Syntactic properties of the language of scientific communication in the Persian scientific works

The language of science is one of the social types of Persian language, which is used by the educated classes in scientific works and contexts. The purpose of this research is to present an overall picture of the syntactic properties of the Persian scientific language. Thus the types of sentences, types of tenses, verb tenses, and syntactic constructions have been identified in the scientific texts, their statistics have been presented, and their content has been analyzed.

The research questions were addressed through documentary research method, which is one of the methods categorized into the qualitative approach. To identify the syntactic properties of the language of science, 90 articles in scientific-research publications in two research domains (humanities and basic sciences) and three academic fields (linguistics, geology, and chemistry) were purposefully sampled. These articles are entered into the "QDA Miner Lite" in the form of text, read, and coded.

Around 1390 codes were extracted and analyzed from these works. The findings of the research showed that one of the common syntactic properties of the Persian scientific language was the use of the indicative mood and the simple present, simple past tense, and present perfect. In addition, Persian-speaking researchers (authors) prefer to use simple sentences, and write their works in a passive voice. The indicative mood with 377 codes and the simple present tense with 325 codes were the most frequent themes in the coding process. Therefore, it seems Persian-speaking authors of scientific works have tried to use writing structure which is polite. For example, they prefer to write their works in a passive voice in order to say their thoughts and opinions politely. In addition, probably, Persian-speaking authors are following the writing traditions from past centuries, which is not compatible with recent science communication’s basics.

Originality/value:

 This study is the first attempt to identify the characteristics of the language of science in the Persian language through the empirical data. The findings of this research can be useful for teachers and educational institutions in teaching the language of science. In addition, institutions such as the Academy of Persian Language and Literature can take advantage of these findings in their policies. The findings of this research are also useful in computational linguistics.