نشریه زبان و زبان شناسی
پیاپی 32 (پاییز و زمستان 1399)

On the 20th of January 2019 (30th Dey, 1398) I was invited by the Society of the Friends of the Cultural and Natural Heritage of Semnan to celebrate the third anniversary of the national registration of the Semnani language in the Iranian Cultural Heritage Organization of Semnan. It was an elaborate ceremony with many prominent Semnani figures and professors of Semnan University. Alongside this there was an exhibition of historical photographs of the region and many different celebrations and programs which were organised by local artists. I gave a talk that was in four sections. The first describing the terminology such as the language, dialect, accent, mother tongue, and local dialect in detail. The second part I was about the danger of the extinction of the local languages and ways of preventing the demise of these languages. In the third section I talked about the important facts of the Semnani language and in the fourth and last section I recited a beautiful poem by the renowned Semnani poet Mohammad Ahmad Panahi Semnani, in the Semnani language.

This essay focuses on two words used in New Persian with almost the same morphology, but quite different meanings:"ماده" māde(h)(=female), and "ماده" mādde(h) (=matter, substance, essence). The former is considered to be of the Persian origin while the latter of the Arabic. By studying these words from the historical linguistic aspect and quoting evidence from the accessible texts in Old and the Middle Iranian (including texts from the holy book of Avesta, Manichaean Middle Persian, and Sogdian texts) , as well as instances in the New Persian, from early stages of the forming of the Persian language, and earliest translation of the holy Qoran) the author first proves that the words are both originally Persian, and then suggests that Mādde(h) (=matter, substance, essence; producer), as an equivalent of the philosophical Greek term: “Hyle”, has been borrowed and Arabicized, presumably by the translators of the Middle Persian philosophical texts, during the translation movement started from mid-eight Century CE. This movement, as a result of the need for exploiting the priceless cultural spoils of the subjugated countries, motivated the Arab caliphs to support it, and many books were translated mainly from the Hellenistic scholars into Arabic. Subsequently these Arabic translations were studied by Persian scholars and writers, and rendered into Persian. Thus, the Arabicized: "مادۃ" and its plural form "مواد", had a return to the Persian with different semantic nuances and enriched the corpus of Persian language and literature.

In many Iranian languages and dialects, [a] is raised to [e] in a process other than vowel harmony or assimilation to a neighboring consonant. For instance, in Delvari [a] raises to [e] when a word such as [dar] ‘door’ appears in its plural form [der-ɑ] ‘doors’. In this case, vowel raising is clearly not a consequence of vowel harmony or assimilation to an adjacent consonant. Previous research on these languages and dialects have seen this type of vowel raising process as being dependent on the number of syllables, the position of the syllable in the word, and stress. A closer look at relevant data shows that this process is rather sensitive to whether the syllable in which [a] occurs is closed or open. Data from various Iranian languages and dialects shows that the low vowel [a] is raised to [e] when the closed syllable in which it occurs becomes open as the result of the deletion of final consonants or their re-syllabification in morphological processes. The deletion of word-final consonants has led to the raising of [a] to [e] and the neutralization of contrast between these two vowels in final position in the development of Middle Persian to Modern Persian. Even the free variation observed between [a] and [e] in the pronunciation of many words seems to be due to the fact that [a] is preferred in closed and [e] is preferred in open syllables. An acoustic study of Persian vowels in word-final closed and open syllables also shows the raising of the whole vowel space and significantly the raising of [a] in open syllables. This feature is very similar to what is observed in tense-lax vowel systems in which lax (more open) vowels tend to occur in closed syllables and tense (more closed) vowels are preferred in open syllables.

An Associative plural refers to a construction where a nominal along with a (synthetic or analytic) marker refers to a human referent and other people associated to him/her. Unlike ordinary plurals, the set formed by associated plurals is comprised of some heterogeneous members. The aim of this article is to identify and describe associated plural constructions employed in selected Western Iranian languages. Furthermore, the sources from which the associative markers originate are also indicated. The bulk of the data analyzed in this study come from the spoken varieties while the grammaticalized associative plurals usually belong to the casual and informal speech. The findings of this study indicate that six different strategies are used to express associate plurals in Iranian languages. In some languages two complementary strategies are used with different subset of nominals (proper nouns, or kin terms) in the same language. Still in some others, the usage of the alternative strategies demonstrates some sociolinguistic implications not touched upon in similar studies on associative plurals.

This study tries to investigate the linguistic interference of Azeri in Persian. The research data demonstrates that the linguistic interference is at work in all levels of language and the amount of interference has an opposite relation to the depth of the linguistic knowledge of the speakers in the target language. Linguistic interferences are very different in types and only eight classes of them have been studied and introduced in this paper. These linguistic interferences are resulted from deleting or misusing the propositions; translating verbs, phrasal verbs, some specific verbs; word by word translation of the sentences from Azeri into Persian; the segmentally similar, but semantically different words in two languages; word-formation in the framework of Azeri morphology; translating the expressions; some typical interferences; and interferences due to the influence of inflection and syntax of first language. According to the results of this study, Azeri parents are recommended to speak with their children in their mother tongue and let their children to learn Persian from much more reliable sources; otherwise the children will be deprived of having a mother tongue, and in addition, they will speak in a language which is not originally Persian because of the linguistic interferences of their mother language. The results of this study could be used in producing programs and reports and in writing news in provincial radio and television networks.

Despite its significance, Farhang-e Nezām is a Persian dictionary which has not received the attention it deserves. Some innovative aspects of this dictionary distinguishes it from its contemporary dictionaries; considering textual/ written repertoire as inadequate in lexicography, paying attention to oral Persian, considering the approved vocabulary of the first Iranian academy and making a list of them, considering gendered language, and regional variations in lexicography which is called “dialectal lexical items” in the present article. This research asks about those words and the reason why they have been listed. Nezām 5 volume dictionary has been studied in pursue of those words. Here, the quantitative methodology used mainly by frequency effects of the dialectal vocabulary variation has been applied to data. The findings of the research show that there are 599 “dialectal lexical items” most of which are related to towns (369) and regions (232). Among them those related to Isfahan and Shiraz dialects are the most used due to “dialectal lexical items” and Bokhārāi, Bakhtiāri, Shabānkārei, Lāri, Natanzi, and Hamedāni are among the least items.

The goal of this paper is to study the different functions of “ magar ” in Persian , based on data from texts in the past twelve centuries . The corpus of this study includes 24 books . Three hundred and sixty sentences using “ magar ” were extracted from the corpus . It was concluded that they have two main functions : interrogative function and non - interrogative function , each with its own syntactic features . However, in these 12 centuries, the interrogative function of "magar" shows an increasing trend and its non - interrogative function has been decreasing . It also seems that in the written texts, "magar" is passing from the non - subjectification stage to subjectification .

Kinship terms have always been an interesting topic for anthropologists from a social relation and interaction point of view, and for linguists for their structural, typological, and historical aspects. Applying methods of dialectometry (Seguy, 1973), including distance matrix, MDS maps, cluster maps, and dendrograms and using Gabmap (Narbonne et al.,2011) for the computational analysis, this study is aimed at discovering the similarities and differences between 704 tokens of kinship terms(Consanguinity and affinity) in 32 varieties spoken in 5 provinces including Yazd, Hamedan, Kerman, Isfahan, and Farsand measuring their distances and closeness to each other and the Standard Persian. Results revealed that phonological and lexical diversity in borrowed terms from Arabic referring to the son’s wife, mother’s sister, father’s brother, and father’s sister is less than other terms. Based on clustering in 10 groups, there is more diversity among the varieties inside Isfahan province. There is less dialect distance among the varieties inside Kerman province, except for a variety in Jiroft which shows more similarities to Hamedan varieties probably due to Lor and Lak populationin both areas.Varieties in Hamedan are grouped as a cluster too, except for a variety which is closer to the Standard Persian. Therefore, linguistic borders and geographical borders are not the same.The largest group includes 13 varieties of Kerman, Fars, Yazd (near birderlines), and southwest, and west of Isfahan near the borderline with Fars. In fact, near borderlines between these provinces, there is a dialect continuum. Two varieties in Isfahan, one in Yazd and one in Hamedan are the closest varieties to the Standard Persian. Kesheh and Tallabad which are probably related to Raji and Ardestani (dialects of central Plateau) can be considered as language islands.

The main function of discourse markers is to make connections between the discourse and the discourse situation, thus managing the interaction between speaker and listener, expressing the speaker's attitude, and organising the flow of discourse. In this research, different functions of the pragmatic marker diye in the Hamedani dialect were examined. To achieve this goal, around six hours of audio and video files of the Hamedani dialect corpus were used. Diye is a high-frequency pragmatic marker in the Hamedani dialect and has several functions. For example, our results show that this pragmatic marker is used for interpersonal functions such as expression of attitudes, emphasis, and confirmation-seeking, as well as for indirect responses (in order to evade the subject and appeal to shared knowledge between speaker and listener). In terms of textual function, it helps to keep or relinquish the floor, show a sequence of events, or end a topic, or to express an explanation, justification, contradiction, addition, or conclusion in relation to a previous or subsequent proposition. Examining the intonation of diye with Praat software shows that the intonation pattern of this pragmatic marker varies, depending on its particular function.

In this article, the gender system in the Vafsi dialect is examined. The theoretical framework is based on the view of Corbett (1991) according to which gender is a system at the level of relations between words (outside lexical derivation). In this view, The criterion for evaluating and determining the number of grammatical genders or word classes in a language is agreement. In addition to determining the number of genders in the Vafsi dialect, the semantic/formal parameters involved in gender assignment have also been studied. The results of this study show that according to the agreement criteria, there are only two word classes or grammatical genders in this dialect feminine and masculine: 1- Words ending in an unstressed vowel –æ̀ (feminine) 2- Other words that end in other vowels and consonant (masculine). Also, the synchronic status of this dialect shows that the gender assignment to the words is not based on a semantic criterion such as biological sex (sex-based) or animacy. Instead, the mentioned phonological criterion forms a separate class of words in this language. Thus, from a typological point of view, the Vafsi dialect has a non-sex-based gender system in which gender assignment to the words is formal, not semantic.

This work, in the opinion of Mauri (2008), Mauri & Ramat (2011), and Mauri & van der Auwera (2012), while maintaining a deep broader perspective, investigates coding of the coordination relations under the labels ‘conjunction’, ‘adversativity’, and ‘disjunction’ in addition to adverbial connectives, which represent the essence of coordination being the conceptual juxtaposition of co-equal structures, namely ‘conditional’, ‘temporal’, ‘causal’, and ‘purposive’ in Târikh-e Bal’ami (11th century BC). Moreover, the present contribution will analyze complementation markers and the less studied coordinating markers, to be specific, conclusives, correlatives and similatives (in line with Haspelmath and Buchholz (1998)). The data revealed that coordination relations in Târikh-e Bal’ami, belonging to 10 centuries before, portray deep similarities with the coordination concepts and markers of Today New Persian. However, the causative coordination markers namely irâ and be suy-e ân ke and adversative markers namely pas and va showed certain differences.

Linguistic research has always been an important field of study for linguists. Although there is disagreement among linguists in defining the concept of "dialect", there is a consensus on the importance of systematic studies in this area. In almost all universities and higher education centers active in the field of linguistics, research works on topics related to dialect are done by professors and students in this field. However, major achievements in this area come from broader research and group participation. In this article, we try to take a look at the systematic activities of dialectology in Iran, which began with the establishment of the Second Academy (Iranian Language Academy, 1359-1349) and after the Islamic Revolution by other institutions such as the Cultural Heritage and Tourism Organization, The third academy (Academy of Persian Language and Literature, 1990 to present), the Institute of Humanities and Cultural Studies and the great Islamic encyclopedia continued. Finally, we look at the scattered dialectical activities in the field of related articles, dissertations and books.