نشریه علم زبان
پیاپی 10 (پاییز و زمستان 1398)

The issue of noun’s I’rāb has been discussed as case in linguistic theories, and its different patterns and markers have been investigated in the languages of the world. The present study aimed at investigating the systematic patterns of case-marking and their grammatical behavior in Classical and Standard Arabic based on linguistic theories within a typological perspective. Relying on structural and formal criteria (considering the final form of the words), two general patterns in Arabic case-marking are distinguished: a) nouns lacking a number suffix (i.e. single nouns and broken-plurals) make a three-way distinction of case (nominative vs. accusative vs. genitive); and b) nouns having a number suffix (i.e. duals, masculine sound-plurals, and feminine plurals) make a two-way distinction (nominative vs. oblique). The present study seeks to show dominant as well as exceptional patterns in a theory-oriented approach, and at some points, criticizes the Arabic traditional grammars for their analyses, presenting some questions for further analysis in future.

The present study sought to explore adverbs in Persian according to two generative viewpoints, namely the traditional adjunct-based approach and Cinqueʼs specifier-based approach. Accepting the categorization of adverbs into sentential and verbial ones, the study revealed that in Persian adverbs appear in sentence-initial, post-subject, and pre-verb phrase positions. It was also shown that only if the adverbs of manner appeared in the pre-verb position, they were interpreted as manner adverbs. However, when they occupied post-subject position, they were considered subject-oriented adverbs. Moreover, the heavy stress could make Persian adverbs appear in the initial position in sentences. The coordination of Persian adverbs was also evidenced. Although the relative order among higher and lower adverbs maintained by Cinque was not followed in Persian, it was concluded that specifier-based approach explains the position of adverbs in Persian in a better way.

The structure and use of languages reflect the society and culture in which they are used. The present study sought to delve into the pragmatic characteristics of Persian kinship terms on the basis of McGregor (2012) model, in order to discern the sociocultural elements that has influenced their formation and usage. The data were collected from Great Sokhan Dictionary (2004) and the usage was checked via selected contemporary Persian films, plays, and novels. It was found that the figurative use of Persian kinship terms to refer to closeness is dominated by ideology. For instance, “paternal guardianship” and “privity” has overtly shaped distinctions in the choice of terms referring to mother’s family versus father’s family. The commonality of the use of the term “amu” (referring to one’s uncle; father’s brother) versus “dâyee” (uncle; mother’s brother) while referring to male friends for the purpose of conveying a sense of closeness is a function of “privity”. In other words, a male friend should be associated with the same gender parent (father) and not with the opposite gender parent (mother). Furthermore, there are sets of Arabic kinship terms sometimes parallel to the Persian ones which could be selected and used to convey a sense of religiosity. It can be concluded that closeness and informality versus distance and formality together with age and social status are variables that have expanded the number of Persian kinship terms.

The present study aimed to examine and compare the knowledge sources and strategies used to infer the meaning of Persian words derived from Arabic by successful and less successful Arab-speaking learners of Persian. To achieve this objective, a standard reading test and think-aloud protocols were used to collect the necessary data. At the outset of the study, 10 Lebanese Arab speaking learners of Persian were asked to express the meanings of 64 de-contextualized Persian words derived from Arabic. Then, depending on the number of words whose meanings were unknown to them, each participant was asked to express the meanings of the 64 unfamiliar words in a short story. During this process, they were asked to elaborate on the knowledge sources and strategies they used to infer the meanings of the unknown words. Meanwhile, their voice was recorded, and later transcribed, and coded. Inter- and intra-coding reliabilities were also checked. Moreover, the reading comprehension test was given to the participants in order to categorize them into successful and less successful readers. Results of the study showed that the successful readers used fewer knowledge sources and strategies to infer the meanings of Persian words derived from Arabic compared to their less successful counterparts.

An alternation is defined as a pair of sentences with more or less identical structures and the same meaning. These alternations are sensitive to the meaning component of verbs. Therefore, it can be used as a criterion for classifying verbs in an effective way. Levin classified English verbs into 49 broad semantic classes and 192 subclasses, introducing 79 argument alternations. She believes that various aspects of the syntactic behavior of verbs are tied to their meaning. Moreover, verbs that fall into classes according to shared behavior would be expected to show shared meaning components. The present study aimed to examine a type of alternations introduced by Levin called “Reciprocal Alternation”, which itself includes several types of alternations. One of these alternations, known as “Understood Reciprocal Object Alternation”, is a type of “Transitive Alternations”. Transitive alternations include alternations involving a change in a verb’s transitivity. The other types of Reciprocal Alternation are the alternations that occur without a change in a verb’s transitivity. These alternations include “Simple Reciprocal Alternation”, “Together Reciprocal Alternation”, and “Apart Reciprocal Alternation”. A corpus-based study of 3070 Persian verbs revealed that all these alternations are also found in Persian. Furthermore, two new types of these alternation named “Reciprocal Chaining Alternation” and “Reciprocal Collective Alternation” were introduced in the present study.

Conceptual Metaphor Theory was first proposed by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson in 1980 as one of the earliest theoretical frameworks of the cognitive semantics. Although it is not a novel view of metaphor and its tradition goes back to the historical-philological semantics, Conceptual Metaphor Theory attempts to adduce different kinds of evidence for the conceptual nature of metaphors. According to this theory, metaphors are not just rhetorical, but human thought is metaphorical in nature and conceptual structures are organized according to cross-domain mappings or correspondences between these domains. However, conceptual metaphors are made based on embodied experiences and human interaction with the world. According to this view, conceptual metaphors are unidirectional and they cannot be bi-directional. The present study criticizes the methodology with which metaphor is studied emphasizing bi-directionality of mapping instead of unidirectionality based on examples of spoken Persian. Also, the study points to the fact that there is no constraint on forming the conceptual metaphors and that everybody can add new conceptual metaphors of special domains.

In word order typology, different languages are studied with respect to the order and sequence of their constituents and the classification and comparison of languages is carried out based on these orders. The present study describes word order in Baboli dialect in the framework of Dryer (1992). Data collection was done by both recording the answers provided by 10 local informants, 5 city dwellers, and 5 villagers to the questionnaire prepared for the present study and interviewing the aforementioned informants. The results indicated that compared with languages in its own geographical area (i.e. Eurasia), Baboli keeps a balance between the number of verb-medial (VO) and verb-final (OV) criteria, having 17 of each. In comparison with the languages of the world, though, Baboli has 16 criteria relevant to verb-final languages and 15 criteria relevant to verb-medial languages, showing a slight tendency towards verb-final languages. These results differ from those of contemporary Persian whose dominant tendency is towards verb-medial (VO) languages in comparison with both Eurasia languages- 12 criteria relevant to verb-final languages and 17 criteria relevant to verb-medial languages- and world languages- 15 criteria relevant to verb-final languages and 19 criteria relevant to verb-medial languages.

With the globalization of Technology and the rapid development of the information technology, using computers and other technological tools in teaching is of utmost significance. Following this line of approach, teachers and instructors in the field of teaching language should also use these tools to enhance effective teaching. The finding of research studies indicate that although most teachers and instructors are willing to utilize these tools in teaching language skills, they refuse to do it due to their fear/phobia towards the use of technology tools in their classrooms. Therefore, the thrust of the present paper had been to investigate the ‘how’ of the probable relationship between the technophobia and computer literacy variables in the instructors of Persian/Farsi to non-native learners. To this end, 40 instructors of the two centers of teaching Persian to non-Persian speakers were randomly selected using the convenience sampling technique. They were then asked to respond to three questionnaires of demographic information, assessment of the level of Computer Literacy developed by Son, Robb, Charismiadji (2011) and Computer Anxiety by Rosen and Weil (1995). The findings showed a significant (at 0.05 probability level) and negative relationship between the two variables i.e. the fear of technology or technophobia and computer literacy. In other words, teachers with more computer literacy, had less fear of technology (Technophobia). That is, those language instructors/teachers who had more fear of technology or were more technophobic, had lower levels of computer literacy. The results of the present study provided the educational planners/stakeholders with some strategies for educating teachers/instructors of Persian and posed some suggestions for a more efficient process of teaching Persian language based on the new needs of the use of technology in education.

Bilinguals transfer elements from their first language to their second language unintentionally due to their weakness in communicating in second language. This process is called linguistic interference in sociolinguistics and science of language teaching. Exploring the consequences of linguistic contact, linguistic interference, and bilingualism sheds lights on many issues and subjects and on developing educational materials in a multilingual community such as Iran where Farsi language is used for educational purposes. Therefore, the present study sought to explore the lexical interference in Taleshi-Farsi and Farsi-Taleshi bilinguals among the Talehshi-speaking community of Anbaran village and immigrants of this village to the west of Tehran through comparison between the two bilingual groups. The research data were obtained through a questionnaire and a number of sentences translated by bilingual people into each language. The subjects were randomly selected from among the inhabitants of Anbaran and the bilingual immigrants in the west of Tehran. It was revealed that interference from the first language to a second language occurs more frequently and the gender of the speakers also has a slight effect on linguistic interference.

The aim of the present study is to investigate the ability of monolingual Farsi-speaking children with high-functioning autism spectrum disorder in the narration of story. To this aim, 18 monolingual Farsi-speaking male student with high-functioning autism spectrum disorder (with a mean age of 8 years and 2 months) and 18 normal monolingual Farsi-speaking male students (with a mean age of 7 years and 3 months) were selected. The students were matched on their cognitive and language abilities. Both groups were encouraged to narrate stories based on a picture story book. Their coherence was investigated on the basis of length of the story, variety of words, causal sentences, and causal networks. Findings did not indicate a statistical significant difference between the two groups in the basic narrative measures and in overtly causal sentences (p<0.05). The results of the study showed that the stories narrated by high-functioning autism spectrum disorder group were less causally connected and less coherent. However, this difference was not statistically significant. On the whole, it can be concluded that causal network model is an alternative way for investigating narrative coherence by examining how narrative information is interconnected at a deeper level.

For the analysis of any text based on Systemic Functional Grammar (SFG), three matafunctions are considered: textual, interpersonal, and ideational. The ideational matafunction is divided into experiential and logical functions. In experiential function, language expresses the experiences of the outside world. The product of this function is transitivity that is used to specify different types of processes found in the verb. In the present study, after analyzing randomly selected anecdotes and wisdoms in Golestan and Baharestan, the differences between the applications of verbs in the two texts were analyzed using experiential function. Despite the significant differences in Sa’di and Jami’s writing style, the results of comparing selected parts indicated less application of behavioral and existential processes, and more frequency of relational and material processes. As a result, it may be concluded that although Sa’di and Jami have not discussed the origins of the issues in the two works, they have given greater consideration to the actors’ behavior as well as their account of events. It suggests that the use of different types of processes depends more on the content of the two works than on their writing style and linguistic characteristics.

The aim of the present study was two-fold. First, it intended to investigate the relationship between perspective taking and bilingualism; second, it studied gender differences in perspective taking. To do so, a total of 100 balanced bilinguals and their 100 matching monolinguals (based on age, gender, and socioeconomic status) were selected. The participants completed a self-assessment sheet which could help the researchers to label them as bilinguals or monolinguals. A Persian translation of the Perspective Taking section of the Interpersonal Reactivity Index by Davis (1983) was administered. The questionnaire consisted of Likert-type questions which had positive and negative scores. Two independent-samples t-tests were run to compare the perspective taking of monolinguals to that of the bilinguals and to examine whether there is a difference between the female and male participants’ perspective taking. The results of the first t-test indicated that the bilinguals had higher perspective taking than the monolinguals. Furthermore, the second t-test showed that the female participants outperformed the male participants in perspective taking.