نشریه علم زبان
پیاپی 8 (پاییز و زمستان 1397)

The present study sets out to lay bare the lexical syntagmatic errors of Arab Persian-speakers studying at Al-Mustafa Virtual University and expound the reasons for committing such errors. To achieve this aim, 260 writing samples of the intermediate-level Persian language learners were collected and sorted out. In the first stage, the lexical syntagmatic errors were identified. In the next stage, taking context into account, an attempt was made to determine the correct forms. Finally, drawing upon Selinger’s (1972, 1992) proposal, effective factors in committing errors were recognized. Given that the researchers did not have direct access to the participants of the study and their educational context, ‘transfer of training’ and ‘Strategies of L2 Communication’ were not taken into consideration for the purpose of the present study. The results of the study revealed that, from among the 56 identified lexical syntagmatic errors, effective factors in committing them can be subsumed under the following rubrics, respectively: Strategies of L2 Learning (41%), Native Language Transfer (36%), and overgeneralization (23%).

In recent years, a major shift has been observed in English language textbooks in all grades, especially in secondary school in Iran. It seems that the inappropriateness of the previous syllabus has led the material developers to make content and structural changes in the new books; therefore, it is expected that in the writing of new books, different scientific views be taken into consideration and aligned with the scientific theories of the day. The purpose of the present study is to investigate the secondary school’s English language textbooks in Iran based on the textual metafunction of Halliday’s Systematic Functional Grammar (SFG) and to specify the frequency and type of textual themes in the texts of the new books. For this purpose, 301 clauses in reading parts of the secondary school’s English language textbooks were analyzed. The results of the analysis showed that the authors of these books are familiar with these concepts; that is, these components have been taken into account in many cases in terms of the choice of reading texts in terms of type and number of themes and the number of simple and compound clauses; but, in some cases, they have not paid careful attention to the distribution of the components, especially in the lesson to lessons distribution, considering their respective educational bases. It is hoped that the weaknesses identified in this study be considered in the new editions of the aforementioned books.

It is quite evident that children are capable to understand meanings which they are unable to produce correctly. Recent studies have also provided evidence that children occasionally produce correct forms that they do not understand yet. The present study seeks to focus on the question of “how is it possible for children to produce correct forms that are not yet understood by them?” This question has recently came into the sharp focus of linguistics and psycholinguistics studies, and various explanations have been proposed thereof. Using a descriptive-analytic method, this paper aims to identify these studies and the explanations in which the asymmetry between linguistic production and linguistic comprehension have been dealt with. Among later explanations, the Bidirectional Optimality Theory (BOT) shows some potentiality in dealing with the asymmetry between these two dimensions and it seems more valid than other explanations accordingly. Nevertheless, the main hypothesis of the present research states that this almost strong theory also faces major challenges which question its validity. To support the claim, the paper indicates the following challenges: a) absence of a single concept about bidirectional optimality; b) confusion as to blocking process; c) disagreement over the way of ranking, type and number of constraints on a specific subject; and d) lack of transparency in adopting an appropriate comprehension model (e.g., top-down or bottom-up). As a result, BOT, like other approaches in the field, is not able to explain this asymmetry adequately in terms of theory and methodology.

This study investigated the effect of speaking rate on the voice onset time (vot) stop consonant production in standard contemporary Persian. For this purpose, a production experiment was performed. Eight sentences were produced by twenty- four participants (seven male- seventeen female) at different speaking rates (slow- normal & fast) three times each. Voice onset time (VOT) distributions and mean VOT values were examined for initial and intervocalic labial, alveolar, palatal and velar stop consonants in context at slow, normal and fast rates of speech. At last, 1152 data were elicited. Results revealed that the short lag and pre-voiced category didn't change as a function of speaking rate, although VOT values for long lag category were affected by changes in speaking rate. Implication of the results suggest that in standard contemporary Persian, "aspiration" is affected by changes in speaking rate.

In the 3rd issue of the Journal of Language Science, Ehsan Changizi wrote a review on the Aban Yasht written by Changiz Mowlaee. In the 4th issue of the same journal, Mowlaee wrote a critique of that review and evaluated it as being false and incorrect in terms of its contents. In Mowlaee’s response, some subjects of the Avestan language are propounded that must be examined in more detail and be analyzed from the linguistic point of view. In the present article, the most important points are categorized in six classes, but under each subject the other subjects such as phoneme and sound, root, enclitic, clitic and host, relative pronoun or demonstrative pronoun ya, copula verb and attributive clause, predicate possession, enclitic pronoun mē and functions of ethical dative are also discussed. In these discussions it has become clear that for studying ancient texts it is necessary to be familiar with generalities of linguistics. It is only by using modern linguistic issues that one can study the Avestan language free from its rules of writing system. For instance, in Avestan writing system the enclitic pronouns are written separately from their hosts and after each of them a dot has been written. In transcribing the ancient texts, on the other hand, these pronouns should be written connected to their hosts since the pronounced form of the ancient texts is shown in the transcription.

The present research deals with the identification of standard of the type and number of cohesion devices used in (10-12 years old) children’s texts. The database includes 400 (10-12 years old) texts written by children in Tehran, 60 stories by child writers, and 60 texts in the fourth, fifth, and sixth grade course books. According to the findings, four types of conjunctive devices (additive, adversative, causal and temporal) are appeared in the texts written by 10-12 year-old children and the ones written for them (i.e., stories by child writers and texts in the course books). Furthermore, the comparison between the usage of conjunctive devices in both types of texts (i.e., productive and perceptive) showed that the standard of the type and number of cohesion devices indicate a kind of growth sequence in which additive devices appeared at first, followed by temporal devices, causal devices appearing next, and finally adversative devices are used. This process shows accumulative sequence of semantic growth; as a result, perception of coordination concept, sequence of occurrences, cause and effect relation, and contrast relation must have taken place for children. This finding is in line with that of Bloom et al. (1980), Kamari (2016), Shapiro and Hudson (1991) and Guna and Ngadiman (2015).

With the increasing impact of technology on different aspects of human life, the production of new educational tools and their use expanded. It is clear that one of the areas that have been significantly affected by the impact of technology is the field of language education. In addition, learning a foreign/ second language through technology is very important. Therefore, the conditions for facilitating language learning in this way must be provided. Accordingly, this study attempted to produce and evaluate the core vocabulary of Farsi Language educational software. In order to evaluate the software, the initial version and the questionnaire was indirectly sent to 15 Farsi learners of the Sa’adi Foundation social network via Email. Moreover, in order to receive and apply software experts’ comments, the software and the questionnaire were given to 15 software experts by the researcher. The results of the questionnaire showed that the software has greatly interested the learners and the experts.