic function and later reflexive function are observed.

This paper identifies the grammatical constructions expressing indefiniteness in Old Persian. Based on the extant data from this stage of Persian language, There had been no indefinite article before Old Persian era and its grammaticalization is the result of the bridging context chr('39')There is only one X, the X represents a human beingchr('39'). In fact, the metonymic relations triggered reanalysis of "aiva" chr('39')onechr('39') to an chr('39')indefinite articlechr('39') which in turn paved the way for its metaphoric extension. To explain this path of development, a Construction Grammar model is adopted. This research is based on the corpus of OP gathered by Kent (1953). The investigation illustrates that the token frequency of the aforementioned indefinite article in the total NPs (4130) amounts to 0.5%. This percentage is not much high; however, it implies that it is a newly formed grammatical construction in Old Persian. In other words, it illustrates the early stages of the indefinite article grammaticalization.

In new Persian nominal morphology, two strategies of suffixation and transfixation are employed to form plurals. Suffixation by–ân and –hâ is native to this language, while transfixation patterns which form the so-called BROKEN PLURALS are borrowed from Arabic. Both native and foreign suffixes as well as transfixation patterns demonstrate some deviations from their original functions. The aim of this article is to investigate these deviations and new developments in the Persian nominal morphology in terms of grammaticalization and degrammaticalization processes. The findings of this study demonstrate, a) introduction of new plural making suffixes, sometimes, exhibiting both inflectional and derivational characteristics, b) deinflectionalization of affixes along with subsequent hypercharacterization of the base to which they are attached c) degrammaticalization of inflectional affixes into derivational ones, amongst others.

Relative clause construction in Iranian languages appears mainly in sentences as a subordinate clause and acts as a describer for the preceding noun. Following Dixon's (2010) framework, our aim in this paper is to study and describe the relative clause construction in Kurmanji dialect of Kurdish. This construction is generally of two types which can be considered as canonical and non-canonical with their own syntactic features. Relative clauses can be either restrictive or non-restrictive according to the information given about the head. Restrictive clauses cannot be omitted, because they give new information, while non-restrictives can; since the information they give are not always necessary. In Kurmanji, a third type can be identified which is called cleft relative clause in which the head is focused. In this dialect, relative clauses are absolutely in accordance with a head. These clauses are external and come after the head. The data on which this study is based on interviews with native speakers of Kurmanji as well as a book called Az Ensanəm.

There are conditional sentences in all languages. A conditional sentence consists of two main and subordinate clauses that are apodosis and protasis clauses respectively. In this study, due to the importance of conditional constructions and the lack of typological classification of these structures in Persian language, we have studied the typology of conditional constructions in New Persian language. Theoretical concepts In this study, we will examine conditional sentences of New Persian language, based on the theoretical framework of Declerck and Reed (2001). In this semantic theoretical framework, conditional sentences can be classified in different types according to the possible worlds of protasis clause. In this typology possible world of protasis clause can be factual or theoretical. If the possible world is theoretical, it can be neutral or non-neutral, and if it is non-neutral, it can be one of the four types of closed, open, tentative, and counterfactual. In diagram 1, this typology is shown:  Diagram 1: Typology of possible worlds In factual protasis conditional the situation of protasis clause is interpreted as a fact, which forms part of the real world that can be occurred truly (Declerck & Reed, 2001, p. 65-66). The following sentence is a factual one:  1. If I had a problem, I always went to my grandmother.       In a conditional sentence that refers to the theoretical world, if there is no relation with the real world, it will be neutral. The speaker who uses the neutral conditional has no presupposition or assumption about the likelihood of a theoretical world and the real world. The following sentence is a neutral one: 2. If a woman has a history of cancer in her family, she should be examined each year.  On the other hand, if the speaker uses the non-neutral theoretical protasis, there is a presupposition about the likelihood of theoretical and real world. Given the degree of this probability, there are four types of non-neutral theoretical conditionals. In these types the presupposition of protasis clause with real world can be one of the true, probably true, unlikely, and false ones. These are called closed, open, tentative, and counterfactual respectively (ibid, p. 67-72).      In the closed conditional the speaker assumes that the situation of the protasis clause in the real world is true. The following sentence is a closed one: 3.  If you know something about this, tell me.  If there is not a certain correspondence between protasis’s possible world and the real world, then the possible world would be open. In this type of conditional sentences there is no certainty, no probability or doubt about corresponding between real world and possible world. The following sentence is an open conditional sentence (Ibid, p. 91-93): 4. If the train is late, we will miss our appointment.        In the tentative possible world, the accommodation of the protais’s possible world and real world is impossible but it is not improbable. In fact, in this conditional sentence, it is more likely that the situation of the protasis clause in the real world is false (ibid.,p. 93-98). The following sentence is a tentative one:   5. If he resigned, I would be happy.  Finally, the conditional sentence in which there is an assumption that the protasis’s theoretical world is contrary with factuality and which is completely different from the real world is the counterfactual conditional (Declerck & Reed, 2001, p. 99). The following sentence is a counterfactual one: 6. I would never have gone with them if I were you. According to the research objectives, the authors have selected the data needed for the research from the written texts of New Persian language produced from the 4th to the 14th century AH. In each of these centuries, ten books from different authors were selected. Then, from each of the selected books, randomly an approximate number of 5000 words was examined and conditional constructions were collected in the aforementioned corpus of each book. Therefore, 110 books from 11 centuries and approximately 50,000 words from each century were examined. Finally, it can be said that the present study consists of an approximate number of 556072 words and 3045 pages. In other words, 50552 words and 277 pages have been examined from each century. Then we examined all the 3648 conditional sentences that were extracted from the corpus and then, we determined the type of conditional construction of each conditional sentence based on the theoretical framework. We indicated that the conditional construction of the New Persian language can be adapted to the typology of Declerck and Reed (2001). Therefore, there are factual, neutral, closed, open, tentative, and counterfactual conditional types in New Persian language. By examining the frequency of occurrence of conditional sentences in the 4th to 11th century AH, we concluded that the use of conditional constructions in the early centuries was much higher than the later centuries, and there was a steady decline down to the 10th century. By examining the frequency of possible worlds in conditional sentences in the 4th to 14th centuries, we concluded that the highest frequency of occurrence of possible worlds belongs to the open possible world and subsequently the neutral, closed and factual possible worlds have a high frequency. The reason for the higher frequency of open possible world is the higher iconicity of this conditional construction. In this construction the speaker considers the hypothetical position that is likely to occur. This situation by constructing the concept of a conditional term that expresses a hypothetical position has the highest degree of similarity and therefore has the highest iconicity. By increasing the iconicity of a construction that can be a criterion in the rising of the frequency of a construction, the frequency of the conditional sentence with the open possible world is increased, and this result is due to the ease in the processing of such sentences.

Conditional sentence is a compound sentence consisting of two clauses: protasis and apodosis. The purpose of this paper is investigating the conditional sentences in contemporary Persian language based on the Declerck and Reed typology (2001). According to this semantic typology, possible world of protasis is divided in to two factual and theoretical classes. Theoretical possible world can be neutral or nonneutral and the nonneutral is divided in to four types: closed, open, tentative and counterfactual. In the present study, we try to examine these types with respect to the corpus of 286 conditional sentences extracted from ten contemporary story books and the frequency of occurrence of each one to be determined separately. The analysis of Persian conditional sentences shows that the Persian conditional construction is compatible with mentioned typology and open possible world has the highest occurrence frequency, and the neutral, closed, factual, tentative and counterfactual possible worlds respectively dedicated the highest frequency of the open possible world. The higher frequency of occurrence of the open possible world arises from the fact that in this possible world a probabilistic situation is considered and there is no certainty about its occurrence and this interpretation is most consistent with the operation of the conditional construction. This study also shows that in addition to the common conditional conjunctions such as “ agar, be shartike, vaella, vagarna, ...” other conjunctions are also used as conditional conjunctions like : “ valo, farzan, hamin ke, be mojarade inke, vaghti, cheo…che, hala ke, ta, ke ….” .

Our purpose in this article is to investigate the formal mechanisms of causative constructions of Modern Persian language based on Dixon (2012) typology. In this diachronic study, a corpus of more than 330000 words and 4151 causative constructions extracted from 30 books of 4th to 7th and 13th and 14th AH centuries. The analysis of Persian causative constructions shows that this language uses three known lexical, morphological, and syntactic mechanisms in order to express the causative meaning so that lexical mechanism has the highest occurrence frequency among them. The data shows that syntactic causative application is restricted to the recent centuries so that no construction of this type has been found in early centuries. Our findings also prove that 4th century has the most frequency of causatives and we can see a decreasing rate of these constructions so that 13th century has the lowest position and again we observe an increasing rate in the current century. The results also indicate that morphological causatives have had a decreasing frequency so that some verbs like "faramushandan", "shanavandan", "agahandan" and… have been omitted from speakers’ vocabulary. Another result is that although existence of a causative verb is necessary for a construction to be regarded as a causative, it is not enough.

The purpose of this paper is investigating the conditional connective words in New Persian language based on the Declerck and Reed typology (2001). According to this semantic typology, different types of conditional sentences based on possible worlds of protasis are factual, neutral, closed, open, tentative and counterfactual. In the canonical conditional sentence there is one connective word in the beginning of the sentence that is used to mark conditionality. In the present study, we try to examine these types with respect to the corpus of 3648 conditional sentences extracted from 110 books of 4th to 14th AH centuries. In New Persian various connective words have been used as conditional words like: “agar, agarche, agarna, ta, ke, valo, farzan, haminke, darsuratike, vaella, hargah, chon, …”. Statistical calculations on conditional words with a frequency above fifty show that there are certain tendencies between different conditional possible worlds and types of conditional words.

One of the most important issues in cognitive linguistics is Spatial Orientation. Languages use sources such as human body (body-part), landmarks, dynamic concept (typically motion verbs like come, go, etc.) and cardinal direction to conceptualize spatial and geographic directions. Every language uses the whole or some of these sources based on its historical and cultural issues. The present study sought to consider the features and sources of Spatial orientation in Persian language based on of Heine’s (1997) theory. The results of the study indicated that Persian language employs human body and animal body (anthropomorphic and zoomorphic model) as the main source of conceptualization, since the bodily experience in space serves as the basis for the majority of metaphorical expressions. The next source was Landmarks (environment – specific features) such as rivers, mountains and rocky places, sea and trees and other related properties. The third and final sources were motion and cardinal directions respectively

The present study aims to investigate the nominal and the predicative possession schemas in Persian with a cognitive approach. Schemas are abstractions from which the grammatical constructions develop. To this end, Heine's (1997) cognitive approach to the study of the Possession Schemas is considered as the theoretical framework by the authors. The results of the study show that the Action, the Location, the Companion, the Goal and the Source Schemas are used in Persian to encode the predicative possession. Moreover, the Location, the Companion, the Additive, the Genitive, the Source, the Linking and the Topic Schemas encode the nominal possession in Persian. A unique feature of Persian, which is not documented in Heine's cognitive approach, is the use of the Linking Schema to encode the nominal possession. This issue is introduced in this research for the first time. Furthermore, Persian uses the Source Schema to express the predicative possession.

Conditional construction is a linguistic universal that occurs systematically across natural languages, potentially true for all of them. The conditional sentence is a compound statement composed of two main and subordinate clauses namely apodosis and protasis respectively. Most languages use conditional connective words to mark this construction. In Persian, “agar” has the most frequency among the conditional connective words. Except this word, there are some other connective words that can be used as a conditional connective word such as “tâ, čonanče, vaGti, hargâh, be šarte inke, hattâ agar,…”. Regarding the importance of conditional construction, this study examines verb’s tense of the protasis and apodosis clauses of the conditional sentences in the contemporary Persian language based on the theoretical framework of Declerck and Reed (2001). Declerck and Reed (2001: 65-66) have proposed a kind of typology for the different types of possible worlds cross-linguistically. Possible world is a situation in which things and incidents exist or could exist. Whereas a real possible world is a situation in which things really exist, an unreal possible world is a situation in which they could exist.   Based on this typology, the   possible world of a  protasis clause can be factual or theoretical. In the case  the possible world is theoretical, it can be neutral or non-neutral. The non-neutral possible world itself is divided into closed, open, tentative and counterfactual worlds. The canonical pattern of tense system in languages of the world portrays a distinction between past and non-past or future and non-future tenses.  English and Persian use a dual distinction between past and non-past tenses. In this research, we aim to examine the  tense of the protasis and apodosis clauses based on the type of the possible worlds of  protasis clauses. In order to investigate the tense of the protasis and apodosis clauses in the conditional sentences of Modern Persian, we selected 10 fiction books of the most famous contemporary Persian authors. Selecting approximately 5000 words and 25 pages of each book randomly, we extracted conditional sentences   through the sample. The corpus involving 50622 words and 254 pages, showed 286 conditional sentences. To derive the tense of the possible worlds, the type of the conditional construction of each conditional sentence was determined based on the theoretical framework of Declerck and Reed (2001) and the tense of the protasis and apodosis clauses was analyzed using the statistical calculations. Finally, we examined the relationship between the type of the conditional construction and the tense of the protasis and apodosis clauses. The present contribution presented an attempt to investigate the probability of occurrence of past and non-past tenses of the protasis and apodosis clauses separately with regard to the data and the use of computations and statistical analysis methods. The study identified that  the tense variation of protasis and apodosis clauses in Persian is fewer than the English cognates . It was also argued that Persian represents a strong tendency in applying clauses that the tense of protasis and apodosis is non-past to be of the “open” division. On the other hand, we demonstrated that there is a strong tendency for the tense of protasis and apodosis being in the past to be of  factual characteristics. The study concluded that as for the open conditionals, the speaker often uses conditional construction to portray a situation which, as yet, has not occurred or could later occurr. Therefore, the tense is often non-past. On the other hand, exploiting factual conditional, the speaker represents a situation believed in the truth of its occurrence. Therefore the past tense will serve to express the factive situation.  Examining the corpus of the present research, we concluded that Persian conditional sentences can be classified according to Declerck and Reed’s typology. It was further indicated that in Modern Persian, the types of conditional constructions address   factual, neutral, closed, open, tentative and counterfactual divisions. We also showed that the past and the non-past tense of the protasis clause were almost equal-with the non-past to be slightly more than the past- while in the apodosis clause, non-past tense was more than the past form. Furthermore, the study exhibited that there is a tendency between the tense of the protasis and apodosis clauses and the conditional type in Modern Persian; however, the tendencies are not absolute and it is not possible to guess the type of conditional construction certainly based on the tense of the verbs. Investigating the relationship between the modal meanings of protasis and apodosis clauses and the type of conditional constructions will be performed in further studies.

motion and causative verbs have great capacity in creating honorific. Current article has examined the impact of these verbs on such structure according to historical and fiction sources and Google within the framework of grammaticalization approach. The results show that these verbs maintaining lexical meaning will be grammatical in the imperative mood. Then changed to general indicator for honorific issue with participating in serial verb constructions and forming single proposition. These verbs have two meanings such as primary and secondary which lose their meanings to be changed into a general indicator of imperative for polite imperatives.The resulting structures at first used as indirect imperative action and then interpreted as more direct actions, due to frequency of application. Frequency of application of motion verbs compared with causative verbs creates imperative patterns and forms more productive structures than causative verbs.

This research is specifically about the function of inflectional "-i" suffix in new Persian. The objective of the article is to recognize some concepts and changes which are encoded by this morpheme in New Persian. Additionally, it follows up the reason of change or recognition of the linguistic elements. The results suggest that the so-called morpheme is changed in the cases that it was expressing two categories of frequentative aspect and modes, including subjunctive, conditional, optative, and imagined. The alternative sign in the category of aspect is prefix "mi-", which has taken a new frequentative aspect other than imperfect, and because of taking a new grammatical function, the auxiliary of "dɑʃtæn" is grammaticalized for its primary function, as well. The alternative sign in the category of mood is the abstract form of subjunctive mood, which means that a literal and phonemic function of an affix is titled to an abstract category. The reason of such changes should be found in the process of grammaticalization. That is, through this process, in aspect form "mi-" has taken a new function in addition to its primary one and has become more grammatical, and in mood form, a grammatical category has become more grammatical and more abstract.