نشریه زبان پژوهی
پیاپی 42 (بهار 1401)

 The education profession continues to question why some students successfully meet their educational outcomes as measured by educational institutions and the larger society and others do not. Naturally, human beings also are in constant search for the factors that cause them or other people to behave the way they do. Among cognitive psychologists, the discussion of this issue has led to conclusions which indicate that students’ beliefs about their probability and causes for success and failure greatly influence their academic achievement (Williams et al., 2004; Williams et al., 2001). The process of assigning causes to our or other people’s behavior is called attribution (Heider, 1958). According to Heider (1958), people broadly attribute the causes of their behavior either to internal or external factors. Weiner (1985) identified four attribution factors that are related to academic success or failure, namely: ability, effort, task difficulty, and luck.In the traditional approach used to assess causal dimensions, researchers have generally translated the causal attributions made for an achievement-type task by the subject into the causal dimensions described by Weiner (1985). This assumes that the researcher perceives causes in the same way as the respondent. Russell (1987) found this methodology problematic since it did not take into consideration that a meaning of an attribution could vary greatly from person to person and from situation to situation. The present study, intends to resolve the limitation of the previous studies by not restricting the attribution factors being studied to the ones the researchers know or are familiar with through Weiner’s attribution theory (2010) and relevant studies. As such, this study investigates the attribution factors experienced and known by university students themselves and the relationship between those factors and university students’ academic achievement.

 The present study employed a qualitative approach to investigate the relationship between EFL learners’ attributional factors and their academic achievement in university. The participants included 20 junior and 20 senior students studying English Literature at Bahonar University of Kerman. The participants’ attributing factors to their successes and failures were, subsequently, categorized into different classes thematically. An inductive category formation procedure (Mayring, 2004) was employed to induce the themes from the responses. That is; the raw data was codified to develop concepts and themes from data using constant comparative method and the coding paradigms of the grounded theory approach (Ary et al., 2014).In order to gather data, a series of interviews were conducted with the students who allowed the researcher to record their voice during the interview process. The interviews were semi-structured in nature to be able to freely delve into issues presented since the students attribute their successes and failures to various internal and external factors that are required to be studied more and more. In other words, academic achievement has a multi-factor nature and the interview questions that don’t limit the participants to some pre-determined responses, increase the probability that the participants do not confine the attribution factors to the ones researched before by the previous studies. Hence, this gives them the chance to reflect on their own experiences and state their believes about them (Liu, et al., 2016).The interview questions were designed and asked in English, but with the purpose of better communication and facilitation of expressing ideas, the interviewees were allowed to use their mother tongue i.e., Persian, if needed. Every face-to-face interview took about 30 minutes and the length of each online interview was about 25 minutes. However, some extended more than that since different ideas and opinions were brought into contact and the total length for all interviews was about 21 hours.
Permissions were sought to gather participants' GPAs (grade point averages) of their last semester to be the indicator of their academic achievement. To be more specific, this research contributes to the body of attributional factors literature by respondingtothe following research questions:Research question one: Based on Weiner's attribution theory, which factors do Iranian EFL learners attribute their academic success and failure to?Research question two: What are the differences between successful and unsuccessful EFL learners in terms of attributional factors of academic achievement?

 Using constant comparative method of data analysis and coding paradigms of grounded theory, participants' attributional factors were classified into two main categories of internal factors and external factors, five subcategories of internal factors, including ability, effort, interest,  familiarity with educational major and learning eagerness, and also seven subcategories of external factors, including test difficulty, luck, the time set for studying before exams, quality of teaching, personal and family situation, obligation from family members and the nature of academic courses were obtained. The findings indicated that most of students with high GPAs attributed their academic achievement to internal factors, including most of all, effort and ability and then, interest. On the other hand, most of students with low GPAs attributed their academic failure to external factors, such as test difficulty, luck, and the time set for studying before each exam. In addition, a high number of recent studies, including Genet (2016), Lei (2009) and Boruchovitch (2004) obtained similar results. Most of participants with low GPAs did not attribute their failures to lack of enough ability and effort. This part of results in the present study does not confirm Kumar et al., (2020) study that introduced lack of enough effort as the most important attributional factor to failure by unsuccessful participants and also does not correspond to Hoomanfard et al., (2020) and Mahmoodi and Karampour (2020) studies since they found that participants attributed their failure to lack of enough ability.

  Regarding the findings of the present study, it could be concluded that students’ attribution style influences their learning motivation and inclination since each attributional factor leads to unique results for students.The present study tried to discover the factors that university students themselves attribute to academic achievement so that it would be much more feasible and profitable for instructors to utilize the results to make positive change in the students believes and thoughts about real causes of events.

Since plagiarism as an act of intellectual fraud has recently received a global inquiry in different fields of science, especially in second/foreign language (L2) academic writing, developing a valid and domesticized instrument to meticulously assess the awareness and professional integrity of the Iranian academic community to avoid plagiarism seemed indisputable. As plagiarism has been defined differently in various sociocultural and academic contexts, its legal and ethical issues in such scientific fields as L2 academic writing are worth noting (Oghabi, Pourdana & Ghaemi, 2020). Accordingly, two major causes, mostly condemned as contributing factors to committing plagiarism, are the torment the L2 learners usually experience in writing academic texts, and the divisive cultural differences.Not surprisingly, the majority of studies on the causes and consequences of plagiarism were conducted in English-speaking countries (such as Australia) to represent the Western cultural values or social concerns and ethical code of conduct. In Asian or Middle Eastern countries, such as Iran wherein the copyright infringement or unlawful reproduction of original works are rarely subject to serious legal consequences, the absence of vigorous studies on this grave matter is underscored. This is while, majority of scarce studies on this topic generally investigated the contributing factors to plagiarism in the Iranian academic context (cf. Riasati & Rahimi, 2013) and overlooked the potentials of determining factors such as attitude or socio-cultural beliefs of L2 writers. At the same time, in the absence of a domesticized plagiarism questionnaire in the academic context of Iran, Iranian researchers generally make use of accessible questionnaires which often represented the Western culture and ethical values (e.g. Curtis & Popal, 2011; Harris, 2001; Idiegbeyan-Ose et al., 2016; Maxwell et al., 2006).

After a comprehensive review of research literature and conducting semi-structured interviews with graduate students of English language studies (n = 24), the researchers adapted a general conceptual framework for developing a prototype plagiarism questionnaire. The non-randomly selected participants partaking in the semi-structured interviews, the pilot and final research participants were all MA graduates and graduate students of English language teaching, English literature, English translation, and linguistics in three State and Islamic Azad University branches in Iran (n = 288). Initially, 39 out of 47 items in the questionnaire were rated on a 5-point Likert scale, ranging from (a) strongly disagree, (b) disagree, (c) I don’t [1]know, (d) agree (e) strongly agree, which represented the components of participants’ awareness and attitude towards plagiarism. Eight more triple-choice items were constructed in terms of short authentic paragraphs and their corresponding paraphrased texts, each followed by three choices of (a) plagiarism found, (b) no plagiarism, and (c) I don’t know, to represent the component of perception. After carrying out the pilot administration of the questionnaire (with 224 participants), item revision and deletion (11 items excluded), exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis, and structural equation modeling (SEM) with SPSS 21 and AMOS statistical software, the researchers developed the final draft of the sociocultural plagiarism questionnaire with 36 items.
 

To explore the first objective in this study, the statistical results in this study supported four components of awareness, attitude, sociocultural beliefs, and perception as responsible factors for determining sensitivity to plagiarism in Iranian academia. Data analysis also indicated the participants’ adequate awareness of the plagiarism policies and their accurate perception, but relatively neutral and irresponsible attitude towards plagiarism downsides, and non-scientific sociocultural beliefs which ultimately provoked them to commit plagiarism. It was concluded that concepts, such as ‘intellectual property’ and ‘ownership of words’ which are deeply rooted in Western culture have not been adequately incorporated into the Iranian academic culture yet. Moreover, Iranian scholars prioritized personal relations or vocational gains over following rules of copyright are proved as widespread in the Iranian academic context.The second objective of this study was examined through frequency analysis of the instances of plagiarism in the Literature Review sections (Chapter II) of the 18 selected MA theses written in English. Relied upon the reports of plagiarism incidence conducted by iThenticate plagiarism detection service at www.Lingaline.com, a widespread and growing number of committed plagiarism by Iranian MA graduates of English language studies during 2013 - 2017 were echoed. In the reports, the rate of plagiarism was higher in men (67.16%) than in women (63.91%); higher in Islamic Azad University branches (78%) than in state universities (56%); and committed more by the MA graduates of English literature (71.66%) than English translation (62.66%) and English language teaching (61.66%). The researchers’ justifications on the obtained results were the absence of clear-cut instructions to rules of plagiarism, strict anti-plagiarism policies as well as adequate institutional attention to this unethical and unprofessional behavior in the Iranian academic community which eventually degraded the gravity of plagiarism to such a large extent.

The results of this study invoked the fact that not only the Iranian academic community requires upheaving awareness and acute perception by every member towards plagiarism unfortunate consequences, but also the non-scientific and desensitizing nature of Iranian sociocultural beliefs towards plagiarism need reconsideration and national policy making. Moreover, in line with Ayoubi (2017), the findings in this study encourage the educators and university professors to implement further tutorial courses to accentuate the severity of plagiarism misconduct and to rip off every chance of committing plagiarism by the university students in their academic writing. Despite promoting this newly-designed sociocultural plagiarism questionnaire as a more reliable assessment instrument for evaluating the Iranian academic community, the current researchers are reasonably skeptical of yielding similar results with Iranian university students at lower educational levels where the curricular demands of writing courses are more into the accuracy of the content over form and mechanics of writing; neither with Iranian university students of non-English majors due to their intended audience who are mostly Persian-speaking readers with similar insensitivity towards plagiarism infringement acts. Last but not least, the current researchers deployed a non-random convenience sampling procedure to have access to a large number of participants which inevitably lowers the generalizability of the findings to different demographic contexts.

The messages in the Quran have been framed in the form of multilayer verses and surahs. Therefore, despite easy and simple words, understanding its concepts needs deep thinking and exploration. In fact, the structure of the Holy Quran is among the issues which demonstrates the necessity of using new methods . As a new method, cognitive linguistics is so able toexplain interpretations disagreement.Movement is considered among the fundamental concepts of cognition which is an active field of experience that exists in all languages of the world and it is encrypted differently.Talmy is among the important characters in cognitive linguistics who has investigated cognitive linguistic issues with an especial approach. Talmy began studying movement phenomena with his ideas in 1972. He considers four major semantic components of figure, motion, path, and ground for movement. These semantic elements appear in language by superstructure elements. Talmy divides languages based on the type of conceptual elements framing in superstructure into two groups of verb-framed and satellite-framed. He believes that verb satellite elements are forms which have not been conceptually done in the root of a verb and appear beside it as a satellite on verb. That group of verbs that semantic element is placed inside their verbal root is called verb-framed.Fattahizadeh, Fat’hiyeh. Habibi, Fatemeh 2021), represented the Movement Phenomenon of “Zahaba” Verb in the Holy Quran in a cognitive approach. Despite the good approach in expressing Talmy’s typological theory and analyzing movement components, this study has not used this theory in analyzing verses cognitively. Mir Khaleghdada, Fatemeh. Hasoumi, Valiollah, Mousavi and Seyyed Mohammad Hossein (2019). study’s explains action verbs in the form of a thesis entitled the quality of conceptualizing static and active phenomena in Quran with a cognitive approach which in addition to real positions, it has penetrated into the audiences’ cognition through conceptualizing non-spatial and abstract affairs. In addition, using the path like and manner verbs and considering the meaning hidden in them, it is possible to understand that besides doing action, it shows that which semantic component has importance. This leads to the discovery of new information in interpretation.The element of movement, however, has been used in the Holy Quran in different forms to express abstract concepts and to show them and to make a living and active image of sensory affairs. The current study aims at investigating the element of movement in Al-Kahf and answering the following questions:What is the application of action verbs in Al-Kahf? What is the field of concepts which have been depicted in movement schema? What are the features of semantic components and movement superstructure elements in this surah?

 In the present study, with a descriptive-analytical method in110 verses of Surah Al-Kahf, all the words containing the element of motion (verbs and whatever substitutes for the verb) are identified and the type of motions and motor components of these schemas are identified . The statistical findings obtained from it in the form of diagrams show the thalamic classification. Among the schemas in this surah, those words containing the element of movement (verbs, derivative nouns, infinitives, and similar cases) that contain cognitive semantics were analyzed and identified by semantic explanation of underlying meanings and hidden verses. Duplicate words are also estimated because they represent different situations, and their primary meaning is taken into account, and in some cases the secondary meaning in the form of conceptual metaphors implies motion.

 The movement schemas as a result of the element of movement in Surah Al-Kahf have a great variety. This diversity has originated from the difference in the structure of the three stories told in the 110 verses of this surah. The story of the Companions of the Cave, due to the astonishing nature of its concept, depicts a set of abstract concepts with an increase in static movements. On the other hand, the story of Prophet Moses and Dhu al-Qarnayn has an abundance of transitional movements in the true sense. In the present study, after determining the components of motor superstructure in the schemas in the verses, their cognitive meaning has been divided and analyzed with the focus on the type of movements hidden in the motor component. In the form of two diagrams, first, the presence of all motor components and then the types of directional components in sentence superstructure are specified.

 The elements of movement are related to verbs and whatsoever substituted with verbs in Arabic. In fact, movement component which needs time and place to be expressed and anything that can show these two features can depict movement. In addition, static motion, due to its special characteristic, occurs without the element of time. In parallel to Slobin’s (2004) maintenance based on Talmy’s theory which argues that Arabic is a verb-framed language and the element of path has become vocabular in the verb itself, the present study has proved this argument.Cognitive meanings have resulted from movement schema which have been mostly in the form of sensory affairs and in the form of conceptual metaphor by imagining abstract affairs in two ways. In the first way, it is resulted through exploring movement schema and its components. In the second way, it is resulted through exploring the second meaning which is directed to that way in movement schema. It is the virtual meaning and thesemantic expansion formed in common categorization and similar vocabular circle related to the initial meaning. In Moses’ story, active and transitional movement proportional to the theme of story and sensory movement has a high frequency. Additionally, this coordination and proportion between movement components and theme is well observable in the story of the Cave of the Seven Sleepers which has begun with a static movement and has been repeated all through the story frequently.

The ultimate goal of language processing while reading is the comprehension of written text, which requires the simultaneous interaction of cognitive and metacognitive strategies. Inference-making is a cognitive strategy that could be defined as using two or more parts of the text information to enable comprehension of implicit information in the text. The cognitive strategies are operational plans used to process the text through words' recognition, combining propositions to obtain the semantic structure of the text, and finally drawing a situation model of the affairs as presented in the text (Kintsch & Van Dijk, 1978). Inference-making is one of the cognitive strategies of reading comprehension, which could be defined as the ability to use two or more parts of the text information to get its implicates (Silagi, et.al. 2015, p. 8). An inference could be either simple like recognizing the reference of a pronoun, or so complex. In fact, it could be said that during the reading comprehension, the reader turns the sentences with a hidden and seemingly incoherent meaning into a coherent one using various inferences. Inference making is one of the main topics in psycholinguistic studies. From this perspective, it is a cognitive strategy through which the reader goes through the text to extract its implied meaning based on two sources of information, i.e., "the propositional content of the text" (the information explicitly stated) and the "prior knowledge." Most of the information extracted from the text is not directly comprehensible through reading but is possible through inference making and text comprehension at high levels. Therefore, inference making helps to create a coherent representation of text by creating a conceptual relation between its different parts (Chikalanga, 1992, p. 699). Considering the above explanations, it could be said that the cognitive strategies enable the reader to activate his/her prior knowledge based on the text and to create a mental representation that facilitates reading comprehension. This mental representation should be enriched enough to provide a deeper understanding of the apparent meaning of the text. Such enrichment could be done through strategies, such as inference making as well as using the text structure' knowledge. The main purpose of this study was to investigate the difference in the use of inference-making strategy (coherent and elaborative) in reading comprehension among the MA students with weak and strong reading comprehension abilities. Accordingly, in this research work, there was one main hypothesis and two sub-hypotheses.

The study was a quasi-experimental type. The independent variables of this study were the participants' level of reading comprehension (with both weak and strong levels) and the type of inference (with two levels of coherent and elaborative). The dependent variable was their score in the inference-making test.The research sample consisted of 100 MA Persian speaking students of the University of Guilan; they were selected by convenience sampling method. First, the researcher-made placement test was conducted to divide the participants into two groups with weak and strong reading comprehension. The test's validity and reliability have been confirmed in the previous study (Ghavami et al., 2020). In the next step, the researcher-made inference-making test was distributed among them. This test consists of 4 texts and 16 questions. Each text has 4 questions, two of which are related to coherence inference-making and two are related to elaborative one. Then, five experts checked the content validity of the test. Its test's reliability was computed using Cronbach’s alpha. The alpha coefficient of the test was 0.72, showing that the test has rather good reliability. Finally, data were analyzed using MANOVA and independent samples t-test.

The results showed a significant difference between MA students with weak and strong reading comprehension according to inference-making strategy, as the strong students use more inference-making strategies. More detailed analysis showed a significant difference between the graduate students with weak and strong reading comprehension regarding the coherent inference making and the elaborative one.

The significant difference between the students with strong and weak reading comprehension (in terms of using the inference making strategy) and outperformance of the strong group compared to the weak group were consistent with the findings of Cain et al. (2001) and Silagi et al., (2015). The findings of this study, theoretically, as one of the first works in using inference making strategy in reading comprehension among literate Persian-speaking adults, could somehow fill in the informational gap in the related literature in Iran. From the educational point of view, the results of this research could provide valuable information on Persian Graduate students' different inference-making strategies for those involved in higher education and planning, including instructors, educational psychologists, and curriculum developing experts.

Conceptual frames are packages of knowledge that represent the worldview of people, including beliefs, values, emotions, prototypes of people and objects, order of events in particular situations, social scenarios, permissible thought structures,and metaphors and metonyms (Fillmore & Baker, 2009). All the experiences and assumptions that we have about the background as well as appendices of our experiences are rooted in our conceptual frames. Accordingly, we have a schematic knowledge of various issues, such as marriage, government, religion, weekends, military ranks, colors, and the like. Frames are based on our knowledge of a phenomenon and its cultural implications, and have little to do with words (that is why it is difficult to understand a joke that belongs to an unfamiliar culture). As a result, mere attention to linguistic forms prevents a comprehensive understanding of the text.  Meanwhile, each word invokes a frame and represents a part or aspect of that frame and at the same time the very same semantic frame provides the background knowledge with which we understand the meaning of relevant words. For example, understanding words such as principal, teacher, and student requires activating the frame of "school". Additionally, a particular word causes the audience to focus on a specific part of the frame and consider its scenario from a certain angle. Therefore, invoking a frame is a cognitive act by which the interpreter (almost unconsciously) understands the input information.The present study aimed at studying the use of conceptual frames in rendering the cultural elements of Charming, in its Persian dubbed version. Accordingly, the following questions are posed:(i) Which conceptual frames have been used to express cultural elements in Charming?(ii) Which translation strategies have been used to render cultural elements in the Persian dubbed version of Charming?In the meantime, the study holds the following two hypotheses:(i) There is a significant difference between the conceptual frames in the original version of Charming and its Persian dubbed version.(ii) The differences are rooted not only in cultural dissimilarities between the two languages ​​but in the personal choices made by the translator.

The present research, using the descriptive-analytical method, aims at investigating the application of conceptual frames in rendering cultural elements to provide more practical methods in translation of culture specific items. The corpus of this research consisted of an America-Canadian animation, namely Charming and its Persian dubbed version by Nama Ava. Charming is a 2018 Canadian-American computer-animated musical comedy film which is a rich source of a wide variety of  conceptual frames (e.g., the postmodernist attitude in making the animation gave it a considerable capacity to trigger the pre-existed frames in the mind of its audience under intertextuality). On the other hand, the Persian dubbed version of the animation is taken from Nama Ava which is among the most authentic Persian internet sites providing translation services for audio-visual products.For comparing purposes, firstly, the classification for conceptual frames as well as definitions for each type were presented and discussed under the taxonomy proposed by Lopez (2002). According to her, the main categories of frames include visual, situational, text-type, social, institutional and generic frames. Secondly, and after recognizing the frames in the original version of charming, they were matched with their (possible) counterpart Persian frames proposed by the translator.Thirdly and based on a comparison between the original English frames and their equivalences in the Persian dubbed version, the strategies applied by the translator to render the recognized and discussed cultural elements.

The results indicated that the most frequent frames in the English version of Charming were social (126 cases), institutional (41 cases), text type (33 cases), situational (29 cases), generic (11 cases) and visual frames (9 cases). In the meantime, the strategies used by the translator to render the original frames in the Persian dubbed translations were transliteration, loan translation, addition, description, omission and cultural equivalent among which addition as the least and cultural equivalent as the most frequent strategies were recognized. The findings also show that the dominant attitude in transferring the source frames in the Persian dubbing is domestication.

This paper concluded that, firstly, there is a considerable difference between the conceptual frames in the original version of Charming and its Persian dubbed version. Accordingly, out of 249 cases of conceptual frames in Charming, 174 cases have been rendered differently or have not been rendered at all. Secondly, the reason behind this lack of transfer or different rendering of the original frames in the Persian dubbed version is twofold: a) differences between English and Persian culture, and b) the choices made by the translator despite the similarity of frames between the two cultures. Here, the translator has preferred to use a different conceptual frame, remove the source frame, add the TL frame to the source text, or neutralize the cultural element of the source frame in the TL. That is to say the translator, instead of focusing solely on linguistic forms of the SL, has tried to render the function of the original by activating appropriate frames of the Persian culture in the mind of the TL audience or omitting the SL frame for cultural reasons.

Equative constructions have not been desirably studied due to their formal and semantic similarity to similitive constructions. Haspelmath (2017) proposed the six basic types of equative constructions in distinct patterns based on typological studies. On the basis of these six patterns, there are also three cross-linguistic generalizations. In the present study, by examining the equative constructions of the (Turkic) Azarbaijani language, we conclude that five types of six types of these basic constructions can be found in the (Turkic) Azarbaijani language. Regarding the generalizations mentioned above, all generalizations are valid in (Turkic) Azarbaijani. It should be noted that the data of the present research are based on the corpus of the ordinary speech of the native speakers and the intuition of one of the writers.

In the present study, we have used a descriptive-analytical method to examine the data. The data of the present research are based on the corpus of the ordinary speech of the 10 native speakers and the intuition of one of the writers. This research mainly analyzes data from direct elicitation and does not include data from written text.

Equative constructions express situations in which “two referents have a gradable property to the same degree" (Haspelmath, 2016, p. 9). Equative constructions vary widely in different languages, but the six main types are distinguished by Hespelmat (2016). Each of these types is characterized by the following five components:  (1) 1                  2                      3                  4                      5 Compare      degree-marker parameter standard-marker standard Kim        is   [as                      tall]         [as                    Pat]. Type 1: Only equative standard-marker:In this type of equative construction, there is a comparee, standard and standard marker, and there is no degree marker, and also the parameter generally plays the role of a predicate. (2) Sanin  taĉin  xošgel  di. "Taĉin" has appeared as a standard marker and is mostly used to compare similarities in human traits, and as it is obvious, this standard marker has appeared as a post-addition (after the standard marker). The comparee is used as a pronoun. (3) Maryam mehrnaz ĉimi  gozal  di. "ĉimi" is standard marker that is placed in postposition of standard (after the standard) and is used to express the similarity of traits between humans and other living things.Type 2: Equative degree-marker and standard-marker:In this type of construction, in addition to the three main components (comparee, standard, parameter), there are also a degree marker and a standard marker. In Azerbaijani, as far as the authors have studied, there is no structure in which it is possible to show both the standard marker and the degree marker based on type 2. Type 3: Equative degree-marker unified:In this type of construction, there are predicate parameter, degree marker (meaning the same degree) and [comparee + standard] exists as a unified unit, but there is no standard marker. In examples (4-5), "ham" and "bir" indicate degree marker. (4) Nɑsirinan mahdya ham qiɑfa dilar (5) Husseinan Ɂahmad bir Ɂandɑzada dilar Type 4: Primary reach equative:In this type, the predicate is a verb means to reach / unite. In the Azerbaijani (Turkish) language, as shown in Examples (6-8), the verbs tʃatmaz, jetišmasan, tʃakib are used to mean to arrive, go or unite:(6) Hiškim safihlida   Behruza  tʃatmaz (7) San zirahlixda  maʤida   jetišmasan (8) Sanda tanbalihdan bɑʤuɁɑ tʃakib san. Type 5: Primary reach equative unified In this type of construction, [comparee and standard] appear as a unified unit in role of subject, there is a verb to reach / unite and a parameter (usually in a dative case).(9) Rɑmininan Bahram chohlexdɑ barɑbar dilar. (10) Bizim mɑšininan sizin mɑšini sürɁatda bir dilar. Type 6: Secondary reach equative In this type of construction, there is a parameter as the first predicate and a verb (to reach united) as a second predicate. In examples (11-13), being good, being tall, and being stingy, respectively, are used as the predicate parameters, and the verb "tʃakib" is used as the second verb, which implicitly means to unite / achieve. (11) Amir gözal di xɑlasina tʃakib (12) Mohammad uzün   di   Aliya tʃakib (13) Hasan xasi  di   Ɂisya   tʃakib

In the present study, by examining the equative constructions of the (Turkic) Azarbaijani language, we conclude among six types of these basic constructions, five can be found in the (Turkic) Azarbaijani language. The authors also provide the seventh pattern of the aforementioned constructions by examining other ways of expressing equative constructions in (Turkic) Azarbaijani. Regarding the generalizations mentioned above, all generalizations are valid in(Turkic) Azarbaijani.

This article is an attempt to apply MIPVU (Steen et al., 2010) for identifying and extracting metaphors used in the educational discourse of teaching the Persian language to first and second grades of elementary schools in Naghedeh. The main objective is to investigate the challenges of applying MIPVU to Persian and present a template for tagging metaphor-related words according to morphological, syntactic, and semantic features of Persian. The second objective is to analyze the conceptual metaphors underlying educational discourse in the first and second grades of elementary schools in Naghadeh.

In this article, the MIPVU framework and its theoretical basis have been applied. MIPVU is based on a combination of cognitive linguistics approach to metaphor with a broad view of discourse analysis.For metaphor analysis, the CMT model(Lakoff & Johnson,1980) is applied to extract the conceptual metaphors underlying the linguistic metaphors attested in the first phase by using MIPVU. The overall procedure formulated for metaphor identification in MIPVU looks like this:Find metaphor-related words (MRWs) by examining the text on a word-by-word basis.When a word is used indirectly and that use may potentially be explained by some form of cross-domain mapping from a more basic meaning of that word, mark the word as metaphorically used (MRW)
When a word is used directly and that use may potentially be explained by some form of cross-domain mapping to a more basic referent or topic in the text, mark the word as direct metaphor (MRW, direct)When words are used for lexico-grammatical substitution, such as third-person personal pronouns, or when ellipsis occurs where words may be seen as missing, as in some forms of coordination, and when a direct or indirect meaning is conveyed by those substitutions or ellipses that may potentiallybeexplained by some form of cross-domain mapping from a more basic meaning, referent, or topic, insert a code for implicit metaphor (MRW, implicit) When a word functions as a signal that a cross-domain mapping may be at play, mark it as a metaphor flag (Mflag). When a word is a new-formation coined, examine the distinct words that are its independent parts according to steps 2 through 5. (Steen et al, 2010: 26) The classroom interaction between teachers and students of first and second grades of 3 elementary schools in Naghadeh (West Azerbaijan Province) was recorded, and then the sentences used by the teacher were transcribed; Finally two sets of data were prepared: First-grade elementary school (5886 words) and second-grade elementary school (4630 words). These data sets consist of transcriptions of spoken sentences used by teachers in teaching Persian to first and second grades students in elementary schools of West Azerbaijan Province, Iran. To these data, POS (Part Of Speech) tags were assigned using Stanford NLP processor, then each lexical unit received their metaphor-related tags in Excel format by the researcher. The online Abadis dictionary was used as a reliable source for identifying the basic and contextual senses of each lexical unit. And at last, a format was presented for Persian metaphor analysis applying MIPVU.

This article discusses some challenges in applying the MIPVU protocol to Persian in annotating words as metaphorical. Problematic issues include demarcation of lexical units such as compound verbs and compound nouns, clitics, and also lack of suitable and corpus-based dictionaries of Persian. Based on these issues, and the overall process in MIPVU, this article can be used as a detailed framework to apply MIPVU for identifying metaphors in Persian both in individual researches and in corpus projects.The educational discourse of teaching Persian to the first and second grades of elementary schools was analyzed according to their use of metaphor-related words. The results showed that only a very small percentage (1.2%) of the whole data was usedmetaphorically, and the frequency of metaphors in the second class was higher than their use in the discourse of the first class. Most of the metaphors were indirect metaphors and just a few direct metaphors were used by one of the three teachers. Based on conceptual metaphor theory, 4 conceptual metaphors were extracted from linguistic metaphors attested in the first phase (applying MIPVU for identifying metaphor-related words).PERSIAN ALPHABETS ARE GEOMETRIC SHAPES/OBJECTS CHILDREN ARE NON-HUMAN BOOKS/SENTENCES/WORDS ARE CONTAINERS IMAGES ARE HUMANS.

As its first objective, this artcle tried to tackle some of the main challenges in applying MIPVU procedure for identifying and annotating metaphors in Persian and presented a useful and detailed framework. It offers solutions for successfully applying the main procedure for Persian according to its morphology, syntax and the rules of its writing sytem, so it can be readily used as a basis for further studies in the field of cognitive linguistics and also in computational and corpus linguistics.As its second objective, based on the analysis of the metaphors used by teachers in teaching Persian to non-native students, this article proves that teachers are not aware of the effects of metaphors in teaching and conveying educational content more effectively to young learners. This means that the teachers had no idea what a metaphor is and how it can be used directly and willingly to stimulate learners' unconscious knowledge. This highlights the need to inform and educate these teachers to understand the importance and necessity of using appropriate metaphors in classroom and in the interaction with students.

One of the internal conflicts in diasporic writers, manifested in their textual and linguistic practices, is their experience of "double consciousness." This conflict which is parallel to their external dialectic in identifying with either motherland or the host country, gives form and content to their linguistic identity. To put it in other words, these diasporic subjects sometimes identify with their homeland, sometimes with the host land, and sometimes with both. This study shows how diasporic writers produce hybrid, and accented texts. Because these texts are two-layered, we term them as palimpsest texts, arguing that the multi-layered and hybrid nature of these texts implies the double consciousness of their producers. The study explored the linguistic mechanisms diasporic writers use to represent their double consciousness.

Two English texts, "To see and see again" (2000) by Tara Bahrampour and “Funny in Farsi: A Memoir of Growing Up Iranian in America”(2003) by Firoozeh Dumas were selected as the corpora of the study for they both belong to diasporic literature with a focus on identity politics of immigrant writers.

In this section, as the example of an immigrant author translating the traditions and cultural elements of the (native) homeland into the language of the (other) host, the focus will be on some excerpts from two novels of “To see and see again,” and “ Funny in Farsi:” Examples from "To see and see again":Example 1 Wait, wait! She cries. “Get out and kiss the Quran” Baba laughs and pulls up the brake again (Bahrampour 2000, p.47). "Kissing the Qur'an", "passing the traveler under the Qur'an" and "starting the journey" by mentioning "In the name of God, the Most Merciful, the Most Compassionate" are among the cultural-specific elements of the immigrant motherland that have appeared in a foreign context. Example 2 “Karej-jan, tell me” Baba’s cousin asks. “kodom bacheh ra beeshtar doost daree? Which child do you like better? (Bahrampour 2000, p.51) In this example, the immigrant author has hybridized the linguistic elements of the motherland and the host country, creating a hybrid text, and immediately de -hybridized them by bringing in their English translation. Example 3 Baba points to Mama and Sufi, who are looking at shop windows. “We have to go” he says. “Khaste Nabashid.” (Bahrampour 2000,p.141) As can be seen in the above example, hybrid texts emerge from the coexistence of "self" and "other," and this coexistence is not possible except through the channel of translation. In fact, translation is inherently hybrid whether it is cultural or linguistic. In the following section, some examples from "Funny in Farsi” are discussed:Example 1 My name, Firoozeh, means “Tourqoise” in Persian. In America, it means “Unpronounceable” or “I’m not going to talk to you, because I can’t possibly learn your name”. (Dumas 2004:63) What matters here is the result of this interaction with the culture of the host country, which has led to the emergence of a double personality. Firoozeh and her family are immigrants who forge their identity in relation to another. This constructed identity is fully reflected in name selection and marriage rituals. Example 2 In my next life, I’m applying to come back as a Swede. I assume that as a Swede, I will be a leggy blond. Should God get things confused and send me back as a Swede trapped in the body of a Middle Eastern woman, I’ll just pretend I’m French. (Dumas 2004. p.47) Here, Firoozeh suffers from personality fragmentation due to being named differently and constantly fluctuating between herself and the other. She no longer tolerates this fragmented situation and finally decides to get back to her original identity Example 3 The ceremony began with Francois and me sitting facing the mirror with everybody crowding around Sofreh-e-Agd. Uncle Abdullah began his speech in Persian, read passages from the Quran in Arabic then translated everything into English. (Dumas 2004, p.149) The issue of hybridization is well illustrated in Firoozeh’s marriage to François. François is a French-Greek citizen who marries an Iranian girl. At the wedding ceremony of these two immigrants from two different cultural backgrounds, American-Christian and Iranian-Islamic traditions and rituals are both practiced. Example 4 Every Thanksgiving, my family and I gather at my cousin Morteza’s house.[…] Aunt Fatimeh brings her baklava. All other relatives prepare their favorite Persian dishes [….].We give thanks  for our lives here in America and for the good fortune of living close to one another.(Dumas2004, p.47) Here, the diasporic family celebrate Thanksgiving following Native Americans; but they completely change its nature, by giving it an Iranian character, which signifies another hybridization.

In this study, an attempt was made to explore two fictional works by Iranian diasporic writers in a bid to discuss their identity politics as reflected in their linguistic and textual practices. The findings discovered an inclination to hybridization, de-hybridization and re-hybridization in their linguistic practices through such mechanisms as code mixing, code switching, transliteration, cultural borrowing, and cultural translation. The central argument was that these contradictory inclinations can be interpreted as a signifier of their “double consciousness” and their internal conflict originating from their external identity indeterminacy. This indeterminacy gives their textual practices an accented character.

Human beings are social phenomena and like to stay connected with each other through an available means called language. According to Marzban and Noori (2020), writing is a useful skill for students to convey their feelings, ideas thoughts and express their needs. In fact, interaction is the basic factor in learning human language and an important element in human’s social life (Ramazani et al, 2018).There is a large body of research that examined the interactional resources that writers use through a variety of research frameworks. In the same vein, the purpose of the current study is to focus on the effect of the language used in letter writing and the writer's gender on the length of text production and the extent to which the interactional meanings are used in the letter.

Participants of this study included 60 elementary young learners (30 boys and 30 girls) studying in an English Language Institute with the age range of 12-14. All of them were at the same level of proficiency. They took placement test of English Language Institute and passed three terms in the Institute. All of them were at the elementary level of English proficiency. Pseudonyms were used for all the participants in this study.Personal letter, as suggested by Lindgren and Stevenson (2013), was selected as suitable task for data collection. The same task was used in both L1 and FL. The Farsi text was written first and after a three-week interval, the English text was written. Both tasks were undertaken in the classroom for 20 minutes and the participants were not allowed to use any resources.C-unit chosen for data analysis in the current study consists of two parts: Macro and Micro analysis. The former focuses on the analysis of the rhetorical content. The latter focuses on the analysis of discourse-semantic expression of C-units.

This study has examined whether language and gender influence the expression of interactional meanings in the letters of young Iranian learners through both quantitative and qualitative analysis of data. Considering the first research question, the findings revealed that both boys’ and girls’ text production in their L1 was more than their text production in their FL. Similar to other studies on young FL writers (e.g., Lindgren & Muñoz, 2013), it was found that participants wrote significantly shorter texts in FL. Although these young writers can be said to be developing literacy in two languages, not surprisingly, there still appear to be considerable differences in their proficiency in L1 and FL writing. They are more fluent writers in Farsi than in English, and have a better command of the Iranian language system. The findings are also in line with Lindgren and Stevenson (2013) who stated that young writers’ text production in their L1 is more than their text production in FL. Regarding the second research question, the findings showed that girls’ text production in L1 and FL is more than boys’ text production in L1 and FL. The findings of this study are consistent with some previous studies in the field of discourse analysis and gender differences (e.g., Argamon et al., 2003; Jones & Myhill, 2007; Canaris, 1999). In terms of interactive expressions in language writing, it has been claimed that "women's writing contains more features that indicate conflict, while in men's writing there is a tendency to provide and share more information." It is seen more, as it shows the author as the possessor of knowledge” (Jones, 2012: 168). However, the studies of some other researchers did not report a significant difference between the use of interactive cues by male and female language learners, and the results of the present study are not consistent with them (e.g., Kuhi, Yavari & Azar, 2012; Tajeddin & Alemi, 2012; Aziz, Jin & Nordin, 2016).The findings of the third and fourth questions showed that there were effects of language and gender on learners.  Boys asked more questions at the end of text than girls in both languages. Girls presented their attitudes more strongly than the boys, wrote more evaluative about people in both languages, and used more emotive and affective language (e.g., Argamon et al., 2003; Canaris, 1999; Tajeddin & Alami, 2012).

This study has focused on the use of interactional resources in writing letters by 60 young EFL learners to a friend in Farsi (L1) and English (FL). The findings obtained showed that both boys’ and girls’ text production in their L1 was more than their text production in their FL and the girls used more aspects of text production such as number of c-units and characters than the boys.  The findings can be used to help the EFL teachers in the sense of finding and distinguishing the differences in the boys’ and girls’ use of interactional resources to communicate with their audience. Thus, if knowing better, they can monitor their expectations of their language learners’ writings and teach them according to their writing preferences.Besides these results, it should be pointed out that this research had some limitations, e.g., the use of availability sampling method which has a low generalizability, focusing on one special age and level of English proficiency, focusing on one specific genre, and examining the effects of merely two variables of writers’ gender and text language. Future studies are recommended to be conducted using more rigorous and rigorous sampling methods, focus on a wider age range and language proficiency level, consider different genres, and investigate the effects of more variables.

The distinction and interaction of functional projections of tense and aspect in the sentence structure has been one of the main subject matters in linguistic researches performed with different viewpoints. There are, also, a number of great works about aspect in Persian with lexicalist perspectives. However, the current research aims to investigate the structural position of the grammatical aspect, both the perfect and progressive aspect, and its structural relation to the tense, on the basis of the non-lexicalist morphosyntactic framework of Distributed Morphology. Distributed Morphology (DM) was proposed in the early 1990's by Halle and Marantz. It is an exciting framework within the Government and Binding tradition and the Minimalist Program that is very appealing because it is both a model of syntax and a model of the morphological component of the grammar. According to Siddiqi (2009, p.5), in Distributed Morphology, there is only one generative component of the grammar (the syntax) whereas in Lexicalist Minimalism, there are two (the syntax and the lexicon). By hypothesizing that the machinery that is responsible for the morphology is the same machinery responsible for the sentence structure, DM drastically reduces the computational load of the model. In DM, unlike in GB and its Lexicalist derivatives, rather than manipulating fully formed words, the syntax only manipulates abstract features to generate syntactic structures. These formal features are selected from a fixed list of abstract features rather than being selected from the output of a generative lexicon.

The morphological operations applied in post-syntactic component of the grammar are our methodological devices in order to investigate the explanatory efficiency of DM in Persian sentence structures. In the post-syntactic component, there are a number of operations to account for morphological behavior. The majority of these operations occur at spellout or between spellout and PF. In fact, after applying syntactic operations in the syntactic component, there are some morphological processes, such as morphological merger, fusion, and fission operating on the syntactic output. Morphological merger, as a way of realizing syntactic structures with morphological structure, is a kind of affixation. Therefore, it is a type of head movement at PF and can be downward. The process of fusion exists in DM to account for situations where merger is not quite adequate for the distribution of vocabulary items in a string. So, fusion takes two terminal nodes and reduces them into one node. Complementary to fusion, the process of fission splits one terminal node into many, like the process employed in splitting AGR into separate heads. After these morphological operations, vocabulary items compete with each other to insert into terminal nodes. Since the phonology which represents the morphological features manipulated by the syntax, is provided at PF rather than being present throughout the derivation, Distributed Morphology is considered a late insertion model. In fact, only once all syntactic processes are finished with the structure is phonological content added. In this competition, those vocabulary items that best fit to their defining environment win and insert. Throughout the insertion, there may be some kind of allomorphy. In DM, allomorphy can be accounted for by applying morphological merger and fusion. These processes are the ones exploited in the present research in order to illustrate Persian verbal and sentence structures and investigate the structural position of the aspect projection.

Distributed Morphology (Harley, 1995; Marantz, 1997) depicts that the verbal domain includes a "little v" that can just categorize a root and change a root into a verb. Therefore, this theory appeals to the "split-vP analysis" hypothesis according to which a verb phrase is divided into three projections: a RootP (headed by a category-neutral root), a vP (headed by a verbal categorizer) and a VoiceP (headed by a Voice which can introduce the external argument). In this morphosyntactic approach, v is no longer capable of introducing the external argument; instead, this task is given to a new functional head called Voice. So, this grammatical model is different from the Lexicalist model; because here a verb phrase itself is broken into a vP and a VP (Harley, 2013). Assuming the split-vP analysis in Persian verb phrases and division of a verb phrase into a VoiceP, a vP and a RootP, we showed that the lexical or light verb moves out of VoiceP in order to merge morphologically with higher functional heads, like the aspect and the tense. Therefore, making a complex head in each morphological merger, the verb can attract different affixes. Besides, it was shown that in Persian sentence structure, the aspect projection is structurally higher than VoiceP and below TP. Hence, the main or light verb moves out of VoiceP, so that it can be attached to the aspect affix (“mi-” in progressive and “budan” in perfect aspect) through the morphological merger. In addition, we could illustrate allomorphy in verbal roots by using morphological merger depicted by DM. Having explained the structural relation of the aspect and tense projections, the present research showed a major distinction between the structural position of the perfect and progressive aspect in the sentence structure. Using morphological operations like morphological merger and fusion as the morphological processes of DM, it was shown that the progressive aspect rather than the perfect aspect has a closer relation to the verbal projection. This part of the results was in accordance with Ramchand (2017) who believed that the projection of progressive aspect was in the verbal domain whereas the projection of perfect aspect in the higher domain, that is, the clausal domain. In the present research, it was shown that if we change the hierarchical order of progressive and perfect aspect, we will get the incorrect structure.

This study offers some insights into the application of the morphosyntactic framework of Distributed Morphology in which the grammar includes just one generative engine, the syntax. As the present research showed, the split-vP hypothesis along with syntactic operations and postsyntactic morphological processes in DM are well efficient in analyzing the interaction of two functional projections of aspect and tense. These morphological processes can well explain affixations and root allomorphies related to these functional projections.Since DM proposes the same mechanisms for analyzing sentences and words, explaining compounds (because of their morphosyntactic nature) in Persian, especially those in which there are functional projections of tense and aspect, and teaching these Persian compounds to foreigners on the basis of DM can be another avenue of research.