Comparing Mental Models of Persian Speakers with that of Azarbaijani Turkish Speakers (A Case Study of Compound Infinitives)

Persian and Azarbaijani Turkish have been located in close contact with each other during centuries, so it is natural that language contacts between them have been conducted. This research is going to reply to two questions: First, whether during these contacts mental models of speakers of the two languages have been closed to each other. Second, whether the mental tableaux model proposed by Johnson -Laird (1983) is suitable enough to compare mental models of speakers of the two languages. To do this, the authors of this study have tried to compare mental models of speakers of the standard Persian with Miyandoab dialect (an Azarbaijani Turkish dialect). The required data were collected using both content and field study. In the first step, 234 compound infinitives with main infinitive components of "eating, beating, drawing and catching" were collected from standard Persian. In the second step, the compound infinitives were given to the twenty Azarbaijani Turkish informants in order to write down their equivalents in Azarbaijani Turkish. Then, the necessary tableaux were drawn. At last, mental models of speakers of the two languages were compared with each other using mental tableaux model proposed by Johnson - Lord (1983). The results were: First, there were many resemblances between mental models of speakers of Persian and Azarbaijani Turkish although the mental models of the first one were more complex than the other. Of course Azarbaijani Turkish informants frequently tended to use simple infinitives. Second, the mental tableaux model proposed by Johnson - Laird (1983) was not suitable enough to compare mental models of speakers of the two languages.