نشریه زبان پژوهی
پیاپی 36 (پاییز 1399)

Asymmetric merge of the sentence constituents enables the Phonetic Form of the language to put the merged constituents in proper order for pronunciation based on the “Linear Correspondence Order”. The existence of various constructions like across-the-board wh and wh-questions derived by the computational system of language and different methods for analyzing them proposed by various scholars, have led to reviewing the certainty of the asymmetric relation between the merged constituents. Chomsky (2001) proposes two kinds of merge: external merge and internal merge. External merge takes two disjoint syntactic objects and combines them to form one larger syntactic object. Internal merge, often referred to simply as Move, is an operation “responsible” for displacement in grammar. This intuition implies the possibility that syntactic objects can be pronounced and interpreted in different positions. Considering the characteristics of external and internal merge, Citko (2000, 2003, 2005) proposed the third kind of merge operation namely as Parallel merge. Parallel merge (symmetric merge) is like external merge in that it takes two distinct objects as its input. However, it is also like internal merge in that it combines one with a subpart of the other. The symmetric merge leads to multi-dominance structures in which a constituent is simultaneously dominated by more than one node. Multi-dominance structures have special characteristics and the computational system of language needs special mechanisms for handling them. Important questions which should be answered about these structures are how to linearize them and how the features of shared elements are checked.  The asymmetric relation among the constituents of sentence is necessary since only the asymmetric constituents have the prerequisites needed for the Phonetic Form of the language to pronounce the constituents according to the LCA (Kayne, 1994). Apparently, the symmetric constituents are not able to be pronounced since they violate the LCA but the studies of Wilder (1999b, 2008), Gračanin-Yüksek (2007) and Johnson (2007) on modifying the definition of c-command have paved the way to make the symmetric merged constituents compatible with the prerequisites for the Phonetic Form. The newly developed notion enables the PF to linearize the shared elements in situ. In this new definition, the LCA can ignore some of the orders which violate the LCA. Wilder (2008) proposed the notion of “full dominance” which enables the shared elements to be pronounced correctly. According to Wilder (2008:238-9):  a. X fully dominates α if and only if X dominates α and X does not share α. b. α is shared by X and Y if and only if (i) neither of X and Y dominates the other, and (ii) both X and Y dominate.  Moreover, the definition of c-command is modified relying on the full dominance as follows: a. X c-commands Y only if X does not fully dominate Y b. d(A) = the set of terminals fully dominated by A. (Wilder 2008:243) By this definition the shared elements, since they are not fully dominated by A, are not considered in d(A) and the PF has the correct order for pronunciation. The second property of the multi-dominance structures is about feature checking of the shared elements. The operation “Agree” in the Minimalist Programme is responsible for providing values to unvalued features. This operation is a one-to-one relationship between Probe and Goal in a c-command domain. In symmetric merge this relationship turns into a many-to-one relationship between Probes and Goals. In order to solve this issue, Hiraiwa (2005) explores the possibilities of single Probe valuing features on different Goals simultaneously in a process which he calls as “Multiple Agree”. His study suggested the opposite in which the Agree operation can take place between several Probes and a single Goal as schematized below: p < sub>uΦ>GuCase,Φ, GuCase,Φ  p < sub>uΦ, p < sub>uΦ>GuCase, Φ Hiraiwa (2005: 51)  Having this mechanism, the shared element in multi-dominance structures can have its unvalued features being valued by two Probes simultaneously. Any inconsistency between the obtained values may result in ungrammaticality of the derived sentence unless the morphological component will determine whether the result is possible or not.  For studying the possibility of existence of symmetric merge in deriving the sentences in the Persian language, the across-the-board wh and wh-questions are selected. Based on the evidences observed from the internal relations among the constituents of the across-the-board wh and wh-questions in Persian language such as existence of the same tense in two conjuncts, impossibility of voice mismatches of little verbs between two conjuncts, simultaneous movement of the noun phrase from two conjuncts, lack of multiple fronting of wh-elements, existence of the same case in both conjuncts for the shared noun phrase and impossibility of using of different arguments of predicates in two conjuncts, it is concluded that a noun phrase, little v, T, and C heads are shared between the two conjuncts.  Accepting the existence of shared elements between two conjuncts provides us with simple and comprehensive analysis for across-the-board wh and wh-questions in Persian. Moreover, analyses based on symmetric merge can also be used for studying other structures in Persian such as parasitic gap, right node raising, gapping, and wh-questions with conjoined wh-pronouns. In all the cited structures, we have shared element(s) the characteristics of which the symmetric merge approach can explain in a simple and convincing way.

The current research is based on morphology which is the study of words and how they are formed. Morphology analyzes the internal structure of words and different parts of words; it considers the morphemes as the smallest meaningful units in a language and divides them into two main categories: the first category is called free morphemes which can stand alone like “telephone” and the second one is called bound morphemes which must be attached to another morpheme; like
“-iste” in telephoniste which produce a new word or plural “-s” in “telephones” which produce new forms of the same word.
Many free morphemes can be used as roots in word formation processes and bound morphemes, mostly known as affixes, attached to those roots can make either a different form of that word or new meanings out of the same word. This linguistic process is called affixation. In other words, affixation is a morphological process whereby a bound morpheme, an affix, is attached to a morphological base to form a new lexical unit, and is one of the most common strategies that human languages employ to form new words and word forms.
Whereas we can distinguish many types of this process, the Persian and the French languages generally make use of prefixation and suffixation. The first process is done by the means of prefixes (affixes that precede the word stem) and the second by the means of suffixes (affixes that follow the word stem). It should be also noted that affixes are divided into two main categories; while some of them are labelled as inflectional adding grammatical meanings to the base, a majority of them is known to be derivational used in creating new words.
The inflectional ones will never change the word-class; they have grammatical functions like the plural “–s” suffix in “éditeur-s” which doesn’t produce new word but rather provides the existing lexeme with a new form suitable for performing a syntactic function in the sentence. The derivational ones mark derivational changes. They can change the word-class of the derivatives and they can produce new lexemes, like the job title suffix “–eur” which makes the derived noun “édit-eur” in French from the verb “éditer”.
In this paper, we have aimed to study the derivation of job title nouns via the process of suffixation and to do so we have chosen to study four suffixes (-چی، -گر، -دار، -بان) which are mostly used in Persian to form profession titles. In this regard, we have collected derived words which are formed by these suffixes, considering job titles in Persian and we have tended to examine and compare them - based on their semantic fields- with their relevant equivalents in French.
We began our research with a glimpse of the derivation process as a high-frequency process of vocabulary enrichment, then, we refer to a few fundamental definitions in the domain of morphology that helps clarify the results. We have also conducted an analytic and comparative study of job titles with their equivalents in both languages regarding this process. We also have tended to highlight the existing similarities and differences made by these minimal units of words carrying the specific meanings in examples collected during the research in both languages.
Findings of this research show that each of the four Persian morphemes studied in this article has different types of equivalents in French and this indicates the structural differences and richness of word- formation system of the languages. Each language varies in the ways they express the same meanings; we take the word “مرز-بان” in Persian, as an example, which is the result of derivation but “garde-frontière” as its equivalent in French is a compound word instead. It is also important to note that the words may vary in their formation system in each language like “chercheur” in French which is obviously derived from a verb (chercher+ -eur) while its equivalent in Persian (پژوهش-گر) is derived from an abstract noun. Therefore, each word adopts different
formation process according to morphological structures of that language.
Another key point to be mentioned is that in some cases when the derivatives undergo the same process in both languages and are formed by a stem plus a suffix, the word stem keeps its definition as it is and the suffix gives a new semantic concept to the newly formed word, but the whole meaning is far from the original meaning of the word stem definition. This happens where metaphor and metonymy can affect the meaning of the entire derived words; as an example we can mention the word “سوزن-بان” in Persian and it’s equivalent “aiguille-eur” in French, where the word “سوزن / aiguille” doesn't have its main meaning and is used in a metaphorical way in both languages.

Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) is an interdisciplinary field in which social, political, and sociological patterns are interwoven. Its purpose is to examine the relationships that are brought about by the inequality of power, and ideology and hegemony apply in the form of texts and conversations in political and social contexts.  One of the most powerful institutions that plays a very important role in using ideological discourses and rebuilding power relations in today's societies is undoubtedly media (television, newspapers, films, magazines, etc.). The press performs ideological work by representing various issues. How does the press cover events in the framework of ideology of the media and based on their interests? Syntactic and vocabulary choices are not optional or incidental; in fact, the ideological positions in each period and in each discourse are revealed in the structure of the news reports. The focus on analyzing media texts should be on how to represent events, situations, relationships, and people in media content. It is important how events are represented in the linguistic structure of the sentence; how to make propositions, combine them and arrange them.  Van Leeuwen developed the analysis of critical discourse from the field of linguistics into the world of the universe, and defined the sociological-semantic indicators as the reason for this "absence of a 100% direct relation between linguistic indices and their role. " He also believes that "the study of sociological-semantic components of discourse is a powerful tool for the analysis of the text rather than mere linguistic components". Iran's nuclear program is one of the most challenging issues at the international and regional level, which has attracted the focus of all the media. The Arab world has adopted different approaches to this issue due to the heterogeneous and incompatible national interests. The views of Saudi Arabia and Syria are influenced by variables such as the nature and volume of relations with the United States, the background of bilateral relations, the conception of the intentions and goals of Iran. Hence, the researchers intend to determine how conflicts between the views of the two countries are expressed in the language. What is the quality of referrals, how is the representation and naming of the parties involved in this agreement and how to portray incidents and events in these newspapers? What are the ideological and existing differences between the two newspapers? In order to achieve this goal, the writers, in addition to using the Van Leeuwen model (2008), use the Halliday’s transitivity model (2004) throughout the paper. The reason for the selection of the two newspapers is that both are published in Saudi Arabia and Syria, both of which are governed and written in accordance with the policies of the two countries and are the most prestigious newspapers. The difference in the results disclose that the representation of social actors in these texts has been carried out with various references tailored to the intended purpose of the authors. The newspaper Al-Riyadh has more to do with other identities and has used all the means to represent them negatively, while the Tishreen newspaper represents other identities negatively and actively and self-identities positively and actively. Both papers use the same amount of these references, and it seems that appraisement is the most referent used for negative representing the other and positive representing the self. A review of these two newspapers revealed that these two newspapers revealed quite different ideologies about Iran's nuclear energy and the actors involved in this text. The negative representations of the newspaper Al-Riyadh from Iran, Iranian actors, and even Western actors as Barack Obama as an important factor in signing this agreement are endorsement of this article. On the contrary, the positive representation of the newspaper Tishreen in relation to this agreement can be a sign of the positive ideology of the newspaper's owners towards Iran and Iran's nuclear agreement.  But the processes used in these papers are based on Halliday’s transitivity model: the material process has the highest frequency among existing processes that represent the positive and negative actions of the self and the other. The relationship process is also another process used to represent the nuclear agreement, which has been used by the Tishreen Newspaper to be more frequent than the Riyadh newspaper. It has used it to represent the nuclear agreement positively. The verbal process is another process used by the writers to identify the actors, and the remarkable point is that both newspapers have used the process to represent a negative one. The use of both newspapers from the material process and the relationship is that these two processes are more realistic and more truthful than other processes.

As regards the definitions and viewpoints toward the field of Applied Linguistics, one might conclude that diversity of definitions mean diversity of research trends and methodologies of research. Pica (2005) believes that such an implication is natural. Research on different issues of the field has expanded over the years and this expansion has attracted a good deal of attention among researchers. Additionally, Applied Linguistics as an interdisciplinary field of study is associated with different disciplines. This multi-disciplinary nature creates a context for the use of different research methods. The appearance of new methods and even the old ones were not considered comprehensively in the current research methodology books (Duff, 2002). Though research methodology has been the subject of many books and research papers, Duff (2002) believes that no textbook has ever provided a comprehensive list of qualitative and quantitative research methods. In addition, the emergence of mixed-methods, action research, and content analysis research approaches have further complicated the matter. It can also be added that no comprehensive report has ever specified to the actual practice of research methods in Applied Linguistics. Therefore, the second aim of this study is to categorize the existing research methods used in Applied Linguistics research articles (RAs). This study aims at investigating trends of research methods in Applied Linguistics research articles in recent three decades (1986 to 2015). To do so, a corpus of 7525 articles published in 10 applied linguistics journals were collected and analyzed by the current writers and four Ph.D. students. In this study, the focus was on the journals and published RAs since (1) they are widely accessible through personal or university library subscription (2) they are academically rigor papers peer-reviewed by referees (3) they cover a range of topics currently practiced in the field and (4) they reflect the research interest of wide range of researchers.  The final journals selected for analysis were 10 journals of Modern Language Journal, Language Learning, System, Foreign Language Annals, Applied Linguistics, Studies in Second Language Acquisition, TESOL Quarterly, Language Testing, Applied Psycholinguistics, and Language Teaching Journal. The list was in common with the top-most Applied Linguistics journals by Egbert (2007) and Phakiti (2014). The selected papers picked up from ten journals discussed above. Review articles, comments, and RAs written in languages other than English such as French and German were excluded from the analysis. To have a manageable analysis, the research methods were divided into two broad categories: empirical and non-empirical. Empirical methods included quantitative, qualitative, and mixed-methods research and non-empirical included theory and implication, pedagogical operation, and personal views and perspectives. Results of the analysis indicated that the empirical studies (83.23%) were dominant over the years. It was also shown that non-empirical studies accounted for 40.73% of the papers published in 1986-1995. However, during 1996 to 2005 quantitative research was the dominant method (64.23%). In the recent decade (2006-2015), qualitative research has received much attention and increased to be used in 41.75% of the papers. Review of Applied Linguistics RAs shows that outstanding tendencies and changes in research methods were observed over that past thirty years. At first (during 1986-1995), researchers tended to use non-empirical studies for investigating research problems in Applied Linguistics. They tried to present pedagogical issues, theoretical discussions, and personal views in designs other than empirical ones which established on stronger and more acceptable theoretical bases. However, this trend subjected to remarkable changes and, along with awareness rise in research methodology among researchers, empirical studies dominated the field. The dominance of quantitative methods continued in the following decade (1996-2005). During these years, about 64.23% of RAs conducted according to the quantitative designs which showed an outstanding increase in their applications among researches. As a matter of fact, researchers assumed that quantitative methods more closely examine language learning and teaching problems. In this regard, non-experimental studies were remarkably attracted researchers' attention. In the recent decade of analysis, qualitative methods were found to be dominant in Applied Linguistic studies. These methods accounted for 41.75% of all the RAs published between 2006 and 2015, indicating a significant increase in their use. Quantitative studies, on the contrary, from 64.23% during 1996-2005 decreased to 40.21% during 2006-2015. The abundance of mixed-methods studies in this decade was also observed to be remarkable. This popularity and extension is in line with the emergence of social variables in language studies and paradigm shift towards more critical and constructivist viewpoints. It is discussed that researchers and instructors pay special attention to these trends of research methods and take merits, demerits, and popularity of these methods into account.

Translation of the Qur'an as the most sensitive text needs to be accurately assessed. Reviewing and evaluating the Holy Qur'an's translation have been the subject to different books and articles for many years, but these reviews are often empirical and do not follow any special theoretical basis or pattern. Translation theorists have presented different models for evaluating translation, but there has not been a rigorous scientific model for evaluating translation from Arabic to Persian, and in particular, translating the Holy Qur'an so far. Systematic evaluation should be based on scientific theories and models. The focus of the present paper for evaluating Rezaee Isfahani’s ST-oriented translation is on five surahs of the Holy Qur'an, based on Antoine Bremen's translation assessment model, which emphasizes the maintenance of the nobility of the ST and avoidance of alteration in translation. According to Berman's explanation, translation is the “trial of the foreign”. To create a sense of familiarity with the foreign text, it will construct a relationship between the “self-same” and the foreign. Again, it is a trial of the foreign since the root of the foreign work is its language ground. In Berman's word, this trial, often an exile, can also exhibit the most singular power of the translating act: to reveal the foreign work’s most original kernel, its most deeply buried, most self-same, but equally the most ‘distant’ from itself. Therefore, he attends to inspect the system of textual deformation that operates in all translations to prevent them from being a “trial of the foreign” and called this the analytic of translation. As he claims the analysis to be provisional, he strongly believes that it requires additional inputs from other “domains”. Deforming tendencies interfere in the domain of literary prose. Language-based cosmos is in some aspects shapeless, which has generally been described negatively. Negative analytic should be considered through its positive counterpart. By presenting 13 deforming tendencies in translation, Burman proposes the negative analytic for ethnocentric, annexationist, and hypertextual translations. He also stresses that a positive counterpart by other translators should extend this analysis. To study the effectiveness of Berman's model in the evaluation of the Qur'an translation, this paper renders an analysis to the rationalism of Rezaee Isfahani’s translation. Rezaee Isfahani introduces his method of translation as “sentence for sentence” rather than “word for word” and free. The priority in his translation is precision and it follows certain interpretive, theological, lexical, and literary principles. Another important notion, which we faced with, is rationalization that is concerned with syntactical structures of the original, starting with punctuation. Rationalization recomposes sentences and the sequence of sentences, rearranging them according to a certain idea of discursive order and destroys the element of the drive towards concreteness in prose. Generally, rationalization deforms the original by reversing its basic tendency. This paper attends to the positive and negative analytic of data. In positive analytic, the translator's success and failure in the case of avoiding rationalization will be evaluated against other translators.According to Berman, positive analytic will construct a kind of anti-system the purpose of which is impoverishing or limiting the deformation of negative tendencies.In negative analytic, on the other hand, the cases in which the translator has used rationalization will be studied and it will be determined if it is possible to avoid rationalization or not after comparing the translation with other translations and text analytics. This study also shows that rationalization is both compulsory and optional. Optional rationalization should be used in negative analytic while it should be avoided in positive analytic. Optional refers to unnecessary changes that are related to the translator's style and preferences. Compulsory rationalization, on the other hand, should be considered as a supplement in using the Bremen’s model to evaluate the translation of the Qur'an. Compulsory refers to the change of grammatical categories and meaning when it is necessary, and it is related to the differences between the two languages. The cause of compulsory rationalization in the translation of the Qur'an can be searched in three sources. The first one is the probable oddness of the translated text owing to the lack of similar structures in TL which lead to literal translation. However, the absolute avoidance of rationalization in translation from Arabic to Persian is not possible due to fundamental differences between the two languages. This problem is minimized in the languages of the same family. The second factor is rooted in the language of Qur'an. The Arabic language is much more widespread than the Arabic grammar, and the Quran is revealed in the Arabic language, not Arabic grammar. On the other hand, some Qur'anic scholars believe that the language of the Qur'an uses the word for the sake of meaning and rationalization is in conflict with these principles. The third point is to pay attention to the cause of displacement in recognizing the necessity or unnecessary maintenance of displacement of Quranic expressions. The displacements caused by the differences between the two languages constitute unmarked information structure and do not harm the translation. However, the stylistic and rhetorical displacements that constitute the marked information structures must be preserved in translation.

Cochlear implantation (CI) is a preferred treatment for severe-to-profound sensory neural hearing loss and has caused significant improvement in the language ability of cochlear implantees compared to the hearing aided patients. Although CI users have gained access to auditory feedback, there are still some gaps in their speech articulation compared to the normal hearings. One area in which the difference lies is their shortcomings in the accurate production of speech segments. They evidence difficulties in the production of vowels which are determinant factors in speech intelligibility and successful communication. As studying vowels from an articulatory perspective does not provide objective results, researchers have shown an inclination for acoustic studies to investigate the differentiating features, namely the first and second formants (F1 and F2) of the vowels articulated by CI speakers. The first formant (F1) correlates with the articulatory height of vowels (high/low dimension) and the second formant (F2) corresponds to the tongue position (the front/back dimension). F1/F2 ratio yields vowel space which provides both an objective representation of the vowel articulation accuracy and the main acoustic cue in auditory perception for listeners. The studies on the acoustic features of the vowels have demonstrated indefinite and contrasting results in the comparative investigations of CI users and normal hearing listeners. Some have reported a significantly reduced vowel space for CI users, while other studies have evidenced an increase in the vowel space of CI users due to the positive impact of CI. There are even studies that have claimed an improvement in the vowel spaces of CI users to the point of similarity with the normal hearing. Inconsistent findings seem to be due to methodological differences and considering different variables such as post- or pre-lingual deafness, CI adults or children, age at implantation and time elapsed after the surgery. Among these factors, age at implantation has wide-ranging consequences and requires more in-depth studies. This study aims at investigating the effect of early cochlear implantation on the first and second formants (F1 and F2) of the Persian vowels produced by CI children. To this end, the vowel production of two groups of children, implanted before and after age three (CI<3, CI>3) with at least three years of device use length was studied. All CIs had been diagnosed with severe congenital hearing loss at both ears without any other disability and physical condition. There was a control group of five normal hearing age-matched children (NH group). After a speech therapist, each participant repeated CV syllables made up of one of the eight Persian plosives as onset and one of the six Persian vowels as nucleus. Using Praat software, the frequency of the first and the second formants of the vowels produced by children in three groups were extracted and then compared with each other. To find between-group variances, Kruskal-Wallis test was used with the significance level set at 0.05. Findings of this study demonstrated that there were significant differences among the groups in the frequency of the first and second formants of all Persian vowels except for F1 and F2 of /a/ and F2 of /i/ and /e/ (eight cases). Mann–Whitney U test showed that CI3 and normal hearing groups demonstrated significant differences in the first mentioned eight cases (F1 of /i/ and /e/ and F1 and F2 of /u/, /o/ and /ɑ/). CI3 groups were statistically different from each other in F1 of the vowels /i/ and /e/ and F2 of vowels /u/ and /o/. Considering the first formant, we did not find any association between early implantation and F1 of the vowels by CIs. All CI users produced vowels with a more open mouth than the normal hearing which seems to be due to the exaggerated training method of therapists producing the vowels with more open mouth to give a visual cue to CIs about the articulation of vowels. In terms of F2, on the contrary, there is a clear relationship between age at implantation and vowel production. Although all CIs showed lower F2 than NHs and articulated back vowels more front than their normal place, the deviation was more observable in CI children who had undergone surgery after the age 3 (CI>3). This indicates that early implantation positively affects the cochlear implanted ones in articulating vowels with normal-like F2 as an important distinguishing acoustic feature of vowels.

This paper is aimed at describing compound nouns and word formation in Persian from the standpoint of Cognitive Grammar (Langacker, 1991) and Construction Morphology (Booij, 2010). To this end, authors deny the existence of word formation rules as concatenation of morphemes and describe compound nouns from Langacker’s usage-based model (Langacker, 2000), which includes word formation templates and hierarchical lexicon.Our aim in this study is to present arguments in favor of construction morphology approach to word formation in Persian. Based on this analysis, compounds including exocentric and endocentric compounds are dominated by the following schemas in Persian lexicon. The schema in (1) is the schema for endocentric compounds like 'češm pezešk' (oculist). Exocentric compounds like naxon xošk (scrooge), are not compositional so they are represented as specific constructions with a fixed meaning as (2). The schemas in (1) and (2) pair a form with a specific meaning in the form of a morphological construction. (1) [[X]X [Y]Y]Z ‘Y with relation R to X’(2) [[X]X [Y]Y]Z 'FIXED MEANING' It will be shown that a constructional approach to word formation and compounding in Persian leads to express more explicit generalizations on Persian word formation.The concept of construction as a traditional notion used in linguistic analyses and books is defined as a pairing of form and meaning. A construction is a syntactic pattern in which particular formal properties are associated with specific semantics that is not completely compositional, but yet predictable. For example, in linguistics we speak of the passive construction because sentences with passive meaning have a specific syntactic form that correlates with a specific passive meaning.In Goldberg (1995), it is argued that an entirely lexically-based, or bottom-up, approach fails to account for the full range of data in languages. Particular semantic structures together with their associated formal expression must be recognized as constructions independent of the lexical items which instantiate them. According to Construction Grammar, a distinct construction is defined to exist if one or more of its properties are not strictly predictable from knowledge of other constructions existing in the grammar.In a constructional approach to word formation, we may dispense with the notion of rule, which is an operation on a base, but rather focus on the output of word formation processes or schemas. These schemas are general patterns which are dominating all existing complex words and are sources of new words. These new words/output of morphological operations are instantiations of morphological schemas and inherit all predictable properties of schemas. The main property of CM is based on the paradigmatic relationships between morphological schemas; in other words, the morphological structure of complex words is identified based on their paradigmatic relationships with other complex words. These schemas form part of a hierarchical lexicon in which schemas dominate individual complex words. By default, complex words inherit the information specified in schemas, but a particular piece of information may be overruled by an individual lexical item that instantiates a specific schema (Booij, 2010). In hierarchical lexicon, there are intermediate levels of generalizations. These are intermediate schemas between the individual words and the most abstract word formation schemas, expressing generalizations about subsets of complex words of a certain type (Booij, 2005). Lexicon has a hierarchical organization containing all levels of constructions, the most abstract schemas, intermediate constructions and finally concrete lexical items. The following schemas in (3) and (4) show the construction associated with agentive compounds in Persian such as "rahzan" and diagram (5) shows the hierarchy of schemas. (3)[[Xi]N [Yj]V ]N‘AGENT of ACTIONj on SEMi’(4) [[Xi]N [Yj]V ]A‘AGENT of ACTIONj on SEMi’ [[Xi]N [Yj]V ]N [[Xi]N [Yj]V ]N [[Xi]N [Yj]V ]A [[rah]N[zan]V]N [[qodrat]N[talab]V]A (5) hierarchy of schemas Synthetic compounds in (6) are formed in two steps. First, ‘xod’ (self) is attached to the verbal stem to form a non-existing word and then –i is added to the bound verbal stem. (6)xodkoši (suicide)xodsuzi (self-burning)xodzani (self-mutilation)xodsazi (foppishness) The shared feature of these words is that all of them are formed by adding the suffix -i to a bound compound verbal stem as their base which forms a 'morphological construct' itself and takes the main role in larger construction in deriving synthetic compounds. From the constructionist standpoint, the following pattern in (7) forms a verbal construction which is the base of many derivations in Persian. We assume such morphological entity as a schema in the hierarchical lexicon and the output of such schema is a possible but non-existing word. (7) [xod- [present stem]V]V A compound stem/base in terms of CM hierarchical lexicon forms an intermediate stage in the formation of an even more complex word. This non-existing possible word is a bound compound verbal stem. In the next step, this schema plays the role of the base in deriving a new and more complex word with suffix -i. The schema is shown in (8): (8) [[bound verbal stem]A- i]A In the formation of these nouns an intermediate adjective like xodsuz or xodkoš is certainly a possible noun. Yet, we should not require the existence of this noun as a necessary intermediate step in the coining of these words. Based on CM, these two word formation templates are conflated with each other and by unification of these templates, compounding and derivation can occur at the same time. That is, we assume a unified template of the following form for such nouns:(9)[xod [present stem]V-i]NIn sum, by representing word formation processes as constructional schemas that can be unified, it is possible to express that a multiply complex word can be derived in one step from a base word that is two degrees less complex. In this paper, it is shown that a constructional account of compounding in Persian leads to expressing more explicit generalizations on Persian word formation. A number of arguments were presented to support the constructional analysis of word formation in Persian.

There are conditional sentences in all languages. A conditional sentence consists of two main and subordinate clauses that are apodosis and protasis clauses respectively. In this study, due to the importance of conditional constructions and the lack of typological classification of these structures in Persian language, we have studied the typology of conditional constructions in New Persian language. Theoretical concepts In this study, we will examine conditional sentences of New Persian language, based on the theoretical framework of Declerck and Reed (2001). In this semantic theoretical framework, conditional sentences can be classified in different types according to the possible worlds of protasis clause. In this typology possible world of protasis clause can be factual or theoretical. If the possible world is theoretical, it can be neutral or non-neutral, and if it is non-neutral, it can be one of the four types of closed, open, tentative, and counterfactual. In diagram 1, this typology is shown:  Diagram 1: Typology of possible worlds In factual protasis conditional the situation of protasis clause is interpreted as a fact, which forms part of the real world that can be occurred truly (Declerck & Reed, 2001, p. 65-66). The following sentence is a factual one:  1. If I had a problem, I always went to my grandmother.       In a conditional sentence that refers to the theoretical world, if there is no relation with the real world, it will be neutral. The speaker who uses the neutral conditional has no presupposition or assumption about the likelihood of a theoretical world and the real world. The following sentence is a neutral one: 2. If a woman has a history of cancer in her family, she should be examined each year.  On the other hand, if the speaker uses the non-neutral theoretical protasis, there is a presupposition about the likelihood of theoretical and real world. Given the degree of this probability, there are four types of non-neutral theoretical conditionals. In these types the presupposition of protasis clause with real world can be one of the true, probably true, unlikely, and false ones. These are called closed, open, tentative, and counterfactual respectively (ibid, p. 67-72).      In the closed conditional the speaker assumes that the situation of the protasis clause in the real world is true. The following sentence is a closed one: 3.  If you know something about this, tell me.  If there is not a certain correspondence between protasis’s possible world and the real world, then the possible world would be open. In this type of conditional sentences there is no certainty, no probability or doubt about corresponding between real world and possible world. The following sentence is an open conditional sentence (Ibid, p. 91-93): 4. If the train is late, we will miss our appointment.        In the tentative possible world, the accommodation of the protais’s possible world and real world is impossible but it is not improbable. In fact, in this conditional sentence, it is more likely that the situation of the protasis clause in the real world is false (ibid.,p. 93-98). The following sentence is a tentative one:   5. If he resigned, I would be happy.  Finally, the conditional sentence in which there is an assumption that the protasis’s theoretical world is contrary with factuality and which is completely different from the real world is the counterfactual conditional (Declerck & Reed, 2001, p. 99). The following sentence is a counterfactual one: 6. I would never have gone with them if I were you. According to the research objectives, the authors have selected the data needed for the research from the written texts of New Persian language produced from the 4th to the 14th century AH. In each of these centuries, ten books from different authors were selected. Then, from each of the selected books, randomly an approximate number of 5000 words was examined and conditional constructions were collected in the aforementioned corpus of each book. Therefore, 110 books from 11 centuries and approximately 50,000 words from each century were examined. Finally, it can be said that the present study consists of an approximate number of 556072 words and 3045 pages. In other words, 50552 words and 277 pages have been examined from each century. Then we examined all the 3648 conditional sentences that were extracted from the corpus and then, we determined the type of conditional construction of each conditional sentence based on the theoretical framework. We indicated that the conditional construction of the New Persian language can be adapted to the typology of Declerck and Reed (2001). Therefore, there are factual, neutral, closed, open, tentative, and counterfactual conditional types in New Persian language. By examining the frequency of occurrence of conditional sentences in the 4th to 11th century AH, we concluded that the use of conditional constructions in the early centuries was much higher than the later centuries, and there was a steady decline down to the 10th century. By examining the frequency of possible worlds in conditional sentences in the 4th to 14th centuries, we concluded that the highest frequency of occurrence of possible worlds belongs to the open possible world and subsequently the neutral, closed and factual possible worlds have a high frequency. The reason for the higher frequency of open possible world is the higher iconicity of this conditional construction. In this construction the speaker considers the hypothetical position that is likely to occur. This situation by constructing the concept of a conditional term that expresses a hypothetical position has the highest degree of similarity and therefore has the highest iconicity. By increasing the iconicity of a construction that can be a criterion in the rising of the frequency of a construction, the frequency of the conditional sentence with the open possible world is increased, and this result is due to the ease in the processing of such sentences.

Languages change is an inevitable phenomenon which may come with phonological implications. In Optimality Theory, first put forth by Prince and Smolensky (1991), language is seen as an inventory of universal violable constraints, the permutation of which might vary from one language to another. The present study aims to put forward a typological comparison among four Iranian languages of Farsi, Sorani Kurdish, Hawrami, and Kalhori Kurdish in terms of the change they have undergone in initial consonant cluster /xw/ at the beginning of certain words, assuming /xw/ as the proto-form and input. The version of Optimality Theory incorporated in this article is that of the Parallel one (McCarthy, 2008) in which the Generator can enforce unlimited number of modifications to the input. The candidates produced by the Generator, then, go through the filter of the Evaluator, consisting of language-specific permutation of markedness and faithfulness constraints.  In order to collect the data, the authors have used librarian sources as well as carrying out field study, interviewing 10 native speakers of each of the aforementioned languages. Since the study is not sociolinguistic in nature, there was no restriction on the age of the consultants. The forms elicited from these native speakers were persistent. The collected data were, then, transcribed and relevant information was extracted through a preliminary observation. It was revealed that with regard to syllables beginning with the consonant cluster /xw/, followed by a vowel, only the following combinations are valid in each of the languages. The assumed input for the three given forms below in each row are /xwa/, /xwɑ/, and /xwi/ respectively. Farsi: [xo], [xɑ], [xi] Sorani Kurdish: [xwi], [xwɑ], [xwi] Hawrami: [wa], [wɑ], [wi] Kalhori Kurdish: [xwa], [xwɑ], [xy] The above forms show the reactions each of the four language under study has regarding how much /xw/ plus a following vowel is tolerated, with Farsi and Hawrami showing no tendency to maintain the cluster, in complete contrast to Sorani Kurdish, in which /xw/ is left intact. One can roughly see the same thing in Kalhori Kurdish, with only one difference of /xwi/ changed into [xy]. The non-back high round vowel of [y] clearly has inherited features from both /w/ and /i/. In this study, the analysis of the diachronic change of /xw/ consonant cluster was conducted considering four constraints of *COMPLEX SYLLABLE, a markedness constraint against any syllable bigger than CVC; MAX(initial), which disfavors any candidate with the initial consonant deleted; MAX[round], a faithful constraint demanding that candidates should retain their round feature; and UNIFORMITY, which demands that candidates avoid coalesce. Through the analysis of the collected data from an Optimality-theoretic point of view, the permutation of these constraints was determined in each of the languages under study as follows: Farsi: Maxinitial, *CS >> Maxrnd>> Uniformity Sorani Kurdish: Maxinitial , Maxrnd, Uniformity>> *CS Hawrami: Maxrnd, *CS, Uniformity>> Maxinitial Kalhori Kurdish: Maxrnd, Maxinitial>> *CS >> Uniformity It can be deduced that except for Sorani Kurdish, these languages opt not to have any complex syllable and use the strategies of coalescence and deletion in order to prevent such syllables from being formed. This is evident in Sorani having all the faithfulness constraints crucially dominating the only markedness constraint of *COMPLEX SYLLABLE, while the same constraint is active and never crucially dominated in the three other languages. Also, Kalhori Kurdish and Farsi are the only languages in which UNIFORMITY is dominated by the other constraints, which results in validating coalescence as a strategy to be adopted so that /xw/ would be avoided. However, regardless of the strategy Farsi, Hawrami, and sometimes Kalhori Kurdish seem to adopt what these languages apparently share is their unwillingness to entirely do away with roundness. Hawrami keeps this feature at the cost of dropping the initial consonant of /x/, as a result of the faithful constraint of MAX(initial) being crucially dominated. Farsi, although merging /w/ and /a/ into [o], retains roundness. Kalhori Kurdish makes use of coalescence, forming the sound [y], which obviously borrows the roundness of the second segment in /xw/. It must be mentioned that in order to come up with a comprehensive analysis, we might need to involve more than these four constraints in some of these languages. However, to simplify the presentation of the analysis, and more importantly, to fixate on the difference these languages have in terms of constraint permutation, this article sticks to these four constraints and shows how the difference in permutation of constraints can lead to phonological systems of languages diverging from one another.

Repetition can be considered as one of the expressions of Nathalie Sarraute's tropism in the external language. The language of Sarraute reflects the sensation more than the meaning. Even if the perception, understanding, and certain explanation of this language excited by the sensation seem to be impossible, the marks of this shaking are manifested in verbal forms such as repetition. The study of repetition is important because it is used extensively in Sarraute's text and plays a crucial role in increasing verbal communication. In the novels of Nathalie Sarraute, the narrator's agitated language is a good place for the appearance of tropism, while in dramatic works, the erased narration is replaced by the short and few blocking and this is how the importance of speech increases. The role of repetition in dynamism of the text and its relation to tropism are the elements that will be emphasized in this research. Figures of insistence or repetition such as anaphora, redundancy, polysyndeton or simple repetition make the narrative progress temporary, while they make the sentences syntactically entangled. Translating monotonously and uniformly, they have the ability to convey the effect of interest and indignation at the same time to the reader. Consistent with the sensation but opposed to the reason, they bring to the text the mark of tropism. Alongside the figures of interruptions and omissions that attenuate the progress of speech, the emphasis figures prolong verbal communication through repetitions and the process of word reproduction. All these figures, widely used in Sarraute's works, represent in fact the anomalies or the verbal disorders coming from the resistance of the interior language to the exteriorization. Françoise Calin studied "reiterations" in Nathalie Sarraute's novels, especially from the narrative points of view. He gave some examples in which a single conversation is sometimes repeated by different speakers that resulted in the "stagnation of the story". We take this expression of Calin to show the effect of repetition in the dramatic texts of Sarraute. The figures of repetition, redundancy and polysyndeton are one of the main anomalies causing the entanglement of structures of the text and its stagnation. But in this stagnation, there is a kind of dynamism and it is considered as one of the solutions of the momentary recording of tropism. According to Sarah Anthony's explication in "Between the Spoken and the Unspoken: a Sarrautian Dialectic," Sarraute uses repetitions to dilate the tropism. Anthony summarizing parts of the book The said and the unsaid in Nathalie Sarraute's The Use of Speech written in 2006 by Sarah Charieyras, expresses the difficulties of grasping and understanding the tropisms. She explains the problem of the inexpressible and the brevity of the tropismic movements in her work. According to her, "Sarraute dilates the text to expose the minutiae of tropisms to the readers." Repetition is then a linguistic instrument not to restrain, but at least to slow down the distracted flight of tropism in order to exhibit these implicit movements of the inner language by the explicit structures of verbal language. In this article, we will examine these verbal excitements caused by repetitions, and whether they advance Sarraute's text or reduce his advancement. The considerable use of repetition is not an arbitrary choice. The author uses it to distort the structures of speech and to give them a deregulated and rebellious figure. The speech carriers (characters) of Sarraute's language do not seem normal to reveal the power of a troubled language that is full of expression, which forces the man to manifest and express himself. Since the universe of expressible and perceptible facts is smaller than that of the inexpressible and imperceptible facts, inevitably the externalized language carries traces of irrationality. Sarraute's language is in the general sense of the term the executioner and the victim at the same time. Obliged to externalize himself to begin to exist, he loses his originality at the expense of existing verbally, but it is a perpetually destructive birth that pushes the utterance to die out and throws a challenge to his carrier. Repetition seems more specific when it becomes a solution and a language practice among the characters to maintain contact as much as possible. However, they resign themselves inevitably to repetition figures in order not to lose the least communicational chances. It is an uncomfortable and painful choice for the sarrautian porters who, in the philosophical sense of the word, already consider "to speak" as a "copy of copy". Repetitive words most often play the role of triggers for tropism. They seem to be the free choices of speech carriers who, in an instant, delay the ordinary progress of the text.

In many Iranian languages including Persian, the past tense stem of some verbs terminates with –št, while their present stem ends with a /r/ which in fact exists in the root; but this /r/ does not appear in the past stem. These verbs are /ænbaštæn/, /engaštæn/, /pendaštæn/, /daštæn/, /kaštæn/, /gozaštæn/, /gaštæn/, /gozæštæn/, /gomaštæn/, /negaštæn/ and their combinations. Concerning the basic morpheme of │T│ for the past tense of verbs represented in different allomorphs (t, d, st, št, xt, ft, ɑd, ud and id), this research aims to detect the process of formation the -št form of this morpheme in the mentioned verbs. The question is what phonemic processes have led to the deletion of a consonant (r) from the root (which is athwart the definition of "root”) and appearance of /š/ in the past stem. The main motivation for this investigation was the lack of convincing reason, explanation or even analysis for the issue. This research based on phonetic factors for sound change containing the elements of motor planning, aerodynamic constraints, gestural mechanics, and especially interactive-phonetic (IP) on one hand, and historical studies on the other hand, has applied both diachronic and synchronic evidences for analysis and explanation of the sound change, and ultimately morpheme formation in the discussed subject. The absence of a consonant in the stem of a verb, in Persian is a token for being stem constructor, but the presence of a consonant in the root and its absence in only one of the stems indicates that there must be a reason for disappearing the consonant of the root; particularly in past stems due to their construction. In the base of all past stems, “t” or “d” (depending on their voicing the environment) is seen, whilst the presence of /š/ (the only phoneme without any vestige neither in the root nor in the base form of stems, unlike other phonemes than “t/d” in the stems) in /št/ has been regarded as the sole “exceptional” past stem morpheme by the scholars, due to the lack of any reason for it. The assumption of this study was that the initial allomorph of past stem constructor should have been /st/ which had make the ending consonant cluster /rst/, and then through the telescoping process of the /r/ (unvoiced [ɾ/ɹ]) with [s] has triggered to emerge /š/. The question here is about the fount of /s/ in the stem. Some investigations have pointed out that in the aorist paradigm of the Old Iranian languages including Old Persian, /s/ had been the aorist stem constructor; therefore some stems were ended with /*rst/. According to researchers, this /s/ is still seen in some verbs, despite vanishing of aorist inflection, and in some cases, it has been changed into /š/. This statement improves our presupposition about the initial allomorph of past stem constructor /st/ instead of /št/ to make ending consonant cluster /rst/ in the past stem. Moreover, one of the most frequent past tense morpheme of many stems in Iranian languages is /-st/, and based on diachronic (e.g. in Indo-European and Indo-Iranian Languages) and synchronic (German dialects and Scandinavian Languages) studies there is a universal sound change of s→š in an especial context. Hereupon, it seems reasonable to emerge such phoneme in the discussed stems if the condition is fulfilled. One of the triggering conditions has been reported in ruki rule (s → š / r, u, k, i -). Concerning the adjacency of /r/ (the last consonant of the root) and /s/ of the morpheme /st/, the condition is acquired, but the data in Iranian Persian language show that a /t/ or /n/ is needed for the change to occur. The process of this phonemic change seems to be a phasic telescoping process via saltation (conversion of sound A to C, leaping over a phonetically intermediate sound B) as follows. In order to articulate /r/ at the end of the root and the /s/ of the past tense morpheme, respectively the tip and the blade of the tongue touches the back and the front of the alveolar ridge. In this companion, /s/ gets regressive assimilation with /r/ and becomes retroflex ([ʂ]: intermediate of saltation) by pulling back the tip of the tongue into the hard palate, but the alveolar /t/ in /st/ (which is articulated by blade of the tongue in Persian language) removes immediately the retroflex feature by pulling up the tip of the tongue toward the blade to form /š/. Thus based on telescoping process, contrary to the opinion of most scholars, the /r/ of the root has not been omitted but has been merged into /s/ to emerge the sole phoneme /š/: CVr+st →CVšt. The results not only explain the sound change in the above mentioned verbs, but also in some other words in Persian  (e.g. /gošne/ hungry, /tešne/ thirsty and etc.); and in dialects of Iranian languages (e.g. /šuštan/ in Mahabadi Kurdish and /šištan/ in Davani dialect for /šostan/ to wash in Persian). As previously mentioned, in all of the samples of this change a /t/ or /n/ must be after /rs/ (Vrsn/t). Moreover, the appearance of this phenomenon in simple words (free morphemic structure) like gošne (hungry), tešne (thirsty), Paštu (Pashto), pašne (heel) and so forth, indicates that this change cannot be a morphophonemic change. Therefore, this view does not consent to most of the studies in this case which remark it as a morphophonemic change; athwart, it accords with all studies and findings in IP model on phonemic change of /s/ to /š/.

Forensic Linguistics is an interdisciplinary field that began its work in the US and European courts in 1997. Since then, linguists have been able to expedite the processing of many cases by analyzing linguistic tools. Forensic Linguistics, which is one of the new trends in applied linguistics, aims to spread and achieve justice in the community, widely used in all areas of linguistics, such as Discourse Analysis, Syntax, Semantics, Phonology, Dialectics, Phonetics, and Stylistics. The approach taken by Fairclough (1989: 5) for language analysis is called Critical Language Study (henceforth CLS). This critical approach pursues the specific purpose of revealing the connection between language, power, and ideology that is hidden to the people. In his view (1995: 555), the purpose of critical discourse analysis (henceforth CDA) is to formulate the link between the features of texts and discursive interactions and the cultural-social characteristics of the contexts in which they are used. The importance of examining the defendants' discourse is such that the judge issues the final verdict based on the evidence in the case and the analysis of the truth of their defense. Language is a means of communication that humans owe their survival to. Moreover, the knowledge of linguistic tools helps to appreciate each other. Evidentiality is a linguistic tool to specify information source as well as speaker or writer performance in order to make clear their speech in a way that news validity has a greater impact on the audience. Studies show that different texts can be divided into separate categories. Forensic Linguistics as a new science which has started its work since 1997 in judicial courts of America and England can accelerate the process of handling judicial cases and help judge and interrogator in judgment. The use and significance of evidential structures are determined when an accused person attempted to swear by any means, except for an accident, etc., from the charge of a crime, show the truth of his speech and convince the judge or interrogator. So, the aim of the current research is to investigate the effect of the verbal application of evidentiality used in judge or interrogator's persuasion. In this research, we analyzed the statements of two accused of murder (a man and a woman) in two criminal cases based on Forensic Linguistics and linguistic tools. The findings of this research showed that the accused individuals use evidentiality as a linguistic tool to persuade the interrogator and then deny the accusation. Also, the results of the current research showed that the accused individuals use simple past tense, reported structures, evidential verbs like seeing, as a sensory verb, evidential words and swearing for a greater impact, increasing credibility of their speech and persuading the interrogator. The authors of this study seek to answer the question of whether using evidential constructions as a linguistic tool can persuade a judge or interrogator to do something or prevent him or her from doing something and how the accused individuals use these constructions as the discourse strategy in order to persuade the judge and the interrogator to absolve themselves from the accusation of committing the crime. Evidentiality is a grammatical category whose primary meaning is the source of the news. This category covers the way information is acquired without being related to the degree of certainty of the speaker's statements and their correctness and incorrectness (Aikhenvald, 2004: 3). He also said that about one fourth of the world languages ​​have evidentiality as grammatical categories whose role is to represent the source of information. For example, in a language, such as the Jarawara language (including the Amazonian languages ​​in which evidentiality is observed readily, and is used as a grammatical category), in the south of the Amazon, it introduces what the speaker observes as the first-hand evidentiality. He uses a non-first-hand evidentiality of what he does not observe. The results showed that the accused individuals attempted to make use of evidential verbs, perceptual verbs, and evidential words such as general, numbers, demonstratives, spatial and temporal markers, and oaths to show the truth of their speech. Also, the findings showed that they attempted to deceive the interrogator and absolve themselves of accusations by using these evidential constructions. The present study consists of four sections. In the first section, we introduce the field of Forensic Linguistics and the use of evidential constructions in the analysis of forensic discourse comprising speech or written. Then we will introduce a number of done researches in the field of Forensic Linguistics. Also, we will explain the nature of the methodology of this study, and provide a brief description of the trend of the two case studies which are analyzed during this study. In the next section, we will focus on the theoretical foundations used in data analysis. In the third section, we will analyze and examine the statements of the accused individuals by providing examples of two real cases based on the above mentioned theoretical grounds. And in the closing section, we will provide a brief description of the findings of the present study.

This article aims to conduct a cognitive corpus-based study on the double nature in metaphorical conceptualization of “Love” in two metaphorical systems of emotions and human relationships in Persian language. In doing so, 15 Persian novels were selected from Institute for Humanities and Cultural Studies' Persian Language Data Base (PLDB). To choose love-related keywords for being looked up in the corpus, Shahid Beheshti University's FarsNet (a Persian WordNet) was used as well as a Persian thesaurus. After listing the word family of “Love”, three more frequent synonyms of “Love” were used to be looked up in the corpus, and 62 source domains for metaphorical conceptualization of “Love” were detected. To compare these source domains with the source domains of human relationships, “Marriage”, as a prototype of human relationships was searched in the PLDB. Studying metaphorical expressions showed that 26 source domains existed for metaphorical conceptualization of “Marriage’. Comparing the source domains of “Love” and “Marriage” showed that three human-relationship-specific source domains of “Bond”, “War” and “Contract”, among others, were the common source domains for metaphorical conceptualization of both “Love” and “Marriage”. This confirms the double-nature of “Love” in Persian. Finally, these common source domains were compared with the source domains of basic emotions of “Anger” and “Happiness” and there happened to be no common source domain between “Love” and these two emotions, resulting in “Love” being probably the only emotion with a double nature. This research has the Conceptual Theory of Metaphor, first suggested by Lakoff and Johnson in their book, Metaphors We Live By (1980), as its theoretical framework. According to this theory, metaphor is understanding an abstract concept with another concrete one. Emotions are very extensive human experiences, and since human cognition can affect emotions, linguistic study of emotions can contribute to a better grasp of human cognition. In this article, the source domains of “Love” and “Marriage” are presented separately. Then, the common source domains between the two are listed. We will see that the three source domains of “Bond”, “War” and “Contract”, the specific human relationship source domains, are common source domains between “Love” and “Marriage”, confirming the double nature of “Love.” In the present study, to find the conceptual metaphors of “Love”, three love-related words were searched in the corpus. Then, the relevant sentences were investigated one by one, and the expressions in which “Love” had been metaphorically conceptualized were studied, and 63 source domains were listed. The same was done for metaphorical conceptualization of “Marriage” and 26 source domains were found. While usually intuition is used to determine the source domains in linguistic metaphor studies, this study, for the first time in cognitive studies of metaphor in Persian language, used the corpus itself to determine the source domains rather than the intuition. The reason is that more often than not; linguists do not agree with each other in terms of which source domains represent which target domains. So, when a source domain could not be determined easily, instead of referring to intuition, the collocations of that word were looked up in the corpus, and the most frequent concrete concept was chosen as the source domain.  Then, the two lists of source domains were compared, showing 18 common source domains. From among these common source domains, three source domains of “Bond”, “War” and “Contract” showed meaningful correspondence to “Love” source domains. By 'meaningful', we mean the source domains that can prove the double nature of “Love” because comparing metaphorical conceptualization of every two concepts is likely to show such correspondences. However, “Bond”, “War” and “Contract” are specific source domains of human relationships as they cannot exist without two active sides. To make sure that these three source domains are specific to “Love”, not other emotions, they were cross-checked with the findings of two studies on metaphorical conceptualization of “Anger” and “Happiness”. Lack of any commonality between the meaningful source domains of “Love” and the source domains of “Anger” and “Happiness” proves that this double nature is specific to “Love” and not any other emotion. This article showed that in Persian, like English, “Love” has a double nature in terms of metaphorical conceptualization in that it shows the characteristics of emotions and human relationships at the same time. The novel usage of corpus in this study was done for the first time in Persian language studies of metaphor. Findings of this kind help researchers get closer to the relationship between different metaphorical systems which in turn facilitates our knowledge of how metaphors are produced and perceived in human languages.

Language is the sign of mental development and an instrument of understanding. It has a very important role in cognitive and social development. Language is mingled with thought. Thoughts are conveyed through language. Words are the basic units, which construct the spoken and written language. In order to express the ideas, one needs words. Therefore, words and the way of learning them are essential processes for all the speakers of a language. Communication is possible through speaking. However, in order to be a successful communicator, it is necessary to pay attention to all the skills of the language. Learning a foreign language is an essential component in foreign language learners’ lives for the challenges that they face during this process. Most of the challenges posed in this stage are due to the learners’ limited exposure to that language. Vocabulary learning is at the core of language learning. Vocabulary Learning Strategies (VLS) facilitate this process. The present study aimed to investigate three common types of vocabulary learning strategies, including rote memorization, mnemonic memorization, and contextualized memorization used by advanced Iranian EFL learners. The design of this study was quasi-experimental. It consisted of three experimental groups and one control group. A website was designed by the researchers for the sake of this study. The website helped the researchers in the process of scoring and reduced the probability of cheating among the participants, so it increased the reliability of the study. Some eighty advanced female Iranian learners (20 in each group) participated in this study. The participants were selected according to the results of the Quick Placement Test. The advanced level learners were chosen on the basis of convenient sampling. At the beginning, a pretest was administered to the learners. Approximately one hundred and fifty words were selected from the book named “Borron’s Essential Words for the TOEFL”. The words were taught to the learners in fifty sessions by three different rote, mnemonic and contextualized. The teacher was one of the researchers. There were also immediate and delayed posttests at the end; however, the immediate and delayed posttests were different in the order of the questions and choices. The results were analyzed by SPSS software. A one-way ANOVA was conducted. In terms of inferential statistics, this study showed that there is a significant difference between the experimental groups and the control group. The mnemonic group was meaningfully better than the contextualized group, the contextualized group outperformed the rote group meaningfully, and finally the rote group had a better performance when compared with the control group.  In descriptive terms, the findings of this study showed that those who were taught using the mnemonic strategy had the highest mean in both immediate (M=39.3) and delayed (M=39) posttests, and showed a better performance than the other groups. The findings of the study have some implications for classroom practice. Therefore, this study might have some beneficial pedagogical implications for both teachers and learners by helping them redefine their proper responsibilities. In a broad sense, this study may help teachers to remember that no single L2 instructional methodology fits all learners. Strategies help determine a particular learner’s ability and willingness to work within the framework of various instructional methodologies. It is foolhardy to think that a single L2 methodology could possibly fit an entire class filled with learners who have a range of stylistic and strategic preferences. Instead, the teachers should be aware of different strategies used by learners and apply the most suitable methods. These methods could allow creative variety to meet the needs of all learners in class. The results of the present study can make writers aware of the conventions of their discipline and help teachers to be careful in using different vocabulary learning strategy types to develop vocabulary and to improve reading and writing in a more natural way. The findings of this research can also contribute to the improvement of the ability to understand the language of written academic discourse. In the present study the application of vocabulary learning strategies resulted in successful learning among language learners. It is worth mentioning that applying these strategies are fruitful for both teachers and learners. They can help both groups to be successful in their practices. Also, even less proficient learners and novice teachers can find something interesting. However, syllabus designers and material writers can use the advantages of these vocabulary learning strategies in writing and developing English materials.

Inability to read in one’s language is now too difficult to get along with as there is an increasing hidden inclination by the human beings toward the written language. Every day that we get out of the house we are sieged by the multitudes of notes, billboards and text messages the simple misunderstanding of which might have irreparable consequences. The significance of reading is incomparably higher in the academia as it is through reading that almost every single piece of knowledge is distributed. We do rarely refer to personal communications even with well-known figures of a field as that figure do definitely have written articles and textbooks to which we can refer. Neither do we highly cite from conference presentations as the presented topic, if is of value, should have appeared in a published text format. One might simply imply that the world of academia does not recognize oral knowledge as legitimate unless it is transformed into written form. Reading academic texts is a more serious concern for non-native speakers of English who need to handle this in a language they are still learning and in which they are not competent. Many of these L2 academic readers have long been focusing on improving their vocabulary and grammar knowledge with the hope that they will help them in reading and even writing. In this article we will investigate this issue to see if, how and to what extent the knowledge of vocabulary and grammar contribute to reading comprehension ability of Iranian graduate students. More specifically, this study intends to answer the following questions: 1.         Is there any relationship between vocabulary and grammar knowledge, and reading comprehension ability? If yes, which of the grammar and vocabulary knowledge are better predictors of reading comprehension? 2.         Do our data confirm the fitness of the proposed causal models of the relationships between vocabulary, grammar and reading comprehension (and their different sub-abilities)? To answer these research questions, a total of 2961 Iranian MA students or graduates and PhD candidate took part in this study. 1107 of the participants were females and 1824 were males. They were all preparing themselves to take part in different English proficiency tests whose score is a necessary condition for admission to PhD programs in Iran. The test they took in this research project was similar in content and length to most of those tests. The test used to collect data in this study comprised of 100 multiple choice items of which 30 were on vocabulary, 40 on grammar and 30 on reading comprehension. The items of the vocabulary section included filing the blank, find the synonym and cloze types; the items of the grammar section included error recognition, fill in the blank and cloze types. Cronbach’s alpha index of reliability for the grammar, vocabulary and reading sections as well as the total test were computed and found to be 0.77, 0.77, 0.66, and 0.78 respectively. Participants’ answers to the test items were fed into SPSS. Descriptive statistics, correlation and reliability analysis were first used to screen the data. To answer the first research question, multiple regression was employed. The second research question which investigated the fitness of the proposed models was answered using path analysis. Primary analysis of the data showed that vocabulary, grammar and reading comprehension were significantly correlated not only as three independent variables but also as a number of sub-variables (item types of grammar and vocabulary). Multiple regression revealed that vocabulary, compared to grammar, is a better predictor of reading comprehension. Further analysis also showed that of the item types of vocabulary and grammar, vocabulary cloze, vocabulary synonym, grammar error recognition, vocabulary blank and grammar blank question types were, in order, significant predictors of reading comprehension. Answering the second research question entailed proposing two causal models. The first one was the simple model which assumed that vocabulary and grammar are causes of reading comprehension ability while vocabulary is also the cause of grammar knowledge. The second model was the more complex one in which we assumed that vocabulary synonym and grammar blank item types as less contextualized measures of these two types of knowledge are causes of more contextualized forms of knowledge which are measured through vocabulary and grammar cloze items which are in turn causes of reading comprehension which is the most context-demanding variable in our study. The two proposed models were evaluated through path analysis using AMOS. Results indicated that both models enjoy good fitness indices and are thus acceptable. Our finding has implications for teaching and assessing reading in academic settings.

With the accelerating pace of technological enhancements such as high-speed Web services, smartphones, high-tech apps, and social networking sites, appropriate and effective methods of applying technology is an urgent need. This need is more imperative in EFL/ESL contexts since a large amount of education relies on digital sources. One way to address this need, is through introducing to the field the postmodern concept of digital citizenship which can briefly be defined as the principles of responsible and appropriate behavior in applying technology. Since Iranian EFL learners are involved in using technology more than ever before, this study aimed to investigate how they perceive and practice digital citizenship. This was carried out through a netnogrphic inquiry in the context of a social networking site, called Telegram. The participants comprised 1126 female and male Iranian learners who were members of three Telegram groups. They were within an age range of 15 to 22, and from a variety of ethnicities and proficiency levels. There were two main sources of data, including Telegram group participant observations and interviews. Through the netnographic observations, about 700 screen pages of text chats were collected. Moreover, the transcripts of voice files exchanged in Telegram groups, along with research field notes and memos obtained through observations over a period of one year were added. To address triangulation, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 10 EFL learners from the investigated groups. Inspired by Ribble’s (2001) digital citizenship model, these interviews helped the researchers scrutinize into aspects of the research which could not be traced through observations alone. Accordingly, Ribbles’ components including digital etiquette, access, law, communication, literacy, commerce, rights and responsibilities, health and wellness, and safety and security, were used as a tentative benchmark for designing interview guiding questions, to probe deeply into the issues which had proved to need more clarifications in the course of observations. While conducting the interviews, we learnt about some points which had been left unnoticed in the observations; they made up the emerging questions which helped us enrich our findings. Since data collection procedure led to obtaining a huge body of data, for manageability reasons, only textual data were used for analysis, and other types of data such as images, videos and emojis were excluded from our analysis. Relying on grounded theory and adopting qualitative content analysis, the obtained data were probed through the initial, axial and focused coding procedures, and emerging patterns were classified into various themes and subthemes. Ultimately, the themes extracted from the observations were decided to be: incongruence with netiquette, misconducts in academic settings, and redundant posts. Similarly, the main themes derived out of the in-depth interviews included proper application of digital technology, effective application of digital technology and demand for digital citizenship education. In all, the analysis of the entire data suggests that Iranian EFL learners are not well aware of the rules, regularities and norms of digital citizenship in spite of their wide use of digital technologies. In fact, the illusion of absolute freedom and the possibility of being anonymous on the Web were among the main reasons for assuming fake personalities, and behaving improperly when on the Web. More instances of their insufficient control of the topic included their lack of recognition of reliable and safe sources from fake and unreliable ones. They were unaware of cyber safety and security issues, and felt helpless in case of being threatened by/exposed to cyberbullying, hacking and cyber fraud. So far as language usage was concerned, they often used colloquial, harsh, sarcastic or disrespectful language which did not suit the digital context of formal, academic groups. Moreover, sending posts which included trivial requests, illegal debates, disappointing issues, and redundant or irrelevant topics__usually in incorrect spelling__ was among their chief misconducts. These findings highlight the need for teaching digital citizenship skills right from the early ages of schooling__ rather than offering limited education of digital literacy at high schools__ to keep learners safe from the threats of digital settings, and enable them to make proper, effective and responsible use of digital technologies. The findings of the present study can be useful for policy makers, ELT professionals, curriculum developers, English teachers, learners and parents. Accordingly the implementation of relevant programs into the mainstream and EFL education, and in the development of related curricula, as well as in computer assisted language leaning (CALL) and teacher education programs is highly recommend. The findings also helps teachers promote their self-awareness and appreciate the need for raising their students' digital awareness in order to become technologically literate and ethically responsible users, resisting negative consequences and hazardous risks of digital environments. Moreover, since the contemporary models of digital citizenship are rooted in foreign cultures with their particular economic, political and social policies and priorities, developing local models of digital citizenship is urgently called for.