نشریه پژوهش های زبان شناسی
سال هشتم شماره 2 (پیاپی 15، پاییز و زمستان 1395)

In this paper preserving minimalist view of the grammar, without abandoning universal systems, we try to account raising structure in Persian in terms of parametric variation. We have shown Persian similar to other consistent null subject languages displays a type of raising called “further- raising” in which a subject can raise to an A-position even after agreement with a phi complete Tense. However, in this kind of raising, contrary to other kind of non-local raising, the agreement of the raised DP with matrix Tense is not allowed. In this article, following Fernández-Salgueiro (2008, 2011) we have shown in fact the parameter of delaying case-F deletion leads to subject-to-subject raising of DP in Persian without contradicting Last Resort condition. On the other hand, it seems disallowing the agreement of raised DP with the matrix Tense is due to the impossibility of multiple checking of phi features in DP and this leads to the agreement of matrix Tense with complement clause represented by the default features of 3 SG on the main verb. Consequently, by considering these parameters, we account the compatibility of further-raising and null subject in Persian.

The linguistic landscape is a field of research in sociolinguistics in which all linguistic signs and texts including traffic lights, advertizing billboards, graffiti, names of squares and roads, shop signs of administrative and businesses as well as small and large notices are studied. In the present study, we attempted to delimit three geographical areas in Urmia (capital of West Azerbaijan) including A (affluent area), B (semi-affluent), and C (poor), and in each area one street is located as the main location of the research. As Urmia is widely introduced as a multilingual, multicultural city, we approached the concept of linguistic landscape from the multilingualism perspective. Once the landscape was photographed and the research data were collected and classified, in general eight linguistic patterns were distinguished including monolingual Persian (75.9 percent), followed by bilingual Persian-European (16.8 percent), monolingual European (5 percent), monolingual Turkish (0.7 percent), bilingual European-Persian (0.6 percent), bilingual Persian-Turkish (0.4 percent), trilingual Persian-European-Turkish (0.2 percent), and monolingual Kurdish (0.09). The results indicate that there is a relationship between the economic development of the urban area and the frequency of the linguistic patterns, as in the areas A and B more monolingual European signs are employed in the linguistic landscapes. The findings also show that there is a correlation between the linguistic patterns and the business types. For instance, in boutiques a variety of linguistic patterns are used to attract customers whereas in businesses like bakery just a very limited linguistic pattern is observed.

The present research aims to study the headlines of Sport Newspapers in Iran. It is a descriptive- analytical research which studies the metaphorical expressions available in the headlines of two Newspapers Khabare Varzeshi and Piroozi by using conceptual metaphor in the autumn of 2014. Following the study of 108 metaphorical expressions, the conceptual metaphors are classified in ten metaphorical domains. Findings show that the metaphor "football is a war" has high frequency among metaphorical expressions concerning the football headlines. The source domain includes not only the war, but also some domains such as football as a machine, natural phenomena, animals, magic, sports, test, direction, show and building. In this research, metaphors are classified in three structural, ontological and directional categories. Therefore, main parts of metaphors belong to structural, ontological and directional categories respectively

In the present study, monolingual Persian-speaking children's mastery of conjunctives and pronominalization as two cohesive devices are investigated within the theoretical framework of cohesion by Halliday and Hassan (1976). To this aim, 80 children in four age groups of 3, 5, 7, 9 were selected from 2 kindergartens and 4 elementary schools in Tehran and were compared with a group of 20 adults as a control group. To investigate the performance of children in the use of these cohesive devices, two narrative production tests in the form of picture story books were administered. The findings of the present study indicated showed that three year old children used a nominal strategy and used temporal conjunctions to create cohesion in stories. Five year old children used a large amount of temporal conjunctions. Their stories were organized properly with the use of thematic-subject strategy. From seven years old onwards, children's narratives became more complex and the variety of connectives increases significantly. Children make use of differential linguistic markers (full anaphoric strategy) to structure their narratives as linguistic whole. They use pronouns to maintain referent and at the same time, they tried to provide clear and unambiguous reference to characters in the story by using nominal form to switch referents.

This study investigated the implicature stemming from æmma (‘but’). To this end, two experiments were conducted. In the first experiment, participants were presented with 24 short stories including “p æmma q” constructions. The p and q arguments were either sensible or absurd. The participants were asked to indicate the appropriate conclusion introduced by by pæs (‘so’/’then’) and ba-in-hal (‘nevertheless’). In the second experiment, the same 24 stories were used as in the first experiment, however after each construction, participants did not have to give the appropriate ‘pæs’ or ‘ba-in-ha’l conclusion but simply had to tick yes or no and justify their answer. The results of the first experiment, showed that in general, the inference of the participants were mainly based on the existence of ‘æmma’ however the content of p and q arguments played an important role. In the second experiment, the justifications provided by the participants showed that whenever the p-argument was not pertinent and an inference based on ‘æmma’ would result in an absurd conclusion, they referred to the content of the arguments and selected the implication from the p-argument.

Halliday(1987b:173) considered metaphorical realizations as metaphorical variants which are related to variation theory. He points out that each of these (types of) variants can be described in more general terms as "an alternative realization of an element on the next, or on some, higher stratum". Morphological, lexical and syntactic variants are alternative lexicogrammatical realizations of the same meaning. In present research, congruent and metaphorical forms are investigated in Persian speakers’ speech. The number of informants is 47 which are chosen based on sex, education and social class. The research questions are:1)How do social variables such as sex, education and social class affect the application of congruent and metaphorical variants? 2) How does each social variable such as sex, education and social class affect the application of metaphorical forms of modality, nominalization and transitivity? Research data indicate that sex doesn’t affect on application of congruent and metaphorical variants and also on application of modality, nominalization and transitivity. But education and social class affect enormously on application of congruent and metaphorical variants and also on application of three kinds of grammatical metaphors (except no effect of sex on application of transitivity metaphors) in Persian speakers’ speech. We have observed statistical hypercorrection as a considerable phenomenon in present research. The middle class (based on the division of social class to low, middle and high) used grammatical metaphors more than low and high classes.