نشریه علم زبان
پیاپی 6 (بهار و تابستان 1395)

In Avestan Language, ablative case is sometimes used for encoding functions of instrumental case and instrumental case is used for encoding functions of ablative case. These two cases encode semantic roles. Ablative case is a spatial case whose main function is to encode source, location, and path. Instrumental case is a non-spatial case whose main function is to encode accompaniment, instrument, manner as well as cause and agent in passive voice. Ablative and instrumental cases- in case hierarchy- are located in the last position and are not distinguished hierarchically. In the present study, Avestan data were explored and it was found that these two cases are polysemic and overlap functionally; hence, they are used interchangeably in Avestan language. The ablative case encodes the semantic roles of manner and cause in passive voice in addition to semantic roles of source, location, and path. Along the same vein, the instrumental case indicates source, path and location in addition to semantic roles of accompaniment, instrument, manner and cause and agent in passive voice. Semantic map of these two cases is drawn to demonstrate their semantic range and polysemy.

Dari Persian language, due to the increased amalgamation with Arabic language and acceptance of a number of new scientific, literary, religious, political terminologies and applying them in various poetical works and concepts, developed considerably in the 4th and early 5th centuries (Hijri calendar) compared to 3rd century (Hijri calendar). As for the language used by poets and writers of this period compared with the subsequent literary period, fewer Arabic words and more original Dari Persian and Pahlavi language words can be observed. It should be stated that the poets and writers of this period were less influenced by Arabic grammatical rules and they were mostly observing Persian grammatical rules. Many scholars sought to write their works in Persian or use Persian equivalents to Arabic words. Avicina Balkhi and Abu-Rayhan Alberoni were two prominent scholars who strongly promoted the use of Dari Persian language.

Nominalization is one of the metaphors introduced by Halliday, which is a part of ideational meta-function. The present research study is an attempt to investigate the role of nominalization in political Persian and English discourses from Van Dijk’s Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) perspective. In so doing, it attempts to answer the following research questions: (1) Does nominalizations have any role in cohesion and coherence as well as in marginalization and highlighting in the text? (2) What’s ideological role of nominalization in Persian and English political discourse? (3) In which discourse (Persian or English) more nominalizations are used? By studying 22/5 pages of English newspapers (Guardian, USA Today, Telegraph and New York Times) and 22/5 pages of Persian newspapers (Keyhan, Qods and Shargh) focused principally on Iran’s nuclear program negotiations, it was discovered that nominalization can cause marginalization and highlighting by changing information construction of the sentence (theme and rheme), referring to presuppositions, using entailment, omitting the agent and changing the mental models. Nominalization helps the author to make reference to the background knowledge of the reader without giving any repetitive information (coherence). It also helps the writer to use nouns (next to each other) which have the same conceptual meaning (cohesion). Furthermore, it can be concluded that this metaphor is used more frequently in Persian newspapers than in English ones.

The purpose of the present study is to explore the process of vowel reduction in Kermani accent. The process of vowel reduction occurs in unstressed syllables which shifts vowels toward other vowels. In this study, 5 male and 5 female native speakers of Kermani accent, pronounced 24 words in 3 repetitions containing six simple vowels in stressed and unstressed syllables. The participants’ productions were recorded using Shure microphone and were analyzed using Praat software (Ver. 5.2.24). A text grid was made for each word. Then, duration, F1, F2 and F0 of vowels were measured and compared in stressed and unstressed syllables. Overall, the obtained results confirmed that the duration and F0 of vowels decreases in unstressed syllables and the amount of F1 of all the vowels and the F2 of the vowels [ɑ, e, o, u] have a tendency towards the F1 and F2 of /ǝ/. Results also indicated that the process of vowel reduction is centripetal in Kermani accent.

In most Persian phonetics resources, there is no absolute unanimity regarding the manner of articulation of uvular consonant /G/. The present study sought to investigate the manner of articulation in standard conversational Persian through intervocalic, initial, final and clustered phonological environments on the basis of acoustic methods. In so doing, the speech samples of ten native speakers of standard Persian (five males and five females) all from educated class who were unfamiliar to linguistics and were within age range of 20-30 were recorded and analyzed through Praat software. According to the analyses, the following major allophones were recognized: voiced stop [G], approximant [ʁ], and voiced fricative [γ]- in free alternation with each other in most of phonological contexts. Furthermore, in conversational speech of some speakers, in some special words, voiceless fricative [x] was in free alternation with its other variants as an allophone. Statistics shows that voiced stop [G] in the above-mentioned contexts occurs more frequently than other variants. It can be concluded that the most frequent variant and representative of this phoneme in standard Persian must be known as /G/.

Materials for Study of Bakhtiyâri Dialect is a translation of Zhukovski’s research study entitled Materials for Study of Iranian Dialects. He lived in Iran from 1883 to 1886 and collected samples from Iranian dialects including Bakhtiyâri. In this collection, he has transcribed 42 Bakhtiyâri poems and translated them into Russian. Zhukovski’s work has been used as the point of departure by “Maryam Shafaghi” and “Sayyed Mahdi Dâdras” one of whom is native Bakhtiyâri speaker and has attempted to correct phonemic transcription and stress placement of Zhukovski and translated it into Bakhtiyâri regardless of its translation. In the current study, the researcher has reviewed and criticized Shafaghi and Dâdras’ transcription, translation and stress placement. Studying Bakhtiyâri dialect over the past 130 years and comparing it to the contemporary Bakhtiyâri is diachronic in nature and one shouldn’t, therefore, change transcription and stress placement with reference to information from contemporary Bakhtiyâri.