نشریه پژوهش های زبان شناسی
سال دوازدهم شماره 1 (پیاپی 22، بهار و تابستان 1399)

Abstract In this article, we investigated the role of Persian phonotactic parameters on the perception of Persian initial consonant clusters (ungrammatical) in the context of an experimental study. Given the limitations of the Persian syllable construction of having only one consonant at the beginning of the syllable, the purpose of this study was to answer the question whether Persian speakers perceive a vowel in nonsensically manipulated C1V1C2 sequences in which V1 is deleted in different degrees from the speech signal or they are found to be sensitive to the magnitude of vowel deletion in the sequences in which they differentiate between sequences in which V1 is deleted and those in which V1 is preserved in the speech signal. To conduct the study, twenty non-words with C1V1C2V2C3 syllable pattern were designed so that they contained one of the six vowels of the Persian sound system. The target non-words were re- synthesized in the Praat software after being produced and recorded in such manner that V1 in each non-word was deleted gradually from the speech signal in several steps. The results showed that the perception of an illusive vowel does not occur systematically for all C1C2 sequences and all Persian vowels. Thus, the hypothesis that Persian speakers perceive C1C2 sequences in initial consonant clusters as C1VC2 at the beginning of non-words, due to phonotactic constraints in the Persian sound system, is not valid.  Keywords: Initial Clusters, Illusive Vowel, Speech Perception, Non-words, Auditory Sensitivity.   Introduction The phenomenon of perceptual illusions particularly that of illusory vowels has become a very useful probe to understand both loan word patterns and the speech perception mechanism. Previous research has unearthed a variety of factors that affect where illusory vowels are perceived. They are perceived in stimuli that contain: (a) consonantal sequences that are phonotactically illicit in the native language of the speaker (Dupoux et al., 1999; Durvasula and Kahng, 2016); (b) consonantal sequences that violate putative language universals such as the Sonority Sequencing Principle (Davidson, 2007), and (c) specific acoustic cues in the stimuli, such as strong consonantal release bursts, increased voicing amplitudes, etc. (Davidson, 2007). What evidence exists that phonotactic constraints play a role in perception? Adults have rather clear intuitions about permissible sequences. For example, English speakers know that “mba” is not a possible English word. Davidson (2007) has shown that nine month old infants are sensitive to the phonotactic patterns of the words in their language and some researchers have argued that such regularities could be useful in helping the child to discover words. Mattingley et al. (2015) investigated the influence of phonotactic constraints on phoneme percep- tion. They used the fact that /sri/ and /Sli/ are not allowed in English while /sli/ and /Sli/ are allowed. They synthesized a series of stimuli ranging from [s] to [S] and presented them to participants in the / li/ and / ri/ context. There was a significant shift in the identification functions between the two contexts, demonstrating that participants tend to hear segments that respect the phonotactics of their language. This paper addressed the role of Persian phonotactic constraints on the perception of initial consonant clusters. Given that initial consonant clusters are not permitted in the Persian sound system, we investigated whether Persian listeners perceive an illusive vowel in C1V1C2 sequences in which V1 is deleted in different degrees from the speech signal, or they are found to be sensitive to the magnitude of vowel deletion in the sequences. Materials and Methods Twenty non-words with C1V1C2V2C3 structure were designed such that they contained one of the six vowels of the Persian sound system. The target non-words were re-synthesized in the praat software such that V1 was deleted from the speech tokens in magnitude degrees. All acoustic measurements were made using Praat acoustic software (Boersma and Weenink, 2010). The stimuli were digitized on a PC Compatible computer using an OROS AU22 A/D board. Five different files were then created from each original item by splicing out pitch periods of the target vowel, V1, at zero crossings. Stimulus 1 contained little or no vowel (most of the transitions in and out of the vowel were also removed). Stimulus 2 contained the two most extreme pitch periods of the vowel (i.e., one from the transition of the first consonant to the vowel, and another from the end part of V1 into the following consonant). Stimulus 3 contained the four most extreme pitch periods (two on each side), and similarly, Stimulus 4 six pitch periods, and Stimulus 5 eight pitch periods. Stimulus 6 was the original stimulus in which the number of pitch periods varied from 10 to 13 across items (10.7 periods in average.) The average overall duration of one pitch period in V1 in each item was 9.06 ms. There were a total of 60 stimuli in one session.   Discussion of Results & Conclusions Results suggested that listeners do not consistently perceive an illusive vowel in C1C2 sequences.  Thus, our study does not provide sufficient evidence for confirming the hypothesis generally assumed in the phonetic literature that C1C2 sequences in languages which do not permit initial consonant clusters are perceived as C1VC2.

Persian light verbs have changed in terms of frequency of use in the course of time. The study of frequency changes of various common light verbs in the long history of Persian language seems reasonable, but the study of light verbs in the course of a relatively short period (a century) for the purpose of showing syntactic changes, can be a matter of significance. The present study deals with such topic. A diachronic study of the use of Persian light verbs in different periods sheds light on the processes leading to the formation of light verbs. In fact, studying the frequency of a number of light verbs during a century can lead to the discovery of how they turned into light verbs. Our purpose in this study is to analyze five Persian light verbs dӑštan (have), ӑmadan (come), ӑvardan (bring), gereftan (take) and didan (see) in five periods during a century (1220-1320 AH). In this study, 15000 simple and complex predicates, extracted from newspaper texts, have carefully been analyzed. In each period, the number of complex predicates based on type and token has been identified. This study shows that the light verb dӑštan has been regarded as the main light verb in the periods under study. This study also shows that the verb didan hasn't been used as a light verb in the last three periods, while it has been commonly used as light verb in the primary periods and has turned into a lexical verb in the course of time. This study also shows that the frequency of the mentioned light verbs during five periods indicates fluctuation; however, it is possible to reach a reasonable conclusion through a well-disciplined procedure.

The present study aims at providing a proposal within the framework of the Minimalist Program regarding both the category status of the small clause (SC) and the case marking of its internal noun phrases in the Mokryani Variety of Kurdish. In this article, three hypotheses related to SC have been examined, according to which the mentioned structure is a word projection of its predicate, the inflection group, and the tense phrase. The analyses presented in this article showed that the first hypothesis causes problems in the extended projection principle, case marking, and X-bar theory. In the second hypothesis, in order to meet the requirements of the inflection group, we considered the existence of phonemes without a phonetic manifestation. However, the examination of the empty elements in linguistic constructions showed that they are not in line with the main nature of the Minimalist Program regarding the optimization of linguistic constructions and is contrary to the ‘Economy Principle’. In the final analysis, based on Hiraiwa’s (2001) Multiple Agreement and Chomsky’s (2005, 2006) Inheritance Feature, the syntactic category of the small clause must be treated as a tense phrase.

Cerebral Palsy (CP) is a movement disorder caused by a non-progressive brain lesion and its symptoms appear in the form of developmental damages. The aim of the present study was to evaluate the Quantitative Electroencephalography (qEEG) signals upon carrying out a speech and language task and to compare the components of language function and common spatial patterns extracted from children with cerebral palsy and healthy ones. In this study, 17 children with CP and 40 healthy children aged from 7 to 12 were studied. In order to evaluate the phonetic, phonological, syntactic, and semantic features of the language in the CP group in comparison to healthy control participants, a Test of Language Development (TOLD) was employed. To examine their electrophysiological signals on the basis of amplitude and frequency of brain waves, as well as brain connectivity across spectral bands, the 16-channel quantitative electroencephalography was used. In addition, the qualitative evaluation and output of the language development test were reported to determine the areas in need of improvement in both healthy and cerebral palsy groups. The results of this study showed that children with cerebral palsy had significant problems in the sub-scales of the language development test as compared to healthy children. It was also observed that children with cerebral palsy scored the lowest score in the grammatical completion subtest. The qEEG-based brain mapping revealed a significant difference in the amplitude of waves and brain connectivity in the area needing improvement between the two groups.

This study is intended to investigate lexical borrowing in Kalhori Kurdish. The main lexical categories such as nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs were examined to find whether native speakers prefer to use native words or loan words (of Farsi). This study was carried out in relation to three social variables as gender, age and educational backgrounds. To collect data, a researcher-made questionnaire consisting of 339 items was employed. The results indicate that in all lexical categories, native words (as apposed to loan words) are mainly chosen by the subjects in all groups. In addition, there is no basic difference in all investigated lexical categories. Almost the same amount of borrowing is reported in all lexical categories, while in all borrowing hierarchies (Treffers-Daller, 2010; Muysken, 1988; Thomason and Kaufman, 1988), nouns were easier to borrow than the elements lower in the hierarchy. The results of this study, however, suggest that the reasons for borrowing are beyond the position in the hierarchy. The importance of lexical gap in borrowing is identified as an alternative to hierarchical approaches in the present study.
Keywords: Borrowing, Borrowing hierarchy, Kalhori Kurdish, Lexical categories

The present paper aims to investigate the role of language and gender in expressing pain. Pain is usually described as a personal subjective experience and sometimes it is believed that language is the only device to access this personal experience. Besides, considering physiological, psychological and social differences between men and women, gender affects the expression of pain. In this paper, I will investigate if men and women express their pain differently. To investigate this, 31 men and 31 women were asked to write one paragraph about a painful experience they had in the past. Qualitative analysis of the data (using MaxQda software and considering sensory, affective, evaluative dimensions of pain in McGill pain questionnaire) showed that although men and women’s texts had equal number of words, women’s texts had more coded segments. This implies that women describe their pain in more details. Both men and women expressed the affective dimension of their pain, but women expressed more emotions and described their pain more severely. As for the sensory dimension, men had more coded segments only for this category, but for other dimensions women rated higher. The results of the t-test tells that the difference between men and women in expressing the affective and evaluative dimensions of pain is significant while for other dimensions is not.  Knowing about these gender differences in expressing pain can be beneficial to medical practitioners.

The main question in this article concerns the extent to which Persian phonology employs the contrast of a pair of phonemes in the word formation. This question is already reported for consonants and vowels. The hypothesis of the research implies that decreasing the similarity of the opposition members in phonological features increases the prevalence of minimal pairs and vice versa. For this purpose, the phonological contrast and functional load of the functionalism are quantified according to the formula of the DC. Then, the DC mean is determined for consonants in terms of initial, middle, and final positions within words, and the number of syllables for vowels using non-linear mathematical functions. Findings confirmed that the dissimilarity of vowels in length, along with the similarity of consonants in non-sonority and coronality, are among the pervasive factors in Persian word formation.

Research data include 41718 minimal pairs extracted from the generative lexicon(Eslami et al., 1383) with a volume of 52858 entries using a computer program. In this program, each entry’s phonological form is compared with phonological forms of approximately the same length (with one unit of length error). If the difference is one, the two words are considered a minimal pair. Minimal pairs that differed in consonants were classified according to their beginning, middle, and end. Moreover, those that differed in vowels were classified according to the number of syllables. Diagrams of exponential and logistic functions were employed to study the relationship between the DC in consonants and the position of consonants at the beginning, middle, and end of words on the one hand, along with the relationship between the DC of vowels and the number of syllables on the other. To evaluate the research hypothesis, a comparison between the values ​​of DCs, as well as their descending order, was performed.

Examining the minimal pairs in the Persian lexicon shows that the DC of Persian consonants increases as we move from the beginning to the end of the word. Moreover, as the number of syllables increases, the DC of vowels decreases, and the inflection point of DC mean variations rest on three-syllable words. Conversely, as the number of syllables increases, the DC of consonants decreases, while there is no inflection point of DC mean variations on three-syllable words. Overall, DC for dissimilar classes is greater than that of similar classes. Specifically, the DC of vowels (in terms of tongue height and length) for dissimilar classes is more than that of similar classes, while it is the opposite for the place of articulation. However, the DC of consonants varies according to sonority, manner, and place of articulation for both similar and dissimilar classes. Therefore, the members of minimal pairs tend to be non-sonorant and coronal.

So far, there has been a lack of research on the manner harmony process in children who learn Persian, both in children with typical phonological development and those with functional phonological disorder. Therefore, manner harmony in these groups of children is considered in the present study. To this aim, manner harmony patterns are examined in children with typical and protracted phonological development.Data collection is performed using a Picture-Naming task, which contains 132 pictures from different items designed to elicit the production of 132 different words. Examining the data indicated a large number of manner harmony errors by children with both typical and protracted phonological development. In the investigated error patterns, plosive harmony and nasal harmony were detected in both groups, while fricative harmony was observed in children with typical phonological development. Analyzing the results using “Articulatory ease” and “Perceptual cues” frameworks confirmed that articulatory limitations are the only stimulants that trigger manner harmony in children with protracted phonological development. On the other hand, perceptual factors in children with typical phonological development may also trigger the manner harmony when articulatory limitations are lessened or removed. The findings of this study also demonstrated some differences with similar studies on children with typical phonological development who speak other languages.

The present article investigates the discursive encounter of the Iran Ministry of Health and Medical Education against the outbreak of Coronavirus and compares this ministry’s discursive strategies with those of other countries in dealing with the virus. To achieve this, all the news articles published in the "Coronavirus News" section in the Iran Ministry of Health and Medical Education website since the outbreak of the Virus in Iran from February 20, 2020, to November 20, 2020, which amounts to more than 1700 cases, have been analyzed to determine the ideologically-loaded news headlines. All the news headlines with the ideological concepts, which constitute a total number of 75 news articles, were coded based on Strauss and Corbin’s (1994) Grounded theory. The results implied that with the Coronavirus peak in the country in the four months leading up to November, the use of religious-revolutionary concepts by the Iran Ministry of Health and Medical Education had increased significantly. Based on Fairclough’s model of critical discourse analysis (1989), it is revealed that the usage of religious-revolutionary discourse by Iranian ministry and recalling the Iran-Iraq war bears the “experiential value” applied in the ideological use of slogans at the "text" level. Recalling the successful narratives of the war discourse can help to gain the support of a nation in defeating the epidemic.

Abstract
Each translator chooses on the basis of vocabulary substitution, as well as on the coherence of the grammatical structure, taking into account the intentions of the source text and the cultural considerations of the target language. Since there is risk of interpolation threats, the author’s intention in the process of title’s translation, semantic approach is chosen for its analysis in this study. Taking into consideration the semiotic definition of "translation" as an intercultural and intertextual relationship, the purpose of the present study with a descriptive analysis method is to show that: In the translation of "The Prophet's" title – Gibran Khalil Gibran’s work, translated by Elahi Qomshei- the cultures of the source language and the target language play a role under the control of discursive terms, based on two converging and diverging semantic systems. Since the function of the converging semantic system is to preserve the cultural morph of the source text, and the function of the divergent semantic system is to create intercultural anomalies. Furthermore, in this research we speak about positive or negative interaction between the two converging and diverging semantic systems about cultural elements, in the translation of "The Prophet's" title within the framework of a discursive value system.
Keywords: Discourse semantics, Title of seasons translation, The Prophet, Convergent, Divergent.
 

Translators may face with difficulties in transferring intertextuality. Intertextuality arises from culture, so it is considered as a socio-cultural element that requires a suitable degree of proficiency about original language culture in order to grasp the meaning implied by the writer in the source text. The problem is that, the translator must take into contact with the precise translation of the intertextual elements and background information about intertextual items in original text in order to consider the meaning implied behind them. Intertextual and cultural items are, where the translation and semiotics have very relative contact with each other, and therefore, for the analysis of the process of title's transfer, semiotic approach has been chosen in this paper.
 

Translation between two languages itself has two aspects; that consist of verbal and textual transferring. In this study we just correspond to textual translation or interlingual one. The distinctive point of this research with other relevant researches on the translation of "Prophet" is concerned with the attention of the intercultural view on this interlingual translation of Qomshei. Cross-cultural elements or semiotics signs that are there in the titles translation of prophet is the base of discussion in this paper. On the one hand, the unrelenting interest of researchers in studying the qualitative process of title translation, and on the other hand, the need for translators to take into account cultural differences to justify the practicality of their translations, completely justify the necessity of this research.
 
Discussion of Results and

The implied procedures of semiotics as directed by Paris school members such as Greimas and post Gremasian theorists in semiotics, contemplates discourse as a field in which the importance of a text is situated on sequence and presupposed correlation of two linguistic steps called units of expression and content based attitude to theory of language, while semiology according to its fundamental definitions relies on signifier and signified series that regards minimal sections without taking into consideration order relationships or signification transformation process of discourse. Taking into consideration the semiotic definition of "translation" as an intercultural and inter-textual relationship, another important note to point here is to understand the basic distinction which underlies these approaches. Semiotics of discourse takes advantage of signs in order for them to be in the process of semiosis, change and expansion. In this paper the translation of "The Prophet's" title – Gibran Khalil Gibran’s work, translated by Elahi Qomshei- the cultures of the source language and the target language play a role, under the control of discursive terms, based on two converging and diverging semantic systems. Diverging mode is numerously used in translation of titles, but it has three different categories by itself. They are reduction, omission and addition.

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.

Apologizing is an ethical speech act that is addressed to the offended to alleviate him /her by the offender who has committed an offence. Blum-Kulka and Olshtain (1984) specified illocutionary force indicating device (IFID), taking responsibility, account/ explanation, offer of repair and promise of forbearance as the building blocks (movements) of an apology of which the presence of the first two strategies indicates sincerity, the others are situation-based. The present article intends to investigate the Iranian politicians’ apologies broadcasted in the national and local media so as to specify if there is any difference among them and if they are different in terms of sincerity. The data found, i.e. 93 apologies, are categorized into 4 groups including politicians at presidency constituency (the president himself, vice presidents, spokesmen, and …), ministers, state governors and local governors and analyzed based on X2 statistical test. The data investigated, the three major 1-3 movement paradigms and the 10 minor paradigms were found, wherein there was no significant difference among these groups in terms of 1 and 2 movement strategies; however, there is a significant difference among these groups in 3 movement apologies indicating that ministers made more use of them. Furthermore, the findings show that there is no meaningful difference among the politicians and all of them deny any responsibility; this takes their apologies seriously into question as this is a great factor influencing the sincerity of an apology.
Keywords: Illocutionary force indicating device (IFID), Offence, Strategy, Politic Apologies, Apologetic
Paradigms, Sincerity
 
Apology is a post-event speech act that is addressed to an offended after a violation or an offence by an offender to create appeasement. Holmes (1990: 150) contends that an apology is: A speech act addressed to B’s face-needs and intended to remedy an offence for which A takes responsibility, and thus to restore equilibrium between A and B (where A is the apologizer, and B is the person offended). Many researches including Olshtain and Cohen (1983), Trosborg (1987), Blum-Kulka, House and Kasper (1989), Holmes (1989), Reiter (2000), Robinson (2004), Barron (2009), Ogiermann (2009), Leech (2014) have agreed with Blum-Kulka and Olshtain (1984: 206-209) in specifying the elements of an apology which are:
Illocutionary force indicating device (IFID) which selects a routinized, formulaic expression of regret (a performative verb) such as: (be) sorry, apologize, regret, excuse, etc.
Taking on responsibility. In the attempt to placate H, S often chooses to take on responsibility for the offence which created the need to apologize.
Explanation
Offer of repair
Promise of forbearance

The first two strategies, found in almost all apologies from different languages they investigated in a research project called A Cross-Cultural Study of Speech Act Realization Patterns (CCSARP), indicate the sincerity of an apology. The others are situation based.
Politic apologies are, in the “Age of Apology” (as it is called by Brooks, 1999; Lakoff, 2000; Harris, et al. 2006; Gibney et al. 2007; Lind, 2008; Sanz, 2012), at their “painful infancy” (Fraser, 1981: 70). The present article intends to investigate the apologies of Iranian statesmen including presidency constituency (the president himself, vice-presidents, spokesmen, and…), ministers, state governors, local governors and parliamentary members (MPs) to find if their apologies are of some paradigms, and whether or not their apologies are sincere. Drawing attention from a plethora of disciplines such as sociology, politics, pragmatics, speech acts theory, politeness, etc., the literature on apology is voluminous; yet it lags so much behind in political apologies; however, it is gaining speed.
 
Material and The data (93 cases of politic apologies) for this study were excerpted from local and national media. Although a good deal of the data belong to the President Ruhani’s eras, but still one can find traces from other presidents’ periods. Of these 20 cases belong to the presidency constituency, 30 to the minsters, 22 to the state governors, and 21 to the local governors. Based on the 5 movements/ strategies identified by Blum-Kulka and Olstain (1984), these apologies were divided into five groups ranging from paradigms with one strategy to the ones with 5 strategies. But it was found that four and five movement paradigms were of no frequency, thus omitted from the analysis. The IFID itself formed a category with 1 movement. The paradigms with two movements were categorized into 4 sub-categories and the paradigms with three movements were categorized into five subcategories; the data were inserted into different tables relative to the 4 identified political groups.
 
Discussion and Based on the data found and X2 statistical test, it was found that the Iranian Politicians’ apologies follow three different paradigms (1, 2 and 3 movement(s)). There is no significant difference among the four politician groups in apologies made in 1 and 2 movements; however, there is a significant difference among these groups in 3 movement apologies indicating that ministers made more use of them. Still, among the different output strategies, those strategies which included an explanation of the reasons why those mistakes had taken place, were significantly higher in number compared to the other strategies. Furthermore, the findings show there is no meaningful difference among the politicians, and none of them accepts any responsibility; this takes their apologies seriously into question as this is a great factor influencing the sincerity of an apology.