فهرست مطالب روح الله مفیدی

This paper aims to investigate the usage pattern of “be-” with complex and prefixal predicates in present subjunctive mood and imperative mood. Our corpus and the statistics come from linguistic judgements passed by 12 Persian speakers about the presence or absence of “be-” with complex and prefixal predicates, and the speakers entered their usage priorities in the questionnaires (31,548 tokens for 3,588 types of complex and prefixal predicates, altogether). The research findings show that the degree of obligatoriness of “be-” with prefixal predicates is generally lower than complex predicates, and that the highest proportion of optional appearance of “be-” among complex predicates belongs to “kardan” and “shodan” as light verbs. In addition, among non-verbal elements, the highest statistics of obligatoriness go to the categories of adverb and prepositional phrase, and the lowest to the adjective. The authors believe that the variation in the use of “be-” observed for some light verbs and non-verbal categories, as well as the very high level of its obligatoriness for some complex and prefixal predicates, and its almost complete obligatory status for simple verbs, all indicate an ongoing change in the mood system of Contemporary Persian. The future of linguistic changes cannot be easily predicted, but it is probable that the optional uses of “be-” become obligatory gradually, and even some unpermitted instances gradually become optional, and ultimately obligatory.

This research aims at investigating the effect of shared vocabulary of Persian and Istanbul Turkish on the reading comprehension of Persian-learners of Turkey (PLT), and at which level of language-learning (beginner, intermediate, or advanced) this shared vocabulary (i.e. the words with phonological and semantic resemblance) ​​facilitates the reading comprehension process. At first, an accessible sample of 75 PLTs (25 from each level) was selected randomly. The data gathering instruments were separate exams of reading comprehension for each level. To prepare the exam materials, we selected a text for each level from Dehkhoda Institute couresbooks of Reading and Comprehension. Then, each text was divided into two almost equal parts. In the first part, the shared words were substituted by non-shared words to reduce the usage of shared vocabulary without changing the meaning in the text. In the second part, more shared words were employed to increase the usage of shared vocabulary in the text. PLTs of each level participated in two parallel exams with shared and non-shared vocabulary texts on two separate times with one day interval. Participants’ scores of the exams were analyzed through paired t-tests and two-factor In-group/Out-group design. The results confirmed our first hypothesis: the reading comprehension increases as we increase the usage of shared vocabulary. Furthermore, our second hypothesis was confirmed for the beginners: as we moved towards more advanced levels of language-learning, the effect of shared vocabulary increased. However, we could not observe any significant changes among intermediate and advanced learners with regard to this hypothesis.

In a diachronic perspective, the article investigates and compares the changes in Arabic and Persian word order, agreement, and case-marking, as the devices of differentiating subject and object. In fact, the main problem of this investigation was to discuss and follow the changes which have happened in the ways of distinguishing between the subject and object in the history of the two languages. In Arabic, the Classical variety has been compared to two of its today’s varieties, and in Persian, the changes have been followed from the Old period to this day. Persian and Classical Arabic data have been extracted from written sources, and the fieldwork part of the investigation consists of gathering data from the Arabic of Khuzestan and Lebanon via interviews with six speakers (three from each variety) by means of questionnaire and picture-description. Data-analysis shows that Arabic has lost its cases and extended its agreement system, and now it relies more on word order. Persian, on the other hand, has lost its case and agreement devices, reconstructing both later, with no changes in word order at the clausal level. Furthermore, no evidence for influences of Arabic and Persian on each other in these fields was found in this investigation, and it seems that all these changes have been language-internal, or at least, the two languages did not have effects on each other with this regard.

This paper investigates the event structure of prefixal verbs in Kurmanji Kurdish of Rudbar (located in the south of Gilan province) and discusses the interpretational contribution of derivational prefixes to the event structure of these prefixal verbs. The research data has been gathered by means of interviewing a number of native speakers in the region and the oral fulfillment of a questionnaire. The findings show that derivational prefixes mostly denote a directional concept and make a motion verb. As a consequence, a punctual interpretation is typically developed in their instances, unless the linguistic or situational context triggers an accomplishment (i.e. telic and durative) event type. In the data corpus of this research, only a few stative verbs were found, and we could detect no prefixal verb in the activity event type. Therefore, the prefixal verbs of the Kurmanji of Gilan can exclusively express the three event types of state, achievement and accomplishment in their various meanings. These observations (the dominance of punctual interpretation and the absence of activity events) are probably in line with the typical meaning of prefixal verbs, i.e. the directional movement.

In classical Arabic, nearly all of the nouns received relevant case suffixes in every grammatical function (including argument, complement, and adverbial). This article investigates the fate of this rich case-marking system in two contemporary varieties of Arabic, i.e. those of Khuzestan (Iran) and Lebanon. The data were provided through controlled interviews, and in cases by means of exchanging audio files, with six speakers of the varieties (three speakers from each one). Two questionnaires (including 101 questions, altogether) and 14 photos for description were used as the main instruments of data gathering, which lead to a corpus of approximately 800 sentences. The analysis of the corpus data shows no morpheme expressing case distinctions (as opposed to any other morpheme) in the two varieties. Two main mechanisms have been at work in the process of case disappearance: phonetic erosion, and case syncretism. The output of these two mechanisms for singular nouns, irregular (‘broken’) plural, and feminine plural has been the removal of all three short-vowel case markers (nominative, accusative, and genitive); and the output of the second mechanism for masculine regular (‘sound’) plurals has been the functional generalization of oblique case to nominative, and the disappearance of case distinction. On the other hand, the corpus data show that compared to classical Arabic, in both varieties, word order has become more fixed, and the agreement system has become stronger. But based on this investigation, these two grammatical phenomena cannot be claimed to be necessarily the consequences of the decay of case system.

The article tries to make a link between grammatical function of the prefix be- with past verbs in the current atlas of New West Iranian and the historical atlas of New Persian, and to interpret this marker’s historical statistics with respect to its behavior in today’s Iranian varieties. In the historical sampling of this research, 22% of past verbs of simple morphological structure (non-prefixed and non-complex) in 4th to 7th centuries had the prefix be-, but in the following centuries, its frequency decreased gradually, and eventually it disappeared. On the other hand, in the contemporary century, a very high level of grammaticalization of be- in the same position is observed in a wide variety of Iranian languages and dialects. The author looks at these two phenomena (the historical behavior of be- and its today’s behavior) in the same line, and believes that there has been a single path of grammaticalization of be- in progress in New West Iranian languages, but the written/standard variety of New Persian stopped this process for some external or internal reasons (contact with varieties without be-, and development of mi- as imperfective marker, respectively), while the process continued in some Iranian varieties to the current level.

This paper attempts to make a link between the grammatical function of the prefix be- with past tense verbs in the current atlas of New West Iranian and the historical atlas of New Persian, and to interpret the marker’s statistical behavior in old texts with respect to its behavior in today’s Iranian varieties. The issue of the grammatical function of be- in this position has always been controversial, and grammarians and linguists have proposed functions such as decorative, redundant, emphatic, and perfective aspect for it. With a statistical approach, this research is concerned with this controversial issue, considering the status of perfective aspect marker in the current linguistic atlas (of West Iranian varieties), suggesting the hypothesis that the grammaticalization of be- as the perfective aspect marker had begun in some regions in the historical linguistic atlas.

A common phenomenon in grammars is the grammaticalization of the speaker’s viewpoint towards the event: seeing it as a whole completed event, or looking from inside as an uncompleted one. This opposition, called perfective and imperfective aspect, respectively, is the main distinction in the grammatical aspect domain. In simpler words, the grammatical category of aspect is the result of grammaticalization of the speaker’s viewpoint. In this domain, there may be a grammaticalized morpheme for each opposition (perfective and imperfective); or just marking one the oppositions overtly, with no marker for the other one.   

The historical corpus of this research includes 77 thousand verbs, extracted from 55 texts from 10th to 20th centuries. To this aim, five texts from each century were selected, and then, two pieces of each text were taken randomly as the sampled data, each one including 700 verbs (1400 verbs from each text, altogether).

According to the statistics, be- in the grammatical function under discussion generally appears with positive verbs of simple structure (non-prefixed and non-complex), and its highest rate of usage is in 10th and 11th centuries. In these two centuries, on average, out of every four simple verbs in perfective aspect, one verb (and a bit more) takes be- (26.7%). In 12th and 13th centuries, the frequency of be- shows decrease (19%), and then, in the 14th, the statistics is reduced to less than half (8.1%), gradually disappearing in the following centuries. Furthermore, in 10th to 13th centuries, there are 17 texts from various geographical regions, having a rate higher than 10%, which shows that be- was being used in all centers of text production in the cultural territory of Persian. Also, the number of verbs with be- in the whole period (142 verbs, non-repeatedly) shows its high productivity, hence its inflectional nature, rejecting the derivational function hypothesis. On the other side, according to several researches in dialectology, a very high level of grammaticalization of be- in the same position has been reported in a wide range of Iranian varieties. At least in Mazandarani, Gilaki, Tati, Khorasani, Central Iranian, and Talishi, there are several language varieties with this marker in the same position, and in many of them, be- is nearly fully-productive with simple verbs. Furthermore, complex predicates and some past forms (present perfect, past perfect, and past subjunctive) are used with be- in some Iranian varieties. If we suppose that in early centuries the grammaticalization process of be- was in progress in some regions of the geography of Iranian languages, then, it may be hypothesized that since 14th century the production of Persian texts and the standardization of written language was affected by the varieties which lacked this function of be-, and this function was stopped gradually, but the varieties which had the marker (previously having more influence on the production of Persian texts) continued grammaticalizing itto the current level. By contrast, if we suppose that the grammaticalization of be- was only going on in New Persian, and after being stopped, it started again in some regions of the geography of Iranian languages, then, firstly, it would be difficult to account for the relatively short time spent for such a high level of grammaticalization of be- in today’s varieties, and secondly, on this assumption, the connection between perfective function and subjunctive-imperative function would be broken off, and restarting grammaticalization for perfective aspect would require theoretical justification. The author believes that it is more plausible to consider the grammaticalization of be- in the grammars of West Iranian languages as a single phenomenon. In other words, there has been a single path of grammaticalization of be- (for perfective aspect) in progress in New West Iranian languages which was gradually stopped in New Persian since 14th century, and was continued in some Iranian varieties. The consequence of such an integrated approach to the phenomenon will be that we can also consider be- in Classical Persian as a perfective marker.   

The statistics of this research show that 22% of simple perfective verbs in 10th to 13th centuries had be-. On the other hand, now, a very high level of grammaticalization of be- in the same position is observed in a wide range of Iranian varieties. The author believes that the most plausible explanation for these two linguistic phenomena (historical behavior of be- and its today’s behavior) is that the grammaticalization of be- for perfective aspect marking began since Early New Persian period (or possibly even Middle period), but Persian stopped this process gradually for some external reasons (contact with varieties without be-) or internal reasons (establishment of mi- as imperfective marker), while the process continued in some Iranian varieties to the current level.   

So far in the mood system of New Persian, the inflectional element ‘be-’ has had three grammatical roles: subjunctive marker, imperative marker, and future marker, all of which having in common the feature of unrealized occurrence of the event (as opposed to its realized occurrence for indicative mood). This investigation, based on a sampled corpus of 55 texts, selected from 10th to 20th centuries, follows the changes of these functions in New Persian diachronically. The results show that in a period of eleven centuries the frequency of ‘be-’ as a marker of subjunctive has increased three times, and as the imperative marker twice-and-half, while it has been productive in its third role (future marking) mostly in 10th to 12th centuries, and this function gradually disappeared later. Furthermore, since 19th c., ‘be-’ which was formerly used with simple verbs almost exclusively, began to be used with complex predicates as well. However, there is some amount of irregularity in the increasing frequency of ‘be-’ in the whole period, and the author attempts to explain it with such hypotheses as grammatical archaism in some texts, and the possible change of grammatical forms in the process of copying the texts

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.

Abstract
The present perfect construction (called ‘quotative past tense’ in Persian grammars) receives different interpretations under the influence of such factors as the verb’s lexical meaning, arguments, adverbs, and other contextual linguistic and situational elements. This paper is a semantic survey, focusing on the effects of simple verbs’ eventual meaning on the interpretation of present perfect, and it attempts to investigate the interaction of these two semantic categories, relying on sampled data from corpora. Our results show that statives mostly have resultative and existential interpretations, activities generally have existential interpretation, and achievements and accomplishments have resultative interpretation by default. Other interpretations of each event type are either of a lower frequency (such as universal interpretation for some statives), or they are formed under the influence of contextual factors (such as existential interpretation for some achievements and accomplishments in which the result state has been cancelled by the meaning of the verb or adverbs).
Key words: event type, interpretation, Persian, present perfect, simple verbs.
 
In the studies on event structure, it is primarily the verb that determines the event type, and then, other elements of the structure and discourse are considered as the next layers, respectively. On the other hand, the interpretation of perfect constructions begins with the verb, extending to higher sentential and situational factors afterwards. This paper is intended to investigate the issues of event type and interpretation of present perfect in Persian, both at the verbal level, putting aside the discussion of higher elements and factors of structure and situation. Furthermore, this investigation is restricted to verbs of simple morphological structure, leaving for future research the issue of the contribution of verbal and non-verbal elements of prefixal and complex predicates.
 
The main part of our data was sampled from the corpus of Bijankhan et al. (2011), and occasionally, some data from Google library were included as well (available at https://books.google.com). From the main corpus, 8352 sentences were extracted by searching the label ‘verb-participle’, and 21135 sentences by ‘verb-quotative’. Then, 74 Persian simple verbs were searched in the extracted data, and for each verb, depending on the number of corpus sentences, 10 to 100 sentences of present perfect (2360 sentences, altogether) were sampled, labelling all for interpretation and event type. At data analysis stage, afterwards, a number of verbs and adverbs were searched and labelled from Google library, as required by the analyses (442 sentences for 32 verbs). The event types were determined based on Vendler’s (1957) classification, and interpretations of present perfect were specified according to Comrie’s (1976) list.
Discussion of Results and As far as our data and analyses are concerned, in present perfect constructions, the interpretations mostly found among statives are resultative and existential; activities are generally interpreted as existential, and achievements and accomplishments as resultative by default. A general conclusion from these generalizations is that the resultative interpretation has obtained the largest portion, and the existential interpretation is in the second place. The overwhelming status of the resultative interpretation is along with the general property of perfect constructions, i.e. ‘the continuing relevance to a previous situation’ in the form of establishing the result state at the present time. On the other hand, if the verb’s lexical meaning (in activities and some statives) or another element in the linguistic context or the situation cancels the result state, existential interpretation will be achieved.
However, the lowest portion belongs to the universal interpretation, and at least within our results, no portion is dedicated to the ‘hot news’ interpretation among default interpretations (in the absence of some adverbs, or contextual and situational elements). This conclusion for restricting the main interpretations to resultative, existential and universal, is along with Pancheva’s (2003) approach who considers these three interpretations as the minimum ones for this construction, and assumes that the hot news and recent past interpretations are a variant of resultative or existential.

The investigation of linguistic devices for encoding the grammatical concepts, in a diachronic perspective, shows considerable patterns of grammaticalization and language change. These changes are very slow and gradual, while extremely systematic and teleological. The present research studies the devices used in Persian aspect and mood systems throughout a period of approximately 1800 years (since the early Sasanid period to the present time) and shows that every grammatical change can trigger a new chain of related changes. The decline of the rich morphology of Old Persian in the process of changing into Middle Persian motivated a compensatory and substituting reaction in the language system. Therefore, the system started a very long process of developing two new morphological devices, and the task was fulfilled. The result of this process is the inflectional suffixes mi- and be- in today’s Persian: the former, having an aspectual and a mood function, has become obligatory in almost all of related environments; and the latter with a mood function has not become obligatory in some environments yet, and it is on its way to spread. This article studies the behavior of the two mentioned morphemes in their process of grammaticalization in Middle and Modern periods as well as the way they competed with the alternative mechanisms in Classical Modern Persian, and the development of some intermediate structures (simultaneous occurrence of grammatical morphemes) in the transition period.