amer gheitury

The land of Iran boasts a rich historical, cultural, and linguistic heritage. This journal, Research in Western Iranian Languages and Dialects, is dedicated to the documentation, analysis and, ultimately, recognition of the languages of Iran, with a dual focus on the languages of western Iran, and languages in the Western division of the Iranian language family in particular.
     In this first English issue, the broad mandate of the journal is in evidence through a series of articles which are geographically and typologically expansive in their coverage. The languages featured here trace a path from the northernmost province of West Azarbayjan, through Kordestan, Kermanshah, Lorestan, Khuzestan, and beyond. The theme of this issue builds on the increasingly robust body of linguistic description and analysis of Kurdish (Gündoğdu et al., 2019; Haig & Öpengin, 2022; Sheyholislami et al., 2025), but the contributions also embrace other languages related to Kurdish.

The present study aims to explore negation patterns in Ardalani, a variety of central Kurdish (Sorani) spoken mainly in Sanandaj, within the typological framework proposed by Miestamo (2005). This framework explains the main negation patterns found in the languages of the world as symmetric, asymmetric, and symmetric-asymmetric. Although Miestamo applied this stypological framework to analyze a wide range of languages, none of the Kurdish dialects are represented in his study. The data used in the present study comprises 263 negative sentences with their affirmative counterparts, which were obtained from the spoken Sorani material broadcast on Kurdistan Radio and Television. The results indicate that Ardalani follows a symmetric-asymmetric pattern. It reveals a symmetric pattern in the past tense with perfective and imperfective habitual aspect but displays an asymmetric pattern in the imperfective continuous aspect and modal structures. For the sentences in the imperfective continuous aspect, the speakers apply either A/Fin/Neg-LV or A/Cat/ATM. In the former, the verb loses finiteness and the features move to the available copula in the structure. In the latter, the aspect changes from continuous to habitual, a more common strategy. Modal structures also follow A/Cat/ATM, in which the modal marker is removed and replaced with the negation marker. However, the modal content remains semantically the same as its affirmative counterpart.

Persian independent pronouns can be considered as the head of noun phrases) Shaghaghi, 2015). However, the head of the noun phrase with a prepositional phrase (preposition + pronominal clitic) can be occupied by a pronominal clitic. To deal with this dual behavior, we adopt distributed morphology, developed by Halle & Marantz (1993), to analyze the internal structure of dependent pronouns or pronominal clitics. This research draws upon descriptive-analytical method, and the data come from Persian language. In this paper, theoretical arguments as well as linguistic evidence will be employed to examine the hypotheses. We suggest that the so-called “pronominal clitics” are actually different elements with different semantic features and structural relationships. Finally, we argue that the (M) index, as a secondary product of morphological merger (Merger) between the two heads, is supposed to be the distinctive element of the dependent pronouns, not of the independent pronouns.

The present study aims to investigate the performance of Persian deaf individuals in using nonverbal inflectional and derivational processes. Drawing upon the assumption that different components of language are not impaired to the same extent as a result of missing a critical period, the morphological knowledge of participants in the three categories of noun, adjectives, and adverbs were examined using multiple choice questions. Participants were ten deaf students aged 15-20 and a matched number of hearing students of similar age. While error scores indicated a significant gap between deaf and hearing group, a within group analysis indicated a significant difference between inflectional and derivational processes within the deaf group who were significantly worse on tasks related to inflectional processes. It is also concluded that the deaf students, due to missing the critical years of language acquisition are less skilled at using both inflectional and derivational morphology as compared to their hearing peers.

The present era is the era of science's control over human beliefs. Man's need to know the nature of himself and the world around him has led him to believe in phenomena based on objective evidence, and this has caused cognitive science to become the favorite field of many scholars today. One of the main fields of cognitive sciences is linguistics, which is based on the study of language. Since language can be considered as a tool to represent the mind; therefore, cognitive linguistics goes beyond the study of the apparent structure of language and investigates very complex fundamental operations that play a major role in the development of language grammar, conceptualization, speaking and thinking. The theoretical approach of this field is based on experimental observations and scientific experiments of psychology and neuroscience, and its purpose is to understand how linguistic information is represented in the mind, to learn language and to understand and use it. In recent decades, the analysis and explanation of metaphor understanding processes has been the focus of many linguists. One of the main challenges in this direction is to find a solution that can explain the processes involved in understanding different types of metaphor. In this research, considering the mechanism of language understanding in the brain, we examined two different groups of conventional metaphors and unconventional metaphors. This research is descriptive-analytical and based on the articles, books and research done in the field of brain connection with metaphor understanding process. The results of this research show that understanding conventional metaphors causes activity in the left middle temporal gyrus, the right fusiform part and the inferior frontal gyrus. While, the fusiform part of the right side is related to the integration of visual and semantic information. On the other hand, unconventional metaphors continuously activate the left fusiform gyrus and the right precone.

In Farsi, the clitic pronouns are often added to the stem as the last element, but in some structures, they can be immediately attached to their hosts. The ability to describe this dual behavior can be used as a criterion to check the effectiveness of different approaches. This research aims to find out if Distributed Morphology and its post-syntactic mechanism are needed to determine the position of different morphemes at the level of the word? Or it can be explained using lexicalist hypothesis? For this purpose, after introducing the theoretical background and previous researches, we analyze data from Farsi; the analyses shows that the assumptions of lexicalists cannot explain why the clitic pronoun (shon) has two positions in (xodeshoniha) and (xodihashon), but this phenomenon is not allowed in other structures. On the other hand, by analyzing the data in the framework of Distributed Morphology, it was found that only with the existence of post-syntactic operations such as local dislocation and considering the content feature of clitics and stems the dual behavior of the clitic pronouns can be explained.

Cognitive poetics, as one of the main branches of cognitive sciences, allows the reader to analyze a text with the help of tools and text builder elements. The present study aims at identifying the builder elements of poetry, an excerpt from the poems of Shirko Bikas entitled “Ma’rouf Aghaee, a rhythmic poem and a dead rain" from the collection of “lights above the peak” to study and analyze it by descriptive-analytic method and based on Text Worlds Theory proposed by Paul Werth in 1999. The results were obtained by identifying the different layers of Shirko Bikas poem, which was accompanied by a departure from the world of the original text to the sub-worlds and then a return to the world of the original text. The results showed that the most important feature of his poems is the use of special names, conceptual metaphors and also the use of adverbs as the most important world building elements in the building of the sub-worlds and the text world. The findings showed that the use of mental processes in the building of sub-worlds and the use of relational and material processes in the building of the text world are the most important function advancing propositions. And also, the findings indicated that in the selected excerpt, the reason for the tendency to read these poems is in the high frequency of the want-worlds and the collapse of the layer of the discourse world and the text world.

The present study is not only the first comprehensive study about a Kurdish poet using Text World theory, but also the least not the last research of the formation of the location of the text world layer of Chair written by Shirko Bikas which has been done with the descriptive-analytic method and the aim of achieving the location of the text world of Chair based on Text World Theory. The data have been selected and collected from Chair via library method. Examining the formation of the text world of Chair using world-building elements and function-advancing propositions showed that the text world of Chair is represented through place names, and in the absence of place names, through the world-building elements of time and character. Also, one part of the representation of the location of the text world of Chair is obtained through the verbal phrases of function-advancing propositions. In addition, the representation of location in the text world of Chair provided cognitive-poetic evidence to support Shirko Bikas's claim that location and names cover a wide range of her works.

The present study aims to metaphorically represent the semantic layer of the sub-worlds in the concept of worlds in the Text Worlds Theory proposed by Werth in 1999. In this study, the nature of Shirko Bikas's poetic landscapes was studied linguistically, and it was determined the type of his perspective and point of view. The methodological nature of this qualitative study is descriptive-analytical, and the data were collected by a library method from the book titled chair written by Shirko Bikas. This study also showed how the poetic landscapes of Sherko Bikas's poetry were the means of expressing his thoughts and mentality at the beginning of the chair. Thus, relying on the concept of metaphor in Text Worlds theory, the Kurdish poet's metaphorical worlds were deciphered at the beginning of the chair to discover the attitude based onwhich this work was created. The results showed that the external underlying mega-metaphor as internal mega-metaphor is represented through the surface structural micro-metaphor of wind, poetry, story, and play all of which are considered as human.

The present descriptive-analytic article is aimed to study and compare the syntactic structure and linear order of Persian verbal inflectional categories within the framework of Distributed Morphology (DM) (Halle & Marantz, 1993). First we suppose the syntactic hierarchical position of functional categories and clause syntactic structure of Persian to be what Taleghani (2008) proposes. Then based on the post syntactic operations such as, “lowering” and “local dislocation” and what Embick (2015) proposes for linearization of constituents within the framework of DM, syntactic and linear position of verbal compounds in present, past and future tenses are compared. Finally, any mismatches between the two structures are explained through the two post syntactic operations. Research findings showed that “negation morpheme”, compared to other morphemes, mismatches much more in the syntactic and linear structures and requires more explanations in post syntactic component. It is concluded that this morpheme at post-syntactic component, lowers and prefixes mostly to vp and in some cases to aspect and auxiliary morphemes.

Modern linguistics and particularly textual and semiotic approaches to structure and functions of texts have provided researchers with important theoretical tools and concepts for modern textual studies of the Qur'an. One of these important approaches that seems useful in studying different types of text is Halliday’s systemic functional grammar. For him, language has three main functions including ideational metafunction which enables us to talk about things in the world, textual metafunction which is responsible for making coherent communicative texts, and interpersonal metafunction according to which we interact with one another through language. Each of the three functions is realized linguistically by three lexico-grammatical structures, that is, the transitivity structure, the thematic structure, and the  mood structure which is itself made of two main elements: the subject and finite. Having analyzed the mood structure in the selected Qur’anic text consisting of 78 verses and 99 clauses, it was concluded that the present tense and indicative mood are the dominant tense and mood respectively in this chapter. This has resulted in a largely spoken style directed toward the audience which is in line with the main function of this sacred text which is to link God and men.

Ellipsis constructions are formal patterns in which certain syntactic structure that is expressed to convey the intended content is omitted. The aim of this paper is to provide the basis for a cognitive construction grammar description of coordination ellipsis and gapping in Persian language. Therefore, the present research is based on the descriptive-analytical method, and since ellipsis is widely used in both written and spoken Persian, our corpus will include both types and it adopts cognitive and construction-based approach. The results show that Persian data can be analyzed, using the concept of access and activation introduced by Langacker (2012). Non-constituent coordination is analyzed in the context of other sorts of clausal reduction, including the accentual reduction of unfocused elements as well as ellipsis, where overlapping content is left unexpressed. A pivotal desctiptive notion is the differential i.e. the content appearing in one clausal window that does not appear in the prior window. The results, also, show that the placement of the differential, when it intrrupts the baseline clause, is important. So, It can easily say that the differential directly follows the anti-differential.

The present study seeks to find the connection between modernism and conceptual metaphors and it is based on the assumption that the principles and components of modernism influence the formation of new novel metaphorical systems. This hypothesis is based on the theories of cognitive semantics and according to the cognitive function of conceptual metaphors and the process of meaning transfer and conceptualization of the human mind. Semantics believe that metaphor is both the basis of thought and the means of expressing it. Therefore, the organization of any idea - religious, political, economic, realistic, modern, etc. - in the human mind is possible through metaphorical channels, and its emergence - in any form and format - requires metaphorical language. . Accordingly, we have studied the conceptual metaphors of the Symphony of the Dead (2007) by Abbas Maroufi as a modernist novel to show the various dimensions of this influence. Studies indicate that some of the prominent components of modernism, including new methods of narration, avoidance of clarity, individualism, cryptography, denial of a single truth, implicit references, etc. in the novel in question to have been used and in seven patterns have led to the formation of special metaphorical systems in the text.

Conversion is the process by which the lexical category of items changes without any change in form. The present study is an attempt to investigate the conversion process in Kalhori Kurdish. This study aims to determine the lexical categories which participate in conversion processes and to show the directionality of them. Furthermore, this study intends to critically evaluate the ability to explanation Kalhori Kurdish database on both Dirven (1999) event schema metonymy and Libere (1992, 2004, 2005) relisting approaches. The data were collected from two Kurdish dictionaries of Karimpur’s xowrhalaat (1380) and Jalilijan’s Baashur (1385). To detect lexical categories, first of all, the identical processes to conversion were discovered and deleted. Then, based on the semantic criterion, the direction of the conversion process is found out. After that, data were analyzed within metonymy and relisting frameworks. The results illustrated that in Kalhori Kurdish, Noun, adjective, and verb are three lexical categories that participate in the conversion process. moreover, the directionality of conversion processes is like the conversion from noun to verb, conversion from adjective to verb, and conversion from verb to noun. The conclusion also indicates that Dirven’s (1999) event schema metonymy can explain the data of Kalhori Kurdish in the conversion process.

Halliday's functional grammar underlines the significance of function and meaning and deals with language for its function in social interactions. The present research aims at exploring the transitivity structure of chapter 12(Joseph) in order to reveal the frequency with which different processes are used and their function in forming the specific style of the narrative. In doing so, we studied all clauses used in the story and described all processes, participants, as well as circumstantial elements in the clauses. Results indicated that material processes outnumbered other processes. A text narrating important events in a prophet’s life is naturaly expected to use more material processes. However, after material processes, verbal processes were the second frequently used ones. The high frequency of verbal processes could be explained with reference to the fact that the story of Joseph is narrated in the form of a set of dialogues where characters converse one another. This is to believe that while narrating events in material processes, the Quran pays much attention to the speech acts performed by characters in the narrative, making the whole narrative proceed in a dialogical style.

Errors are common and systemic deviations resulting from the violation of the rules of the second language. In the present study, lexical errors based on the classification of Dulay, Burt and Krashen of errors (1982) are divided into three categories: intralingual errors, interlingual errors and ambiguous errors. The purpose of this research is to investigate the source and distribution of lexical errors in the speech of Kalhori natives living in Kermanshah. The sample of this quantitative- qualitative study included 170 bilingual Kalhori males and females living in Kermanshah. They were selected equally via voluntary sampling method. After gathering data, at first they were classified and then their frequencies were shown through tables and charts. The results showed that the sources of these errors are intralingual and interlingual. The highest percentage of observed errors belonged to intralingual and then interlingual errors. The results of this study, along with presenting a description of the lexical errors of Kalhori natives, emphasize on the necessity of correcting and improving teaching methods, constructing tests and teaching resources and providing books to teach Persian to Kalhor students, in order to take steps to decrease the problems of Kalhori natives when interacting with Persian natives.

The Grammar of Reading Imagesis a new look into pictures, located in social semiotics. It is implemented in decoding the pictorial signs. Kress and Van Leeuwen (2006), inspired by Halliday’s metafunctions have devised a similar structure for reading pictorial signs named Representational, Interpersonal, and Compositional meanings. The aim of this study is to investigate appropriate answers to the following questions. Can this approach be successful in decoding the Representational, Interpersonal, and Compositional meanings? How much can this approach find the grammatical and semiotic patterns in pictures? Can this approach find the patterns responsible for shaping the special styles of pictures? This study has been conducted on two pictures selected among 23. They have been painted by Soltan­mohammad based on the Siavash and Zahak’s narratives of Shahtahmasb Shahnameh. This study has been divided into three sections. First, the theoretical basis of Reading Images approach was explored. Next, the cases in the pictures which are in accordance with the components of this approach were discovered. Finally, the cases which were in conflict with this approach were discussed. The results of this study reveal that there is a kind of sexism in the pictures which do not exist in these two stories of Shahnameh. In addition, the painter has no tendency towards using perspective, and modality in analyzing his paintings. Furthermore, the echelon structure of the “emergence of snakes on the shoulders of Zohaks’ picture shows the echelon structure of the society it belongs to.

Error is a common and yet predictable phenomenon in the process of learning a second language. Traditionally, errors were seen as obstacles in learning a second language. So they should be avoided, but today errors are regarded as important factors in learning a second language. Language interferences are a category of errors that are the result of transferring a native’s language knowledge to the target language. Language transfer may occur in two ways: positive and negative transfer. Positive transfer occurs when there are similarities between source language and target languages. This transfer will help learning a second language. Negative transfer occurs in cases where there are differences between first and second languages and they cause language interferences.
The present research, within the framework of "error analysis" based on Brown (2007) classification of errors, is intended to analyze the syntactic errors that result from the interference between Kalhori Kurdish and Persian in the speech of Kalhori natives. So, among speech errors, syntactic errors, and among them the errors caused by the interference between first language and second language were analyzed. The approach of this study is integrated (quantitative/qualitative). The sample included 170 bilingual Kalhori males and females living in Kermanshah. They were selected via voluntary sampling method. Interviews were held in the presence of interviewees to collect data, during which participants were asked to speak about a memory in Persian. The results of the study showed that errors from the most frequent to the least frequent were of components of compound verbs, prepositions, order of components in a sentence, “ra”, incorrect verb, using redundant “je”, conjunction and incorrect pronoun. The reason for the occurrence of language interference in the speech of Kalhori natives is that in the mind of language learners, Kurdish language system is completely formed as the first language. According to the transfer theory, the reason for the existence of interlingual errors is the existence of this mental system. At the beginning of learning Persian as a second language, the language learner relies in many cases on his first language. Thus, using first language structure leads to the interference of structures.
The results of the present study can help to present some pedagogical guidelines for teachers, syllabus designers, test constructors and language learners to decrease problems of learning Persian. So if a teacher becomes aware of linguistic findings, such as error analysis, he can figure out why learning is not happening. In addition to that identifying errors helps teachers to evaluate the progress of their students and they become aware of the points they should put more emphasis. Also, the results of this study can help syllabus designers to design books for bilingual students. Since the purpose of the tests is to evaluate student's knowledge, test constructors, with knowledge of the errors recognize where students have difficulty with. In this way, the reason for the problems of bilingual students is not just their lack of attention to the lessons. Learners themselves can make their assumptions about language through their errors and identify and resolve their linguistic problem.

Despite numerous studies conducted to explore the manifestations of aphasia in different languages of the world, language-specific patterns of aphasic patients in Kalhori as a southern dialect of Kurdish spoken in part of Kermanshah Province, Iran, remains largely unpacked. The present study aims at investigating language deficits of a forty-year-old Kurdish-Persian aphasic woman, here F. D., who was diagnosed with Broca’s aphasia.
To assess her linguistic competence, and more particularly, her knowledge of syntax and semantics, we administered a modified version of the Bilingual Aphasia Test in Kalhori.
Although she showed severe deficits in almost all modalities and levels examined, results indicated definiteness, prepositions and verb agreement with the subject as the most problematic areas.
While impairments to do with prepositions and parts of speech are expected features of aphasic patients, as far as the assessment of verbal morphology of Kalhori is concerned, results seem to replicate the results achieved by Nilipour et al. (2001) researching Persian bilingual aphasics.

An interesting area of research in deaf studies concerns the idea that various language components and particularly different functional categories such as tense, mood, and agreement are not impaired to the same extent. The present study aimed to explore the performance of Persian speaking deaf individuals on tests dealing with five functional categories, namely complementizer/Wh-words, tense, aspect, mood, and agreement.
This research was a cross-sectional study with two groups, first of which included 11 (4 boys and 7 girls) profoundly deaf students with hearing loss above 90 dB for both ears, aged between 14 and 22; and second group of 15 students with normal hearing with mean (SD) age of 14 (2) years. In addition to interviews, we also conducted sentence-completion and grammaticality judgment tasks to explore their performance in each category.
The deaf group performed significantly worse than hearing group in all the tests. Our results also demonstrated a significant numerical gap between all five categories in the deaf group, beginning from the lowest least impaired category, which is in agreement, and ending up to the most impaired category, that is, complementizer.
We found a dissociation of functional categories in deaf individuals. Also, higher nodes are more vulnerable to impairments than lower nodes.

It is believed that different components of our linguistic capabilities are not impaired to the same extent in aphasic patients. Moreover theoretical issues on aphasia can be researched on patients with different languages. Thus, we aimed to study the dissociation of inflectional and derivational morphology by assessing the performance of 8 Persian bilingual aphasic patients in producing Persian derivational and inflectional words.
Material and To explore the capability of patients in using derivational and inflectional words, in addition to obtaining a brief history from all patients and an image of the impaired regions of the brain, two types of tasks, word-repetition and spontaneous speech tasks, were administered to them. The results were then statistically analyzed to see which part of their word-formation competence, derivational or inflectional processes, was impaired more seriously.
The results of word-repetition and spontaneous speech tests indicated that patients did better at derivational morphology. In addition, a quantitative analysis revealed a gap between scores for derivational and inflectional words, confirming the dissociation of the two types of the process as claimed by generative linguists.
Based on the results patients had a better performance on derivational words as compared to inflectional ones confirming this linguistic theory that the two types of process take place in different sections, i.e. derivational process belongs to morphology whereas inflectional process is basically syntactic.

Considering the fact that different components of linguistic knowledge are not equally vulnerable, this study investigated the knowledge of argument structure of verbs in a group of deaf Persian speakers, as people who have been deprived of linguistic data during the early years of their childhood that is the critical period of language acquisition.
In this study, the knowledge of verb arguments was examined through two tasks, one written (for 10 verbs) and one pictorial (for 10 verbs), in the two groups of deaf and normal hearing individuals, each of which consisting of 12 participants (6 girls and 6 boys).
The analysis of verb argument structure showed that the number of errors in pictorial tests and recognized verb arguments was not significantly different between the groups. However, the main challenge of the deaf participants was attributed to mapping the arguments of the verb onto syntactic level.
The results showed that linguistic levels are not equally dependent on the successful experience of the critical period. The syntax level was highly affected by the critical period, while concepts like verb arguments had the least vulnerability.

Building upon Fairclough''s (1989) stages of critical discourse analysis, i.e. the micro level text (discourse) analysis, and the macro level processing (ideology) and social (power) analyses, the present paper foregrounds some ideological facilitators of institutional power enactment, which are multimodal interruptions of professors in the last parts of M.A viva sessions. These verbal and nonverbal interruptions or discourse types are taken-for-granted by all the academic people, and these beliefs are ideologically held and transferred to others, since they are legitimately and naturally re-produced, though having the form of a coercive power. This paper presents a new understanding of power, by urging that power in the present study is both non-modern and coercive, as opposed to Van Dijk (1996), discussing the features of a modern power as being ''persuasive and manipulative'' rather than ''coercive or incentive.'' The data consisted of four main themes: (1) Verbal & nonverbal commands; (2) Interruptive comments and explanations; (3) Gatekeeping power including (a) Time management, and (b) knowledge management; and (4) Interruptive activities. This paper has implications for applying CDA in higher education and especially in face-to-face oral exams as opposed to blind peer reviews, where the coercive power takes the place of collaboration.

The influence of Saussure on the twentieth century thought and modern approaches to the study of language has often been acknowledged by great figures in the social sciences and humanities، to whom structural linguistics has been considered as a major science، a philosophy، or a long-awaited methodology for social sciences and humanities. Despite a great number of studies aimed at uncovering the history of theoretical linguistics، there has been little attempt at tracing it to the philosophical context in which it was originally developed. This is particularly true of research carried out in Iran. The present study aims at first revisiting the Saussurian concept of the linguistic sign and the particular approach to the study of language known to us as ‘structural’; and seond، exploring the lines of thought linking Saussure to Rousseaue and Hegel، and from another perspective linking him to rationalist thinkers.

The present study aims at exploring kinship terms and the different ways in which they are used to refer to and address relatives and non-relatives in Hawrami, an Iranian language spoken in Paveh, a border city in Kermanshah province. The relevant linguistic and cultural data are obtained primarily by one of the researchers as a native speaker of the dialect and through field works and interviews with native speakers. In addition to analyzing consanguineal and affinal terms, and words for step-relatives, some space is also devoted to discuss pragmatic aspects of the words, particularly in contexts where the terms are used to address relatives as well as non-relatives. Considering the fact that the authors came across no serious study of Hawrami kinship terminology, the present study might be one of the first preliminary steps to a better understanding of the cultural and anthropological aspects of this Iranian dialect.