نشریه پژوهش های زبان شناسی
سال سیزدهم شماره 1 (پیاپی 24، بهار و تابستان 1400)

One controversial issue in embodied cognition is that lower cognitive abilities (e.g. perception) influence higher cognitive abilities (e.g. language). In particular, with regard to this idea, several studies have shown that visual perception and visual imagery share common neural representations. However, it is an open question whether visual perception deficit could influence perceptual simulation during language comprehension. To clarify this issue we carried out a behavioral experiment, using sentence-picture verification task to examine the extent to which children with developmental dyslexia can simulate the shape and orientation of an object implicitly described in the sentence. Seventeen children aged between 8 and 13 years with dyslexia and 17 age-matched control subjects participated in this study. Data analyses showed a significant difference between two groups and revealed that in the typically developed group reaction time for matching condition was faster than mismatching condition, whereas children with dyslexia were less able to distinguish between two conditions. The results showed that perceptual experiences can modify the subsequent processing of perceptual (visual) imagery and also suggest that visual perception and visualization during language processing share common representations. In addition, the finding highlights the influence of visual perception on language comprehension.

While most new Iranian languages do not have a separate construction to express the future time, Jowshaqani a central Iranian language in northern Isfahan shows a triple construction for future time: a near future referring to immediate future and future certainty, a distant future referring to remote future and future possibility, which is also used for optative and irrealis, as well as a construction for a future imperative. Apart from describing the forms and uses of the future, this article also examines the historical evolution of the future construction in Jowshaqani, and how the new uses are developed for the older ones. The study of the form and function of the future tense in Jowshaqani shows that the new uses of the future tense has as optative, irrealis, and imperative meanings which can be analyzedin terms of the relation of the future tense with modality. For expressing near future, the aspect has been an important factor in the development of such a near future construction.

This study aimed to investigate the intonation pattern of Kashani utterances with broad, narrow, and contrastive focuses on different syntactic structures, which were obtained by changing the order of verbs, subjects, and objects. Our data included 4 sentences produced in 3 syntactic structures with a broad focus, 1 syntactic structure with a narrow focus, and 1 syntactic structure with a contrastive focus produced by 16 speakers (8 males and 8 females) from Kashan City. The data were recorded in an anechoic chamber with the sampling frequency of 22050 Hz. A total of 320 utterances (4 sentences × 5 cases × 16 speakers) were annotated in the 2 tiers of tone and phone by using Praat software. The fundamental frequency (F0) of each word was measured at 5 intervals. After the average value of F0 was calculated for each word, their pitch contours were drawn. The results showed that the pitch contours of unmarked Kashani utterances followed a falling pattern. Moreover, the pitch contours were sensitive to the position of each verb as the sentence nucleus. "Verb" was the last constituent that received the pitch accent in a sentence, while it de-accented the constituents coming after it. Finally, the focal constituents appeared at the end of the sentences with narrow or contrastive focuses. These constituents had high prominence and amplitude compared to the other constituents in the sentences. In addition, alignment of the accent peaks in all the accented syllables corresponded to the vowels of the next syllables. The results of this research could be helpful in understanding the typologies of languages and dialects and identifying speakers of varied dialects.

The present paper is a semantic survey of prepositions "/barāyē/ and /tā/. The aim of study is to identify schematic meaning of the mentioned prepositions with a diachronic view in order to investigate semasiological changes of meaning as a result of their secondary grammaticalization. To achieve this goal, the meanings of each of the prepositions were gathered from Sokhan and Dehkhoda dictionaries. After analyzing prepositions' meanings, associative image schemas with the meanings have been mentioned. Prototypical and peripheral meanings of prepositions have been determined using Evan and Tyler's (2003) suggested method. After proving polysemy of the mentioned prepositions; semantic network of each preposition; is drawn. Finally, polysemy of the investigated prepositions has been explained with regard to imagery schemas as the result of secondary grammaticalization. The innovative aspect of this research is that the polysemy and secondary grammaticalization of prepositions had not been studied with regard to conceptual schemas associated with their semantic functions before.

The main issue addressed in the present study was the psycholinguistic reality of representational complexities of tenses in Persian compared to English language. The cross-modal lexical decision method was used to examine relative tense processing during sentence processing. The theoretical frameworks applied here were those of Comrie (1985) and Shapiro (1990) dealt with linguistically and psycholinguistically, respectively. The dependent and independent variables were the participants’ reaction times and the type of tense, respectively. 25 university students aged 18-30 years were selected based on some specific factors like gender and university grade. The results of the 1st experiment showed that simple sentences, including factual scientific present and future tense verbs, as well as performatives, were processed faster than those containing other tenses. This was the result of either common experiences of human beings or instantaneous verbs uttered by them. The results of the 2nd experiment revealed that simple sentences containing non-finite relative tense verbs were processed slower than those having other tenses like present perfect, past perfect, and subjunctives. This might be related to the un-markedness of non-finites. What was common in these two experiments was that converting simple sentences into complex ones would erase the significant differences in the participants’ times of reaction to the simple sentences. The findings of this research demonstrated that cognitive load could be used in the curriculum design for non-native learners of Persian language so that learning the tenses that needed a much more cognitive load could be postponed in the learning process.

Aspect refers to different ways of viewing the internal temporal constituency of a situation. It is divided into grammatical and lexical aspects. The focus of “grammatical aspect” is on the event being completed, in progress, or prospective, while in “lexical aspect”, such characteristics as dynamicity, duration, and telicity are considered based on the inherent meaning of the verb. Predicates referring to future are usually different from those denoting past or present; the events related to the past have happened, those related to the present are in progress, and a prospective event refers to the possibility of its occurrence in future, thus being neither true nor false at the moment of speaking. Speakers talk about the events related to future in various syntactic and morphological forms with different degrees of certainty. The objective of this paper was to analyze the prospective aspect of Aktionsart in Persian based on a functional approach so as to determine which aspectual classes could be used in prospective aspect. The data were collected from the spoken and written sentences used in the websites, mass media, and daily conversations. Considering data showed that most state verbs, due to the non-agentivity of their subject, cannot denote prospective aspect, but in some cases context is determinative in representing prospectivity. The distinction between progression and prospective aspect in activity verbs is mostly context-dependent. Progression in achievement verbs usually refers to the events that will happen imminently, while the possibility of the event to happen imminently or distantly from the present moment can be represented in accomplishments with regard to the context. Therefore, perfective, imperfective, and perfect aspects could represent prospective aspect of Aktionsart in Persian regarding some contextual characteristics.

In our ordinary and everyday speech and in the informal and colloquial contexts in general, we encounter the use of constructions, in which two verbs appear in a “verb-verb” situation, thus making a complex predicate construction, such as "kešid bordeš", "gereft xabid", and "daram miravam". All these three constructions have a common feature of adjacency of verbs, in which one verb has a matrix function and the other has a dependent function. Thus, in the present study, they were studied under the title of "adjacent verbs". The authors believed that the “Role and Reference Grammar (RRG)” would provide a useful theoretical framework for better understanding of the “construction of adjacent verbs”. In RRG, all linguistic constructions are explained in three dimensions: syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic (focus structure). Accordingly, in the present paper, we first classified the different types of adjacent verbs and then discussed their features. It starts by identifying the syntactic, semantic, and focus structure representations will be discussed and then, the constructional scheme of adjacent verbs in Persian will be represented.

This study set out to conduct a typological investigation of “comparative/superlative construction” and analyze the formal and functional differences of the constructive components of this construction in Persian language. To this end, firstly, the most important morpho-syntactic strategies encoding the superlative comparison were identified. Secondly, the formal expressions of the components were examined. Thirdly, the dominant strategy of expressing superlative comparison in Persian was determined based on Stassen’s typological classification (1985) and Nose’s proposed generalization (2010) as the theoretical framework. As with the research methodology, this study was a corpus-based and descriptive-analytic research. The data included 164 sentences collected through a comprehensive search in Colloquial Persian Dictionary written by Najafi (2008). The results showed that the Persian language uses a variety of strategies in term of Ezafe construction, free word order, and a dedicated grammaticalized construction to encode the superlative comparison. Furthermore, the formal expressions of the components of “parameter marker”, “standard marker”, and “standard” are not obligatory and their ordering in the sentences is flexible; however, the formal expressions of “comparee” and “parameter” are optional, except in one case, and they are obligatory in other constructions. Moreover, it was revealed that although the superlative comparative constructions in Persian were mostly of the “Locational” type, Presian used some more constructions or strategies, which were not documented in Stassen and Nose’s proposed models. Finally, the study concluded that Stassen’s typological classification and Nose’s proposed generalization were not adequate enough to explain the Persian data and thus needed to be modified.

Linguistic representations of conceptual metaphors have been studied in numerous Iranian and non-Iranian researches; however, few studies have been devoted to visual representations of metaphor. In the present research, based on the theory of conceptual metaphor and metonymy as well as multimodal theory of metaphor, the metaphorical and metonymical conceptualizations of the film of "the Snow on the Pines" were studied. To this end, all the scenes and dialogues were analyzed and the metaphors and metonymies, which were directly or indirectly related to the main theme of the film, i.e., infidelity and love, were scrutinized. The findings showed that some metaphors like SADNESS AS DARKNESS and EMOTIONAL RELATIONSHIP AS NUTRIENT were mainly mono-modal and only represented via the visual signs. On the other hand, some metaphors like LOVE AS JOURNEY, CONTROL/POWER AS UP, and LACK OF EMOTIONAL RELATIONSHIP AS SNOW were multimodal and represented by a combination of visual and spoken or visual and written signs. Moreover, in the present film, the metonymies of EFFECT FOR CAUSE and POSSESSED FOR POSSESSOR played a significant role in forming metaphorical conceptualizations.

This study aimed at investigating the semantic aspect of modal verbs in today’s Persian language from a typological perspective, which provided us with an opportunity to compare the meanings of Persian modal verbs with those of the other languages. The theoretical framework of this study belonged to Nauze (2008). This was a qualitative research, which was done using a descriptive-analytic method. The research data, which included natural Persian utterances, were obtained from texts appeared in the cyberspace. The modal verbs considered were as follows: bâyestan, tavânestan, šodan, and xâstan. After gathering the data, the type and semantic map of each modal verb were determined based on the conceptual space of modality presented by Nauze (2008). The results showed that Nauze’s modality framework could cover a variety of meanings of modal verbs in Today’s Persian language. It was also found that Today’s Persian data were in concordance with typological principle of Nauze, who claimed that all the meanings of modal verbs had to be based on one of the vertical axes.