نشریه زبان فارسی و گویش های ایرانی
سال سوم شماره 2 (پیاپی 6، پاییز و زمستان 1397)

By “broken form” we mean the written form of a colloquial Persian word, affix or clitic which firstly reflects the colloquial pronunciation of that form, and secondly has an equivalent formal form with different pronunciation in formal Persian. Here are some examples of Persian broken forms and their formal equivalent forms: اگه/اگر; می تونم/می توانم; رو/را. Broken forms were introduced firstly into Persian modern literary works such as novels and dramas especially to show the actual and colloquial dialogues of their characters. This paper deals with Persian broken forms in Persian dictionaries. We try to answer such frequently asked questions as follows: 1) Are we allowed to enter the broken forms into dictionaries as independent entries? If yes, then why? and 2) Which forms have to be entered in dictionaries? Based on a detailed corpus prepared from real Persian literary texts we conclude that there are just a few words that necessarily have to be entered into dictionaries. We also discussed about the way these items have to be entered into general Persian dictionaries. The present contribution aims to portray a descriptive analysis of “broken forms” in Persian, a Persian-specific category which should be described in its own terms. Therefore, the explanation being argued here seems to be superior to framework-bound analyses and is presented in a framework-free manner. It has been discussed and suggested that all broken forms used in Persian Novels and dramas must be included in Persian general dictionaries as independent entries. The independent entries may be  reduced ones, in the sense that the reader may be referred to the formal entry for all the related information including meaning, example, part of speech, and so on…), however  two points are strongly expected to be included in the reduced entry: 1. The stylistic label, and 2. The pronunciation. Generally-speaking, there are three types of broken forms: 1) Stylistic free forms; 2) Verbal Forms; and 3) Clitic Forms. It is proposed that the stylistic free forms are the most current broken forms which are produced by some more and less productive phonological rules. Based on our corpus they are as follows:آ/ آقا sir؛ آتیش/ آتش fire؛ آروم/ آرام rest؛ آق/ آقا sir؛ ابرام/ ابراهیم Abraham (proper noun)؛ اروا/ ارواح ghost؛ امبر/ انبر clamp؛ الان/ الآن now؛ اوس/ استاد master؛ اوسا/ استاد master؛ اوسا/ استاد master؛ بادام/ بادوم almond؛ بام/ بوم roof؛ باهار/ بهار spring؛ البت/ البته of course؛ برا/ برای for؛ پمبه/ پنبه cotton؛ پوس/ پوست skin؛ په/ پس then؛ پیرن/ پیراهن shirt؛ تموم/ تمام all؛ تو/ توی in؛ تومن/ تومان tuman (Iranian Currency)؛تیکه/ تکه part؛ جاهاد/ جهاد sacred war؛ جمبه/ جنبه Friday؛ جیگر/ جگر liver…The verbal forms are divided into two types :a)verbal endings; such as بخوابه[1]/ بخوابد orبخوابین[2]/ بخوابید  or بخوابن[3]/ بخوابند…and b)stylistic alternations of present verb stems, such as بینم[4]/ ببینم; بدم[5]/ بدهم … and finally the clitic forms being just a few but highly frequent are clitic broken forms in Persian language which may be divided into four groups: a) Endings of the verb to be (بودن); b) forms of topic marker را; c) types of pronominal clitic; and d) adverbial clitic  هم/ م (also/ too). None of the four clitic forms can have an independent entry in dictionaries because they are not free morphemes, therefore they are briefly introduced in explanatory tables in dictionaries. Our analysis is based upon a corpus of 11200 broken forms (tokens) extracted randomly from the dialogues of 112 contemporary Persian published novels and dramas (1917-2017), i.e. 100 broken forms from each work. Looking up the extracted forms in some general Persian dictionaries, we noticed that nearly not a single broken form has been entered the dictionaries as an entry. The pertaining and significant   hindrances arise when foreigners learning Persian language need to find the meaning of these actual forms but cannot find them in any general Persian dictionary, however Persian lexicographers, editors and grammarians are biased to ignore such forms so that they usually don't take them into consideration. Notwithstanding such old and strong negative attitudes, Persian novelists and playwrights make use of the broken forms vastly and freely. We discussed and suggested here that all the broken forms used largely in Persian contemporary novels and dramas should be entered into general Persian dictionaries with a stylistic label such as 'COLLIQUIAL' or 'BROKEN' or so on. In this paper, based on our limited corpus discussed previously, we attempted to extract a list of Persian broken forms. “Broken forms” are written forms of a colloquial Persian words, affixes or clitics. A broken form, therefore, reflects the colloquial pronunciation of each form, and has an equivalent formal form with different pronunciation in formal Persian. Broken forms were introduced firstly into Persian modern literary works such as novels and dramas especially to show the actual and colloquial dialogues of their characters. It has been discussed in this paper that broken forms, especially those used vastly in Persian modern literature, must be recorded in Persian general dictionaries. Based on a detailed corpus extracted from real Persian literary texts we conclude that there are just a few words that necessarily have to be entered into dictionaries.

[1]. He sleeps

[2]. You sleep

[3]. They sleep

[4]. I see

[5]. I give

The present research is a corpus- based study on Persian intonation. Previous studies on Persian intonation have only focused on experimental data and to date few researches have been carried out on Persian intonational patterns as realized in natural spoken corpora. The aim of the present research is to evaluate the intonation patterns of Persian content and grammatical words in a natural spoken corpus. The content words included nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs, and the grammatical words included pronouns, prepositions and copular verbs. Earlier researches posit two types of pitch accent in Persian intonatioanl grammar: A bitonal pitch accent, namely L+H* that marks words with stress on a non-initial syllable, together with their enclitics, and a mono-tonal pitch accent, i.e., H* that describes mono-syllabic words or initial-stressed words. The question addressed in the present contribution is to what extent the intonational patterns assumed in the Persian intonation literature may be replicated in studies of Persian natural spoken corpora.    This research is based on the Auto-segmental theory of intonation. The intonational structure under this theory is composed of a number of tonal events aligned with specific segmental landmarks. The most important tonal events are pitch accents and boundary tones. Pitch accents are associated with stressed syllables while boundary tones are aligned with the boundary of prosodic units. These tonal events are called tonal targets as they are linked with specific segmental landmarks in the speech signal. The auto-segmental theory of intonation posits six pitch accents namely H*، L*،L+H*، L*+H، H+L*، H*+L.Among these pitch accents, L* and H* are mono-tonal, while L+H*، L*+H، H+L*، H*+L are bitonal. A mono-tonal accent is one which is composed of either a single high (H*) or low (L*) tone. Bitonal accents, on the other hand, are compound tones made of a combination of a low and a high tone, irrespective of their order.   The Methodology of the research is descriptive. A number of Persian content words, including nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs, and grammatical words including pronouns, prepositions and copular verbs, were randomly selected from 104 utterances from FarsDat (Farsi spoken language database). All the utterances had been spoken by native speakers of Persian speaking the standard dialect of Tehrani Farsi. The target words, content and grammatical, were segmented from the acoustic signals of the utterances for further analysis. All acoustic parameters were measured using Praat software, version 5.2.12.
Measurements were made simultaneously on F0 contour and spectrograph. The F0 patterns of the target words were investigated to see whether they bear a pitch accent, and if they do, what kind of pitch accent they are most associated with.  The results suggested that while content words usually receive pitch accents, grammatical words are rarely produced with a pitch accent. The findings further suggested that the morpho-syntactic category of a given word is unable to affect its tonal pattern. The distribution of the pitch accent types H* and L*+H revealed that Persian words are most often produced with the L*+H accent type, irrespective of their lexical stress pattern, and that the H* is used in initial-stressed words only when the segmental condition for the realization of the L tone is not satisfied. It was also argued that the alignment of the H tone in L*+H accent is affected by the presence or absence of enclitics in a word: In words with an affixed enclitic, the H peak is delayed, and realized in the post-accented syllable, while in words with no enclitic pronoun, the peak is realized on the accented syllable with no delay. Overall, the findings of the present research indicated that all Persian words, irrespective of their stress pattern receive the bitonal pitch accent L*+H, and the pitch accent H*is realized on words with initial stress only when the phonological condition for the realization of the L tone is not met.

Conditional construction is a linguistic universal that occurs systematically across natural languages, potentially true for all of them. The conditional sentence is a compound statement composed of two main and subordinate clauses namely apodosis and protasis respectively. Most languages use conditional connective words to mark this construction. In Persian, “agar” has the most frequency among the conditional connective words. Except this word, there are some other connective words that can be used as a conditional connective word such as “tâ, čonanče, vaGti, hargâh, be šarte inke, hattâ agar,…”. Regarding the importance of conditional construction, this study examines verb’s tense of the protasis and apodosis clauses of the conditional sentences in the contemporary Persian language based on the theoretical framework of Declerck and Reed (2001). Declerck and Reed (2001: 65-66) have proposed a kind of typology for the different types of possible worlds cross-linguistically. Possible world is a situation in which things and incidents exist or could exist. Whereas a real possible world is a situation in which things really exist, an unreal possible world is a situation in which they could exist.   Based on this typology, the   possible world of a  protasis clause can be factual or theoretical. In the case  the possible world is theoretical, it can be neutral or non-neutral. The non-neutral possible world itself is divided into closed, open, tentative and counterfactual worlds. The canonical pattern of tense system in languages of the world portrays a distinction between past and non-past or future and non-future tenses.  English and Persian use a dual distinction between past and non-past tenses. In this research, we aim to examine the  tense of the protasis and apodosis clauses based on the type of the possible worlds of  protasis clauses. In order to investigate the tense of the protasis and apodosis clauses in the conditional sentences of Modern Persian, we selected 10 fiction books of the most famous contemporary Persian authors. Selecting approximately 5000 words and 25 pages of each book randomly, we extracted conditional sentences   through the sample. The corpus involving 50622 words and 254 pages, showed 286 conditional sentences. To derive the tense of the possible worlds, the type of the conditional construction of each conditional sentence was determined based on the theoretical framework of Declerck and Reed (2001) and the tense of the protasis and apodosis clauses was analyzed using the statistical calculations. Finally, we examined the relationship between the type of the conditional construction and the tense of the protasis and apodosis clauses. The present contribution presented an attempt to investigate the probability of occurrence of past and non-past tenses of the protasis and apodosis clauses separately with regard to the data and the use of computations and statistical analysis methods. The study identified that  the tense variation of protasis and apodosis clauses in Persian is fewer than the English cognates . It was also argued that Persian represents a strong tendency in applying clauses that the tense of protasis and apodosis is non-past to be of the “open” division. On the other hand, we demonstrated that there is a strong tendency for the tense of protasis and apodosis being in the past to be of  factual characteristics. The study concluded that as for the open conditionals, the speaker often uses conditional construction to portray a situation which, as yet, has not occurred or could later occurr. Therefore, the tense is often non-past. On the other hand, exploiting factual conditional, the speaker represents a situation believed in the truth of its occurrence. Therefore the past tense will serve to express the factive situation.  Examining the corpus of the present research, we concluded that Persian conditional sentences can be classified according to Declerck and Reed’s typology. It was further indicated that in Modern Persian, the types of conditional constructions address   factual, neutral, closed, open, tentative and counterfactual divisions. We also showed that the past and the non-past tense of the protasis clause were almost equal-with the non-past to be slightly more than the past- while in the apodosis clause, non-past tense was more than the past form. Furthermore, the study exhibited that there is a tendency between the tense of the protasis and apodosis clauses and the conditional type in Modern Persian; however, the tendencies are not absolute and it is not possible to guess the type of conditional construction certainly based on the tense of the verbs. Investigating the relationship between the modal meanings of protasis and apodosis clauses and the type of conditional constructions will be performed in further studies.

The most basic elements of a language which play a key role in majority of syntactic theories and morphological analyses are “parts of speech” including “adjectives”, the subject of the present contribution. The sources of Persian traditional Grammar have divided adjectives into various categories such as subjective, objective, ability types and the like. However, a considerable challenge for defining and categorizing adjectives relates to the fact that the parts of speech (henceforth, POS) have extended marked grammatical functions besides their unmarked functions. Therefore, to describe and explain POS, we should resort to a theory positing that the members of a category are not equal. The present research seeks to provide answers to the following questions:1.How are ability adjectives associated with subjective and objective patterns?
2.Which feature(s) of prototypical adjectives do subjective and objective adjectives lack?
3.Which part(s) of speech result(s) from the categorical shift of subjective and objective adjectives and how do these adjectives differ from other types of adjectives? This research has been conducted within the framework of Typological Prototype Theory (henceforth, TPT), which is a theory about categorization and has arisen from cognitive linguistics. Cognitive grammar posits that language is relative, and as Langacker (1987) puts, the linguistic system is not an all-or-nothing matter. The prototype theory was developed in the works of Brent & Key and also Rosch in the 1960s and 1970s, however it was Lakoff who first used it in relation to linguistic categories.
In line with Cognitive Grammar, Croft (2001) developed the Radical Construction Grammar in the form of a theory based upon Typological Prototype Theory, according to which the prototypical function of POS occurs in unmarked functions, and the POS may also appear in non-prototypical or peripheral functions through structural coding. This point of view states that each grammatical category has central and peripheral members, with the central members having higher frequency, being less structurally coded, and showing a complete potential behavior. 
By structural coding, we mean the use of morphemes to make a lexical category marked. Croft (2001) uses two criteria of structural coding and potential behavior for typological markedness. According to the former criterion, the marked value of a grammatical category has equal or greater morphemes than its unmarked value, while according to the latter criterion, one value of a conceptual category is grammatically more 'versatile' than the other. The grammatical behavior of the unmarked and the marked POS can be differentiated using the sub-criteria of behavioral potential criterion including comparability, function in attributive and predicative positions, and frequency of occurrence.
According to Croft (2001), there are constructions in all languages of the world for predication, reference and modification, which express the propositional acts needed by languages. We can use these propositional acts to identify the POS. Words that can fill in the positions of predication, reference and modification can be divided into semantic classes, and the basic propositional act functions of strengths of the prototypes include action, object and property. This is a descriptive – analytical research conducted using the content analysis method. The adjectives used as the raw data were collected by the researchers and the frequency of their occurrence were examined both in the Persian Language Database (PLDB) and Bijankhan Corpus. Considering the diverse texts and words used in these corpuses, it is expected that they are appropriate representatives of the texts and words used in Contemporary Persian. It is noteworthy that considering the practical limitations and the impossibility of analyzing all the selected adjectives, the researchers selected and analyzed a limited number of action adjectives and tried to select basic adjectives which are more frequently used and do not belong to a specific colloquial or written style. The present research showed that subjective and objective adjectives belong to the <modification, action> class of adjectives and are non-prototypical or peripheral adjectives. Examining the semantic and syntactic features of ability adjectives and comparing them with the subjective and objective adjectives, the researchers concluded that ability adjectives can be placed within either subjective or objective types of adjectives depending on their construction. This research also revealed that subjective and objective adjectives cannot be considered prototypical adjectives based on the structural coding criterion and the comparability sub-criterion. This conclusion was strongly confirmed through the frequency of these adjectives in the PLDB and Bijankhan Corpus. The present contribution also exhibited that the categorical shift of the Persian subjective and objective adjectives is toward the lexical category of noun and that the changes of these adjectives are different from the adjectives denoting a property or object. This research demonstrated that the TPT is able to account for the behavioral differences of the adjectives denoting property, action and object, but is incapable of explaining the behavioral differences of the sub-categories of these classes of adjectives. To reach more reliable conclusions, a typological- functional theory is needed to differentiate between all members of a category by considering all morphological, syntactic, semantic, stylistic and pragmatic criteria.
Further research can analyze other types of Persian adjectives including those denoting object and property within the framework of the TPT and determine the degree to which they are close to or distant from prototypical adjectives. It is also suggested that future researches examine other POS within this framework to specify the degree of prototypicality, thereby taking a step toward bridging the gaps in relation to the POS in Persian.

In this study, the function of “rɒː” in some Persian dialects of Khorasan is sought. There are many studies of various kinds about the function of “rɒː” both in contemporary and previous periods of Persian. The reason behind it is the various position of “rɒː” as well as the changing function of it during various periods of Persian Language. However, the function of “rɒː” in Persian dialects and other Iranian languages and dialects is not well addressed yet. It seems that this grammatical function shows a different mode in Iranian languages and dialects from that of Persian Language.

This study is descriptive-analytic and the data are gathered from two sources: one from the printed works like articles and theses which are called secondary data and the other from the native speakers of the dialects which is called primary data. The source of the printed works has been cited in the text.

/rɒ:/ locates in a different position and has a different behavior comparing to the other Persian adpositions, so in different research it is identified with different names, such as case marker, adposition and direct object marker. In the traditional Persian grammars it is a marker which identifies direct object. In linguists’ works it has been paid attention to both syntactic (direct object marker) and semantic-discursive functions (as definiteness, topic or contrastive topic, specificity and presupposition marker). For example Sadeghi (1348) calls it a definiteness marker and Dabir-Moghaddam introduces it as a topic marker. Karimi (2003, 1996, 1990, 1989) attributes it a specificity marking function and Ghomeshi(1996) and Ganjavi(2007) believe that it’s a presupposition marker. Hosseini Fatemi (2013) challenges all these functions and believes that “while definiteness, specificity and presupposition capture important aspects of the meaning of /rɒ:/, none of them adequately characterize its semantics and they cannot give a unified account for all its functions”. In her opinion,” /rɒ:/ is a vacuous element which signals the presence of maximality operators higher in the structure”.

Studying the given dialects showed that “rɒː” plays four functions: the first is the same function that is found in Standard Persian that is direct object. In most dialects, this function appears both independently and in clitic form. In some dialects like “khafi” and “Delbari”, it seems to be used only in its clitic form that means its grammaticalization   process is a step forward than standard Persian.
The second function is the preposition “to”. This is seen in some dialects as “Kakhki” and “Neishabouri”. This function is found in the texts of Modern Persian in its first and second periods. It is also used in these texts within some other different functions. The third function of it is to appear in some sentences with enclitic compound verbs, pronominal compound verbs or temporary composite such as “khosh amadan” (to like), “khab mandan” (to fall asleep), “dard amadan” (to hurt), etc. In these structures, the surface subject does not correspond with the verb that is always in its third singular person form.
Studying these structures in the given dialects showed that there are three forms in this respect. In some dialects like Bajestani, the verbs along with the same indexed clitic forms appear with the potential surface subject like that of standard Persian:xoš-om miyâ  
like-I    come-she/he
I like.
In some dialects like “Khafi”, the pronoun does not appear in clitic form, but independently:az    u          xoš mo      namiya
from him/her like I   not-come-she/he
I don’t like him/her
In some dialects like “Kakhki”, this structure is produced with “rɒː” in the absence of the same indexed pronoun with surface subject:Zahrâ-rɒː            bad           miya
Zahrɒː-DO marker bad come-she/he
Zahrɒː dislikes it.
The form of “Kakhki” is used in the first and second periods of modern Persian, the trace of which is abundant in the works of Gulistan of Sa’di and Tarikh-i Bayhaqi. Regarding the fact that in these works, there can be found clitic pronoun of the above structures in limited scale and contemporary Persian is qualified to produce clitic form, it can be claimed that these changes follow the Dual Acquisition Theory of Hawking.
The fourth function of “rɒː” is the not-syntactic use of this marker that is evident in fewer dialects. In other words, this sign is syntactically pointless and expletive and it seems it has only pragmatic/discourse function. This is mostly used in some dialects like “Kakhki” and “Raghei”.
Example from Kakhki Dialect: Zahrâ rɒː az rudevalok mɛtarsa (Zahra is afraid of Lizards).
This function of “rɒː” no longer exists in the contemporary Persian but it exists in ancient periods. Some instances of it were indicated by Dehkhoda in “Samak-e Ayyar.  Another form of this expletive “rɒː” was in Old and middle Persian of Zoroaster that was accompanying with the preposition /az/. Such function of “rɒː” no longer exists in Khorasan’s dialects.

Today, there are not three functions out of four functions of “rɒː” in the contemporary Standard Persian and “rɒː” as a discourse marker is seen along with the non-nominative noun phrases like indirect object noun phrases or adverbial noun phrases instead of nominative ones. In this function, “rɒː” is used so frequently today.It should be indicated that holding the discourse function of “rɒː” is not a phenomenon related to the contemporary Persian, but it holds a long history. However, nowadays the distribution of “rɒː” in this function as well as its usage domain has been changed. The study of functions of “rɒː” in these dialects showed that the situation of “rɒː’ in some Persian dialects of Khorasan is like the situation of it in the texts of Modern Persian in its first and second periods and the changes of it are a step backward than the contemporary standard Persian.

 Oral literature including poetry, songs, lullabies, stories, anecdotes, proverbs and the like is being transferred from generation to generation in an unlettered way. The scholar's lack of interest in folk literature, particularly lullabies, has marginalized this kind of literary art as it is feared today that such works are gradually being forgotten and erased from their speaker`s memory. Therefore, it is of paramount importance to recording and analyzing this part of oral culture which leads to accurately understanding the culture of the people in terms of its various subcultures. Given the location of the city of Qa'in and due to its national and religious prejudices and also the love affairs and deprivations, it is observed that the women of Qa`in console themselves with these folk lullabies.   The present research is carried out within the framework of the analytical-qualitative method. Research variables (gender, religious-cultural themes, women's social status, and climatic conditions) are of a descriptive scale and demographic questions (age, level of education, occupation of respondents, and the number of children (daughters and sons)) are numerical variables.  Due to the fact that all the women inhabitant in the city of Qa`in have been selected as the research community and since   providing   a complete list ofpopulation was not accessible, the methods of “non-probable judgment” and “available sampling” have been used. The sample size was 50 determined   through the following formula: n =   (e: Estimation accuracy or maximum error limit is considered to be 0.15 in this study). Data gathering was carried out through fieldwork using both a researcher-made questionnaire and a personal interview by the researcher. Most of the interviewees encompassed middle-aged and elderly women from both the township and the surrounding villages. The result of one-year research effort in collecting lullabies compiled 692 bits analyzed as the research data. To analyze the data, the collected lullabies were coded, categorized in the same sense, and then all the implied concepts were noted. Possessing the extracted concepts, the researcher returned to the field of research in order to collect other lullabies as far as there remained no new concept of lullabies. Subsequently, concepts which categorized a common theme in a category were categorized and analyzed eventually.  The quantitative and content analysis of the extant lullabies of Qa`in showed that the Qa`ini mothers have far transmitted their ideas, thoughts and religious beliefs to their children in the form of lullabies along with reflecting the economic and cultural situation of the region and also their own pains. We argued that the contents of the lullabies portray the beauty of nature, the personality traits, the family and social problems of women and the mother's wishes for their children. In addition, we demonstrated that the mothers' age and their social status and education are also effective in choosing the lullabies they sing for their daughters or sons. The results showed that the most frequent lullabies clearly manifest the following subjects: 1) the social status of women 2) the religious themes 3) the cultural and climatic conditions and 4) the gender.The descriptive results of gender variable represented that the relationship between gender and age is a direct relationship, while inverse for education, job and the number of children. Furthermore, there was a direct relationship between age and religious themes in lullabies and also between the employment of women and religious themes. As part of the analysis, it was demonstrated that there was no relationship between education and religious themes in lullabies and between the number of children and religious themes.It was also exhibited that there was direct relationship between age and social status of women in lullabies and also between education and social status of women, while there was inverse relationship between the women's occupation and the number of children with social status of women.   The lullabies identified in the study depicted that there was a direct relationship among age, and the climatic and cultural conditions and also between the employment of women and the number of children with climatic and cultural conditions. Interestingly, our project showed that there was no relationship among education and climatic and cultural conditions in lullabies. Moreover, the results of Friedman test represented that there is a significant difference between the mean of effective variables on the content of lullabies whilst the highest priority was given to gender, religious themes, women's social status, and cultural and climatic conditions.