mohammad amouzadeh

This paper aims to investigate the light verb constructions (LVCs) formed with the light verb dādan ‘to give’ in Persian by employing the principles of cognitive lexical semantics. It examines the semantic relationships between the heavy verb dādan and its uses as LVCs. The analysis of attested examples reveals that the use of dādan as a light verb (LV) is a function of the semantic structure of its simple verb counterpart. This suggests that its lightness status is highly systematic and can be explained in terms of cognitively driven motivations. In addition, a significant number of the LVCs express certain causation meanings, suggesting that Persian speakers tend to use the LV dādan to convey causative notions as newly emerged LVCs. This stance will constitute our line of argument to analyze the data in this study. By presenting a cognitive configuration of LVCs in Persian, the current paper can pave the way for a fine-grained theorization of typological aspects of LVCs in some other languages.

Object omission construction is a valency-reduction process in which a transitive verb appears without its object and is used as an intransitive one. However, the addressee is able to understand the meaning of the objectless sentence. The considered type of object omission in this paper is context-independent, in which the reference of the omitted object is not mentioned in previous context and the context does not provide any clue to recover the deleted object. Among different factors which can affect object omission, in this research we attempt to determine the nature of the deleted object based on some important typological hierarchies such as animacy, referentiality, definiteness and number which can be used to determine the tendency of language in choosing the prototypical object in the sentence. It seems that an object is omissible when it has different features compared to the present object in the sentence. The findings prove this claim and reveal that the reference of the omitted object is located in the lower levels of the aforementioned typological hierarchies. Moreover, the findings indicate that an element such as 'number' which makes no difference in morpho-syntactic presentation of the direct object in the sentence has no effect on the possibility of object omission.

Discourse marker is a functional-pragmatic category, not affecting truth conditions of the sentence. These linguistic elements encode procedural rather than representative or propositional meanings. Discourse markers have been the subject of increasing attention in recent years, and have been investigated in different theoretical frameworks. Among the vast variety of approaches toward interpreting the role of discourse markers, one major approach is rooted in Grice's suggestion. By elaborating the concept of conventional implicature along the previously well-known concept of conversational implicature, Grice (1989) treats some discourse markers as being instances of the former. He also conceptualized the concept of non-central or higher-level speech acts to account for the contribution of these discourse markers to the meaning of their host sentence. In this article, we will initially describe the characteristics of the discourse marker "magar" (‘unless’/’but’) in terms of prototypical characteristics of discourse markers proposed by Brinton (1996) and Heine (2013). We then present a diachronic exposition of its semantic development from having a propositional meaning to a word with a textual and expressive function in contemporary Persian. This explanation is in accordance with Traugott’s (1986) analysis of semantic change toward more subjectification. Ultimately, we have applied a Gricean interpretation to this Persian discourse marker, as a higher-level speech act. It is argued that "magar" (‘unless’/’but), in addition to its function as a connective element (which connects two textual units or encrypts the connection between the propositional content of an utterance and its previous context), can help with the performance of a non-central speech act with the illocutionary force of indicating opposition. Given the fact that speech acts, in Searl's terms, are the subject of the quadruple felicity conditions, namely Preparatory, Sincerity, Propositional content and Essential conditions we have shown how these conditions can be actualized (or applied) when it comes to higher-level speech acts.

Three types of meaning i.e., propositional (conceptual), textual and interpersonal were acknowledged for language in the tradition of functional studies. In light of such appraoch, this study aims 1) to describe different types of meanings of in (this) and ân (that) in Persian and, 2) to show that how basics of grammaticalization can be applied to provide a synchronic survey of the semantic variety of the aforementioned dectic expressions as discourse markers in Persian. Based on Traugott & Dasher (2002), this paper examines the different uses of these elements by looking at their propositional (conceptual), textual and interpersonal meanings. The analysis indicates that in & ân are used in their propostional meaning and also used in the bridging contexts. Moreover, the investigation shows unlike ân, the semantic changes of in extends beyond the bridging contexts. So in (this) as a discourse marker, textually has a function in changing the topical trends and creating a pause to formulate the upcoming discourse. It is subjectively used to designate and emphasize the upcoming discourse and to create a contrast and inter-subjectively functions in speech acts such as requesting, asking and advising. Grammaticalization of the deictic expressions supports Traugott & Dasherchr('39')s clines. However, Traugott & Dasherchr('39')s semantic cline, should be modified in way of impersonal subjective > personal subjective > inter-subjective. In sum, using a descriptive-analytical methodology, it indicated that these elements have different uses which grammaticalization (Traugott and Dashar, 2002) provides a solid theoretical framework to describe and study these expressions in Persian.

The study of parentheticals in Persian can still be regarded as an unexplored area of investigation. Persian Parentheticals can be divided into different types; one of them is va-parenthetical. This paper is set forth to study væ-parentheitcal clauses. It opens with a discussion on their typical places of interpolation and their mobile nature. It then continues with the discussion on their general characteristics, namely, omissibility, ellipsis-licensed, and remaining beyond the scope of subordinators. The available data confirm that except ellipsis-licensed feature, all other noted characteristics could be true in case of væ-parentheitcals. This study also reveals that væ-parentheitcals can be interpolated in three different positions (beginning, middle and final). This paper follows a moderate approach, a way between the integrated and the unintegrated approaches, to study væ-parentheitcals. In this vein, it mainly adopts Kavalova’s model (2007) to study væ-parentheitcals. Finally, in spite of quite similar features between væ-parentheitcals and væ discourse marker, some distinctions are made between them. This study argues that by taking some modifications, Kavalova’s model (2007) is quite appropriate to analyze Persian data. The Persian examples illustrated in this study are derived from both written and spoken corpora. It draws on written data from Persian Talk Bank, and the spoken data are collected by authors from some TV round table programs.

This study investigates the functional complexity of the discourse marker “âxe” (‘because’/‘but’) in Persian to express causal relations from the perspective of (inter) subjectification. To this end, we have adopted a descriptive-analytic approach to conduct the research. The data of our investigation come from certain synchronic corpora of every day conversations found in the Persian weblogs, talk shows & interviews, as well as notes taken from every day talks. The findings indicate that “âxe” has undergone grammaticalization at both sentence and discourse levels, and it has reached the advanced stages of (inter) subjectification. In fact, in line with Sweetser (1990) and Degand and Fagard’s (2012) models, “âxe” expresses both objective and subjective causal relations. In fact, Persian speakers make use of this expression to express epistemic, speech act, and textual justification. These functions are indicative of increased dependency of “âxe” on discourse situation, showing the increased grammaticalization and (inter) subjectification it requires to materialize such discourse functions. 

Collocation is defined as the combination of two or more words, which generally go together in a specific context (Lyons, 1995). As an illustration, only one of the synonymous lexemes such as big and large fill the blank space in Example (1). You are making a ____big_____ mistake. * You are making a ___large___mistake. Example 1 indicates that mistake only collocates with big on a syntagmatic axis, and not large. The study aimed at investigating certain semantic and pragmatic motivations behind lexical collocations based on frame semantics demonstrating what words collocate with certain words such as ‘dast’ (hand) and what motivates their constructions. In other words, the question is whether it is the frame correspondence that brings two or more words together. This research aimed to answer the following questions: What motivates specific words to go together? How does frame semantics provide us with information about collocations? What cultural, metaphorical and metonymic factors play roles in lexical collocations? The argument is that what motivates collocations reside in the speakers’ background knowledge and their ability to use syntactic and semantic phenomena properly.

Frame semantics was introduced by Charles Fillmore in 1970s. It aimed to explain the configuration processes of encyclopedical knowledge of words (Ungerer & Schmid, 2006). This framework was primarily used for designing dictionaries which include our background knowledge, whether structural or semantic (Fillmore, 2007). Fillmore (1982, p. 111) defines ‘frame semantics’ as “a particular way of looking at word meanings, as well as a way of characterizing principles for creating new words and phrases for adding new meanings to words, and for assembling the meaning of elements in a text into the total meaning of the text”. By the word ‘frame’ he means all other previously known terms such as ‘schema’, ‘script’, ‘scenario’, ‘ideational scaffolding’, ‘cognitive model’, or ‘folk theory’. Croft and Cruse (2004) believe that words are not randomly saved in our memory. But they are not only organized based on relations within structural semantics, but also they are connected based on experience. For example, a “restaurent” is not just a place to eat food, it is related to other concepts such as customer, waiter, ordering, eating, and bill. They mention that these concepts are not connected to RESTAURENT by structural semantic relations such as hyponymy, antonymy and etc., but they are connected to restaurent by our daily experiences. Furthermore, Fillmore (1982) elaborates how frame semantics can help us explain the subtle differences between various synonymous words. For instance, the words “shore” and “coast” are considered to be synonymous; however, within frame semantics they are different because a person that is at the deck of a ship may say ‘We are close to the shore’, and a person that is on land may say ‘This is the coast of France’.

For conducting the present research, a corpus consisting of 2000 sentences was used. Most of the data were collected from the website The Persian Database and Sokhan Persian Dictionary. All data included the word dast (hand) as a subpart of the Body-Part Frame. For the investigation of collocations with dast, two types of data were found: nominal collocations and verbal collocations. A kind of analytical-descriptive method based on frame semantics was used to carry out the current study. In this method, series of collocates with dast were collected to be compared with their near synonyms to discover the compatibility of bases, collocates and the whole construction. In nominal collocations, Body-Part Frame should be compatible with the frame in which the collocation is defined. In verbal collocations, the Body-Part Frame may literally or metonymically affect the verbal element. Moreover, cultural concepts might influence the quality of the collocation.

Mel’čuk (1998), and Gelbukh and Kolesnikova (2013) used the lexical-functional approach to study collocations. They do not, however, look at the semantic motivations behind their combination. Since lexical-functional appach is not based on our experiences and background knowledge, it appears to be difficult to find a way to the nature of lexical concatenations. Fillmore (1975, 1977a, 1982, 1985) aimed to use frame semantics for describing lexemes and preparing FrameNet. However, Ruppenhofer, Baker and Fillmore (2003) believe that it is possible to use FrameNet for collecting information about the collocations and multi-word phrases. In fact, such information is hidden and this paper aims at dicovering motivations behind collocations based on such a theory. Explaining motivations behind collocations without defining the terms collocations, metaphor and metonymy based on frame semantics becomes very difficult. Collocation is defined as combination of a word from one frame with another word from the same or a different frame, wich creates a construction wich can be defined within either of each elements’ frames or a completely new frame. Metaphor is defined as mappring from a frame into another frame. Metonymy is a frame-to-frame mapping, in which on frame is the subpart of the other frame.

Conclusion

In verbal collocations the verbal element is dominated by the frame in which the nominal elemenet is defined, whereas in nominal collocations the nominal elements should be defined in compatible frames. If they are not literally compatible, then they must be fixed metaphorically, metonymically or culturally.

The current study will be focused on the analysis of modern Persian conditionals based on a cognitive-pragmatic approach. The study proceeds to answer three questions: 1) Can Sweetser's (1990) theoretical model elucidate the different cognitive and pragmatic dimensions of Persian conditionals? 2) What are the conventional readings of agar (‘if’, the common particle in Persian for the conditionals) in Farsi, and in which conditionals are they most present? And finally 3) Can we draw a relationship between subjectivity / intersubjectivity and conditionals? The study assumed a pure and descriptive research whose data were largely derived from contemporary spoken Persian over a period of three months. To answer the questions, the investigation is comprised of three parts. The first part includes the analysis of triple classification of conditionals (e.g. content, epistemic, and speech act conditionals) in Persian sentences based on Sweetser's model (1990) and upholds the efficiency of this model to a great extent. The second part deals with the ways in which 'agar' construes several readings in Persian conditionals and classifies them as necessary and sufficient condition, topic marker, and concessive readings. Finally, the discussion focuses on the subjectivity and intersubjectivity aspects in relation to hypotheticality of conditionals and it argued that the hypotheticality of conditionals can be fairly explained in terms of subjectivity and intersubjectivity. Accordingly, we can propose the grammaticalisation of agar in Persian conditionals. Moreover, this paper furthers the issue by looking at the ways in which conditional insubordinate clauses are triggered by cooptation (in Heine’s term); this happens by foregrounding the components of discourse situation, in particular, subjectivity and intersubjectivity. In fact, it can be asserted that subjectivity and intersubjectivity can account for the various conditional sentences applications in Farsi

This study aims at examining the construction of the word-formation pattern of [del-X] (compounds of “heart”) and investigating its semantic variations, the most general schema and subschemas in Persian employing the Construction Morphology approach (Booij, 2010). To this end, a collection of 71 compound words starting with “del” were collected from Bijankhan Corpus, Dehkhoda and Zansoo Dictionaries and Google. Then they were assigned to different categories based on their semantic variations and the specified categories were closely studied. The results reveal that one general constructional schema and Three subschemas have command of this construction and the central meaning “distinctive feature of an entity related to SEM del and X” is the most abstract pairing of form-meaning understood from all products of this word-formation pattern. This implies that the [del-X] pattern is basically an adjective-making construction and the usage of its compound words in nominal category is through conversion activated by metonymy. Furthermore, it was revealed that the polysemy we deal with here is not at the word level but it is at the construction level.

Understanding abstract concepts, especially metaphors in daily life and education is a complex conceptual phenomenon. Early hearing damages can affect an individual’s understanding of metaphors and their functions in different ways. This study aimed to compare the understanding levels of metaphorical expressions between children with cochlear implants (CIs) and normal children. In this study, 35 children with CIs were compared with 35 normal children in terms of understanding metaphorical expressions. Two groups were matched in terms of gender and age. The children with hearing problems received their implants when they were two to five years old. Both groups of children were evaluated using a researcher-made test. Finally, the data collected through the participants’ responses to the test items were analyzed using descriptive statistics and the independent samples t test. There was a significant difference in understanding metaphorical and simile expressions between children with CIs and the normal children (p<0.05) in favor of the normal children. The mean±SD scores for the metaphorical and simile expressions in normal children were 9.57±1.78 and 8.11±2.39 while in children with CIs, they were 5.34±2.35 and 6.17±3.24, respectively. Although the cochlear implantation improves the auditory perception of deaf children, the perception of children with CIs was found to be weaker than normal children. Apparently, these children have spent several years of their lives without hearing, and this deprivation is likely to affect their understanding.

Light verb constructions (LVCs) are so pervasive in Persian that a heavy verb may act in various constructions as a light verb (LV). This makes the heavy verb lose some parts of its main meaning in such constructions and get away from its prototype meaning. However, this does not imply that no systematic relationship can be found between the heavy verb and its light counterpart. The purpose of this paper is to explore these relationships among the heavy verb, dâdӕn (to give), and the resulting LVCs. The framework adopted in this study is cognitive semantics in general and cognitive lexical semantics and force-dynamics in particular. Cognitive lexical semantics consists of various theories including prototype categorization, image schemas, conceptual metaphor and foregrounding. According to this approach, different meanings of a word form a semantic category whose semantic similarities and commonalities are greater in more central meanings than in more peripheral ones. Moreover, the relationships among these meanings may be explained in terms of conceptual metaphor, image schemas and foregrounding. LVs also form a network of related meanings that could be explained in this way. Another concept is force-dynamics which deals with interaction of entities in relation to force. Regarding the LVCs, it is assumed that the characteristics of the interactions of the forces of heavy verbs would be preserved in LVCs. These may include the source of energy, its direction and the recipient of the energy. For example, if a heavy verb denotes a self-oriented action, light uses also refer to a self-oriented event. This paper is a descriptive-analytical study. The data included LVCs using the verb dâdӕn and were collected from various library resources and previous studies. To analyze the data, first the semantic structure of the heavy verb, dâdӕn, was examined based on the Newman (1996)’s model and various aspects of this structure was identified. Then, drawing on the principles of cognitive lexical semantics, the light uses of dâdӕn and their relations to the components of the semantic structure of the heavy verb were established. Furthermore, the force-dynamics of the heavy verb dâdӕn and its traces in the light uses were examined. As a result, the ways dâdӕn could be lightened were discussed and characterized in different categories. LVCs maintain one or more semantic aspects of the heavy verb dâdӕn. The concept of “interpersonal communication” can be accounted for by the metaphoric mapping between elements of communication and the conduit metaphor. “Causality” is directly related to literal transfer of objects into the receiver’s control domain and the control aspect is associated with the concepts of “permission” or “strength” in LVCs. Moreover, control domain may be related to the concepts such as “emergence” of a phenomenon. Concerning the force-dynamic properties, light uses of dâdӕn mostly tend to keep these properties as other-oriented outward actions. At first it seems that the heavy verb, dâdӕn, has a simple structure and its main parts consist of a sender, an object, and a receiver. However, there are more to this structure such as control domain, force-dynamics, and transfer. The light uses of dâdӕn are systematically related to various aspects of the semantic structure of the heavy dâdӕn. In other words, these literal aspects are mapped onto more metaphorical concepts such as causality which is one of the most common concepts expressed by the light dâdӕn. This means that the light dâdӕn has turned into a causal verb in the process of losing the meaning of its prototype as a heavy verb. This may be directly a function of the force-dynamics of heavy dâdӕn which similar to a causative verb, expresses actions towards other entities. In other words, transfer or imposition of a state on an entity is perceived as transfer of an object to a receiver.

Discourse Grammar treats two separate but interrelated domains for discourse processing: Sentence Grammar (SG) and Thetical Grammar (TG). The former deals with the structure and meaning of sentences while the latter deals with the organization of discourse at the level beyond the sentence as well as the relationship between linguistic materials and the contextual situation of discourse. Cooptation as a cognitive process mediates between these two domains of language use. It encompasses linguistic elements such as a clause, phrase, word or other chunks of a text located in Sentence Grammar domain are transferred to the domain of TG providing a tool for coding components of the situation of discourse for which SG seems unable to facilitate the discourse function required. The present study investigates the process of cooptation and some unknown issues related to it. Moreover, it divides coopted units according to their structures of instantaneous, constructional and formulaic types. As far as their placement is concerned, coopted units can anchor either in their host utterance or in their context in four ways. In addition, certain motivations including mental processing, economy and iconicity are required in order to cooptation being operationalized. These motivations interact and compete with each other to organize the discourse in an appropriate way.

Light verbs are generally considered a special grammatical category which have little semantic contribution to verb phrases, and therefore few studies have explored the light-heavy verb semantic relationships. Drawing on Brugman’s version of force-dynamics, cognitive lexical semantics and examining around 130 compound and light verb constructions formed by gereftan, this paper showed that although this light verb is not as lexically rich as its heavy counterpart, there remain systematic semantic relationships between the two. Given the limited number of Persian simple verbs, heavy verbs allow the expression of new concepts by making complex predicates, and therefore it is expected that the heavy verb gereftan will participate in numerous compound and light constructions and lose aspects of its meaning in the process. However, this paper showed that the light verb gereftan not only maintains various aspects of meaning including force-dynamic ones, different light verb usages are also a function of the heavy verb’s polysemy.

Persian travelogues of the Qajar period are amongst the first encounters of Iranians with the-West-as-the-Other and due to this various forms of othering of the Europe can be recognized in them. Since metaphor is one of the principal devices in the process of othering, the main aim of this paper is to provide a critical-cognitive study of metaphorization of the "the West as the Other" in two early instances of Persian travel account in such an era. The under-study travelogues in this research are Masir-e Talebi and Hayrat Nameh. The main approach used in this study is Critical Metaphor Analysis which provides the ground for offering a critical-cognitive analysis of the role metaphor plays in different texts and discourses. Exploring these two travel books, it is found out that a number of conceptual metaphors have been used in them for representing the West which offer a hyperbolic, idealized and heaven-like image of Europe to the readers. The combination of these conceptual metaphors finally leads to the formation of an iconographic frame of reference or megametaphor which suggests a coherent integrated picture of Europe. Such metaphors metaphorize that place as the Heaven or utopia which could be used as a model for Iranian society in that time.

The process of compound predicates (CPr) formation in Persian has got little attention on behalf of linguists. This paper aims to situate the components of Persian light verb constructions in contexts that can be justifiably invoked as a motivation for CPr formation. The authors believe that CPrs can be considered as direct or indirect products of incorporation process.
We hold here a broad concept of incorporation, namely X incorporation (XI), in which X indicates categories including nominals, adjectives and prepositional phrases. This process, explicated by means of some concepts from Cognitive Grammar, involves CPrs originating from complete clauses, and then passing through a compositional path where a nonverbal and a verbal element are selected out of a clause and end up in a complex predicate. In such a hypothetical path, a verb argument is occasionally omitted and the verb complement or adjunct, having a higher cognitive salience, is incorporated to it.
The investigation will continue with focusing on the LVCs constructed with LV kardan ‘do, make’, as the most frequently used light verb in Persian. The paper will also explore how different paths could be associated with different ‘heavy’ meanings of kardan.
Moreover, each CPr may further provide speakers with constructional schemasupon which other LVCs formed with a given LV can be sanctioned.
Considering different kinds of LVCs explained in this paper, we can say that the semantic contribution of LVs falls into one of the two following possibilities depending on how the LVC in question is formed:i. Compositional path is directly conceivable. When this is the case, the semantics of LV is equivalent to, or derived from, a main or extended sense of its non-light counterpart, as in emtehân dâdan ‘to take an exam’ (lit. to exam-give), xâb raftan ‘to fall asleep’ (lit. to sleepN-go), and lâne kardan ‘to nest’ (lit. to nestN-do).
ii. Compositional path is indirectly accessible through a constructional schema. In this case, the LV‘s semantic contribution can be thought of as dissolved in the constructional meaning of the relevant schema, as in imeyl zadan ‘to email’ (lit. to emailN-hit) whose LV has nothing to do with ‘hit‘, but imports a sense of ‘communication’ immanent in the constructional schema X zadan which is in turn inherited from telegrâf zadan ‘to telegraph’ (lit. to telegraphN-hit).
iii. The compound verb is a denominal verb in which the light verb serves to verbalize a non-verbal element. In this case the semantic contribution of the light verb is to add processual meaning to the predicate.

The present study aims to examine the analysis of Persian adjective phrases (APs) within Role and Reference Grammar (RRG) and to appraise the merits and demerits thereof. In RRG, there is no independent AP; therefore, predicative adjectives are considered as PREDICATE inside NUCLEUS of the CLAUSE and attributive adjectives are regarded as modifiers within the periphery of NUCLEUSN. Each type of adjective can, in turn, have its own modifiers as arguments or non-arguments. On the basis of this analysis, attributive APs are represented as predicative APs in a form which is very similar to relative clauses. The exclusion of AP from syntactic analysis enjoys prominent methodological and psycholinguistic advantages as such a theory demonstrates the principle of economy and offers more plausible explanations for first language acquisition as well as easier language processing. The application of RRG analysis to APs in Persian indicates that this theory can well account for such phrases in this language. This is best reflected in the effective analysis of split predicative APs, which serves another advantage for RRG. However, there are still such cases as the representation of split attributive APs which remain controversial thorough investigation.

A term in one language rarely has an absolute synonymous meaning in the same language; besides, it rarely has an equivalent meaning in an L2. English synonyms of seeing and hearing are particularly grammatically and semantically different. Frame semantics is a good tool for discovering differences between synonymous words in L2 and differences between supposed L1 and L2 equivalents. Vocabulary teaching based on synonymous or bilingual equivalents has confused EFL Iranian students. Frame semantics has shown to improve L2 comprehension of EFL learners. Hence, teachers are recommended to either explain the meaning of each word or provide them with synonyms and bilingual equivalents together with complementary explanations concerning the differences between the words.

Academic achievement has been one of the efficiency indexes of every educational system that is influenced by many factors. This study has been conducted with the aim of surveying the views of Lecturers’ and students at Rehabilitation College of Semnan University of Medical Sciences on the factors influencing students’ academic achievement.

In the current study, which is a cross-sectional descriptive-analytic one, a census method was employed and it was conducted in the academic years of 2012 and 2013. The participants of the study were 130 sophomore and higher level university students majoring in physiotherapy, occupational therapy speech therapy at Bsc level and as many as 40 Lecturers at the Rehabilitation College of Semnan University. For the purpose of data collection, a 25-item self-developed questionnaire on Likert scale was developed and its reliability and validity was confirmed.

Among the five areas surveyed in the study based on the perspective of Lecturers and students, factors related to student (4.43±0.49) and (4.17±0.52) received the highest scores. Meanwhile, the lecturers assigned the lowest score to family factors (3.53± 0.53) and students scored facilities of the educational environment the lowest (3.84±0.90). A comparison of the views revealed that there is a significant difference between the lecturers and students’ perspectives on student (p=0.007), family (p=0/017) and socioeconomic factors (p=0.001). Like lecturers, the students perceived future job opportunity of the field, interest in the field and self-confidence as effective factors on academic achievement.

Considering learners and factors closely related to them as well as preparing grounds for increasing learners’ motivation, confidence and interest in the field have appreciable influence on learners’ academic achievement.

This research aims to investigate the situational and metaphorical code-switching and code-mixing in the EFL classrooms in Bukan. The results show that we can discern a close relationship between mind، context and language by looking at the phenomena of code- switching and code-mixing in these classes. A systematic analysis of data reveals that code-switching and code-mixing occur according to a change in frames. The frame for a situational code switching is based on social contexts and obligations، while the frame for a metaphorical code switching triggers out of a topic change. It can be argued that there is a functional correspondence between a specific frame and a special code. A change in a specific frame will result into a change of its relevant code. Furthermore، the choice of a code is associated with a couple of factors triggered by context of situation and speaker’s intentions. The study also shows that a code switching designating issues such as solidarity، informality، emotive information and symbolic function relates to Kurdish code، whereas the indexical meaning such as low solidarity، formality، referential information and communicative function attributes to Persian code. Due to the theoretical apparatus of this paper، we can say that code mixing is triggered by simultaneous activation of different frames which results in simultaneous applications of different codes in a single sentence.

On the basis of Discourse Grammar (DG)، this study investigates the expression of yæ''ni in Persian. The term was originally borrowed from Arabic and has undergone the process of grammaticalization. It exhibits different pragmatic functions to characterize changes involved in the evolution of this discourse marker. The study suggests that grammaticalization of yæ''ni should be analyzed in terms of cyclic grammaticalization formulated by Kuteva (2012); that is، SG>TG>SG. The beginning point of the process is a Sentence Grammar unit that has been co-opted for being used in Thetical Grammar (TG). Once co-optation has taken place، the co-opted yæ''ni (as a thetical chunk) has undergone grammaticalization in TG، leading to the grammaticalized thetical of yæ''ni. It is also argued that the grammaticalized thetical of yæ''ni goes back to its domain of origin (SG) by taking over a grammatical function within SG. Its trajectory of development leaves us with a cyclic process starting with co-optation، linking SG to TG، continues within TG (resulting into a grammaticalized thetical) and ends by linking SG to TG (re-integrating into SG).

This paper aims to investigate the ways in which socio-linguistic parameters such as gender contribute into the turn organization of defense sessions. Interruption plays an important role in the organization of turn taking in the interactions of defense sessions. The current paper is then primarily focused on the description and analysis of interruptions in the interactions of dissertation defense sessions of Persian speakers using the “community of practice” approach. A number of discourse and pragmatic functions (e. g. defense، directiveness، cooperation، competition، etc.) have been identified for interruptions in relation to the power relations of interlocutors in the interactions. Apart from qualitative analysis، some quantitative findings have been provided for further clarification. The analysis of data shows that it is mainly the social status of a speaker that influences the types and frequency of interruption rather than his/her gender. In other words، the social variable does not play an important role in the interruption for turn organization in the defense sessions of Persian speakers.

Modal verbs and their different meanings can be investigated on the basis of various theoretical frameworks. In this paper، Persian modal verbs are examined and analyzed in terms of degrees and kinds of modality proposed by Palmer (1990). Our analysis shows that although bǎyad ‘must’ does not entail the proposition، it is used to express three degrees of epistemic modality، two degrees of dynamic modality and a degree of deontic modality. tavǎnestan ‘can’ and šodan ‘to become’، on the other hand، behave rather differently; they are used in expressing two degrees of epistemic modality، two degrees of deontic modality and a degree of dynamic modality. According to this research، Persian modals have the capacity to express all degrees and kinds of modality proposed by Palmer.

Supposing the reciprocity of relations between society and media, it is logical to investigate the social changes of women’s identity through inspecting the changes in women’s identity representation in media (particularly cinema). This paper aims to analyze the mutual effects of predominant social affairs of after-Islamic revolution of Iran on the manner of women’s representation in Iran’s cinema. In fact, it intends to clarify whether the mainstream cinema at this juncture in history has an considerable effect on the manner the women’s identity represented in cinema.This research shows that the social changes accompanied by more progressive cultural representation of women’s social identity in Iran cinema.

Some studies of complex predicates suggest that light verbs are bleached semantically and are unable to bear the role of an autonomous predicate (Jespersen, 1965; Cattell, 1984; Grimshaw & Mester, 1988). Although it is accepted that the semantic content of light verbs is deficient, we address the issue that such a claim ignores the semantic relation between light verbs and the corresponding main verbs. The claim in this paper is that light verbs preserve the force-dynamic schemata of the corresponding main verbs totally systematically but the concept area is transferred from physical to abstract-psychological domain. Indeed, it is claimed that, although light verbs do not have totally predictable meaning, their contribution to the meaning of the predicate is completely systematic and to some extent clear. The present study focuses on two light verbs “KARDAN” (to do) and “DASHTAN” (to have) to indicate somewhat this systematization

This study aims to testify empirically Bernstein’s (1962a&b) theory of communication. By treating social classes as important independent variables in the socialization of communication, Bernstein argues that their linguistic performance is either an instance of “restricted code” or “elaborated code” illustrating a relationship to working class and middle class respectively. To test this model, 13-year-old students including 40 boys and 40 girls of worker and middle class were asked to write paragraphs about “their school” and “their life in ten future years” as well as doing some sentence completion tests. The data gathered from their written performance, was then analyzed both qualitatively and quantitatively. Results confirmed Bernstein’s claim, that is, the working class people and middle class people use restricted code and elaborated code respectively. Further analysis showed girls’ more complicated linguistic behavior than that of boys’ in each social class. Also, quantitative analysis, as a support for the qualitative analysis, showed a positive correlation between one’s social class and elaborated linguistic performance.