- Linguistics Department, Bu- Ali Sina University, Hamedan, Iran
Mohammad Rasekh-Mahand
Bu-Ali Sina University, Linguistics, Faculty Member
- Syntax, Typology, Cognitive Linguistics, Cognitive Semantics, Iranian Languages, Grammaticalization, Functional Linguistics, Historical Linguistics, and 44 moreLanguages and Linguistics, Persian Language, Endangered Languages, Linguistics, Cognitive Linguistics, Syntax, Morphology, Dialectology, Contact Linguistics, Linguistic Typology, Construction Grammar, Language Typology, Morphosyntax, Typology, Middle Voice, Alignment Change, Theories of Language and Linguistics, Corpus Linguistics, Serial Verbs, Verbal Aspect Theory, Connectives, Mood and Modality, Verb classes, Lexical and Grammatical Borrowing, Semantic Maps, Indo-Iranian Languages, Tense, Transitivity, Valency, Argument Structure, Ergativity, Differential Object Marking, Case Marking, Noun Incorporation, Leonard Talmy, Language Evolution, Biolinguistics, Tense and Aspect Systems, Modality, Tense aspect modality, Word order, Experimental Syntax, Usage-Based Linguistics, and Usage-based Grammaredit
This paper provides data from a regional dialect of Persian, Hamedanian Persian, where a verb is grammaticalized to be used as epistemic modality marker, frequently used in interrogatives. The verb didan, objectively means ‘to see’, but... more
This paper provides data from a regional dialect of Persian, Hamedanian Persian, where a verb is grammaticalized to be used as epistemic modality marker, frequently used in interrogatives. The verb didan, objectively means ‘to see’, but subjectivized in many instances to mean ‘understand’. However, in this dialect, bini, originally the subjunctive second person singular form of the verb didan ‘to see’, is used as epistemic marker. It is used in content and polar questions, where uncertainty is a common feature. Our fieldwork data show that the verb didan is used rarely to mean ‘to see’ and it extended to mark epistemic modality, used as probability marker. This modal marker is only used in questions, which share the stance of uncertainty with epistemic markers. The various features of this grammaticalization path are discussed and an explanation based on egophoricity is provided.
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This paper aims to describe and explain the different morphosyntactic and semantic features of some double verb constructions in Persian, an Indo-European language mainly spoken in Iran. It is argued that these double verb constructions... more
This paper aims to describe and explain the different morphosyntactic and semantic features of some double verb constructions in Persian, an Indo-European language mainly spoken in Iran. It is argued that these double verb constructions are not instances of serial verb construction, but instances of emerging aspectual verbs with varied degrees of grammaticalization. It is argued that numerous factors lead to grammaticalization of these verbs, including context, the semantic class of the verbs, and their frequency. A corpus-based analysis shows that these aspectual verbs have been grammaticalized in different ratios during the last one hundred years, demonstrating ongoing change in the Persian language.
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In Tātic, a modern Northwest Iranian language group, =rā is a polysemous postposition which has not evolved into an accusative marker, unlike what happened in Modern Persian. Tātic varieties, which include all Tāti, Tālyshi and Tātoid... more
In Tātic, a modern Northwest Iranian language group, =rā is a polysemous postposition which has not evolved into an accusative marker, unlike what happened in Modern Persian. Tātic varieties, which include all Tāti, Tālyshi and Tātoid dialects spoken in northwest Iran, exploit the postposition =rā to mark many different case roles. This paper studies the various functions of the postposition =rā and its variants in this language group. The data for the study have been gathered through fieldwork and interviews with Tāti native speakers as well as through available descriptive grammars. Using the dative semantic-map approach, we show that the main functions that =rā marks in all Tātic dialects are ‘beneficiary’, ‘reason’ and ‘purpose’. We conclude that because some of the functions of =rā are not among the semantic roles in the conventional dative semantic map, this needs to be expanded in order to account for the polysemy patterns of =rā in the Tātic language group.
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This paper studies the morphological influence of language contact between Turkic and Tātic language group in Northwest Iran. The postposition under study is the Turkic-inan and how it has entered the morphological system of some Tāti... more
This paper studies the morphological influence of language contact between Turkic and Tātic language group in Northwest Iran. The postposition under study is the Turkic-inan and how it has entered the morphological system of some Tāti dialects of Iran. In particular, it is shown which Tāti dialects are influenced in this regard and why. The data for this study were collected from interviews with native Tāti and Turkic speakers in Iran and also from descriptive grammars and Tāti-Farsi dictionaries. We have used Narrog's (2010) instrumental semantic map to see which semantic functions are fulfilled with the instrumental-related postposition or case marker in both Tāti and Turkic dialects of Iran and whether they are the same or different in these languages.
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In the modern age, the written sources are rapidly increasing. A growing number of this data is related to the texts containing the feelings and opinions of the users. Thus reviewing and analyzing the emotional texts have received a... more
In the modern age, the written sources are rapidly increasing. A growing number of this data is related to the texts containing the feelings and opinions of the users. Thus reviewing and analyzing the emotional texts have received a particular attention in the recent years. In this paper, a system that is based on a combination of the cognitive features and the deep neural network, gated recurrent unit, is proposed. Five basic emotions used in this approach are anger, happiness, sadness, surprise, and fear. A total of 23,000 Persian documents by an average length of 24 are labeled for this research work. The emotional constructions, emotional keywords, and emotional POS are the basic cognitive features used in this approach. On the other hand, after pre-processing the texts, the words of the normalized text are embedded by the Word2Vec technique. Then a deep learning approach is followed based on this embedded data. Finally, the classification algorithms such as Naïve Bayes, decision tree, and support vector machines are used in order to classify the emotions based on the concatenation of the defined cognitive features and the deep learning features. 10-fold cross-validation is used in order to evaluate the performance of the proposed system. The experimental results show that the proposed system has achieved an accuracy of 97%. The result of the proposed system shows the improvement of several percent in comparison with the other results achieved by GRU and cognitive features in isolation. At the end, studying other statistical features and improving these cognitive features in more details can affect the results.
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Nowadays, it is believed that Iranian citizens are using a more violent language compared to the past decades. The findings of this study show that the violence rate or use of angry words in Persian has rise and falls in the past five... more
Nowadays, it is believed that Iranian citizens are using a more violent language compared to the past decades. The findings of this study show that the violence rate or use of angry words in Persian has rise and falls in the past five decades. It is supposed that some social and political events have direct effect on this pattern and there is a relationship between language violence rate, social events and the cognitive patterns in the society. The data for this study were collected from movies, novels and short stories, and newspapers in the past fifty years. By studying the metaphors and adjectives, we tried to establish the interaction between social events, violence in language and cognitive patterns in each decade.
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Tāti is an Indo-European language of the Northwestern Iranian subgroup. Each Tāti variety uses different alignment elements to mark verbal arguments in transitive and ditransitive constructions. Tāti ditransitive constructions differ in... more
Tāti is an Indo-European language of the Northwestern Iranian subgroup. Each Tāti variety uses different alignment elements to mark verbal arguments in transitive and ditransitive constructions. Tāti ditransitive constructions differ in flagging, indexing and word order. They use flagging and indexing strategies to mark the T (Theme) in ditransitive clauses. They use the Double Object Construction (DOC) or the Indirect Object Construction (IOC) to mark the R (Recipient) of ditransitive verbs: (a) in some varieties, a postposition is required for R, which makes R different from T; (b) in some others, T is in the direct case and R in the oblique, and the verb agrees with T; (c) still in others, T (but not R) always hosts person agreement marking clitics; (d) finally, R appears in postverbal position and T in preverbal one in some varieties, so R is different from T with respect to word order.
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In this paper, we give an account of dative functions in a number of Iranian languages from a typological perspective. To analyze the functionality of dative markers in the selected languages, we follow a semantic map approach and take... more
In this paper, we give an account of dative functions in a number of Iranian languages from a typological perspective. To analyze the functionality of dative markers in the selected languages, we follow a semantic map approach and take Haspelmath’s map of dative functions as a typological grid to examine our data. We collected our data from descriptive grammars and, for Ossetic and Wakhi, from interviews. The data show that five additional connections should be added to the semantic map of dative functions; these connections are confirmed by data from at least three languages within the Iranian language family. The main semantic property for the dative in Iranian languages is indirect affectedness. Moreover, in some languages spatial functions of the dative are also attested. The distribution of dative functions is mainly explained by the preservation of the oblique case and the areal distribution. In addition, in some languages, a grammaticalization cycle is observed, as a result of which purportedly beneficiary markers are transforming into dative markers.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/stuf-2018-0021
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/stuf-2018-0021
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This paper aims to study instrumental related functions in some Western Iranian languages. The data were collected from descriptive grammars, and interviews in some cases. Narrog’s instrumental semantic map is the basis for analyzing... more
This paper aims to study instrumental related functions in some Western Iranian languages. The data were collected from descriptive grammars, and interviews in some cases. Narrog’s instrumental semantic map is the basis for analyzing polysemy patterns in these languages. The data show that two main polysemy patterns are attested: (1) Instrumental and companion functions are coded alike. (2) They are coded differently. These two patterns are distributed areally. Furthermore, some languages are shifting/have shifted between these two types mainly as a result of contact-induced matters. In languages in which two or more functions are not directly connected, one marker generally has both instrumental and dative functions.
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In recent functional and cognitive literature different motivations are suggested to influence the relative clause extraposition, where the modifying relative clause is not adjacent to the modified head noun. Information status,... more
In recent functional and cognitive literature different motivations are suggested to influence the relative clause extraposition, where the modifying relative clause is not adjacent to the modified head noun. Information status, grammatical weight and verb class are among such motivations. The current corpus-based study of relative clause extraposition attempts to test the prediction of these different motivations in Persian. Using logistic regression analysis, the effects of these various factors on the extraposition of relative clauses are investigated. The findings revealed that, among different influential sources, grammatical weight is the main factor influencing extraposition of relative clauses. Verb class and information status are found to be lower ranked factors, respectively. The analyses demonstrated that with a special verb class, i.e. linking verbs, which predominantly carries given information in discourse, relative clause extraposition happens more freely. The findings support Hawkins' (2004) principle of domain minimization and provide more evidence for the hypothesis that, Persian, a seemingly SOV language, behaves typologically as a VO language, in which the heavy constituents shift rightward to facilitate constituent recognition, similar to other head-initial languages.
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In this paper, different functions of Persian pronominal enclitics in verbal domain are discussed. Traditionally, it has been supposed that these enclitics act as arguments, while it is argued here that they act as agreement markers as... more
In this paper, different functions of Persian pronominal enclitics in verbal domain are discussed. Traditionally, it has been supposed that these enclitics act as arguments, while it is argued here that they act as agreement markers as well. As they have moved from Wackernagel's position toward verb adjacent position in different stages of Persian language history, their functions have also changed. Through grammaticalization, they have acquired a new role as subject agreement markers. They may also act as objects in clitic doubling structures, when the optional NP object acts as topic. The new role of these clitics is explained by the blocking principle, which shows how a language acquires new verbal agreement formatives only for the non-distinctive slots of the agreement paradigm.
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In Persian dialect of Hamedan, there are some negative sentences which do not mark polarity. In cross-linguistic studies, these structures are called expletive negatives. They are formally negative, but logically positive. Based on a... more
In Persian dialect of Hamedan, there are some negative sentences which do not mark polarity. In cross-linguistic studies, these structures are called expletive negatives. They are formally negative, but logically positive. Based on a fieldwork data, I have shown that expletive negatives occur in temporal adverb clauses of 'since, until, as soon as, before', adverbial clauses of unexpected or impossible event, and clauses showing regret and complain. I have argued that the shared function of expletive negative in these concepts is to show a kind of epistemic modality. The meaning conveyed in these contexts is uncertainty, impossibility and unwillingness. Hence, the negative marker does not show polarity, but a kind of epistemic modality. The prevalence of this structure in Hamedani dialect is due to its long contact with Turkish, a language which has many instances of expletive negative. Hamedani Persian has borrowed this structure from 'before' adverb clauses of Turkish.
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Flexibility in idioms may occur at different lexical, morpho-syntactic and syntactic levels. In flexible idioms, the core meaning remains unchanged. This descriptive-analytical study aims to investigate flexibility in Persian Idioms at... more
Flexibility in idioms may occur at different lexical, morpho-syntactic and syntactic levels. In flexible idioms, the core meaning remains unchanged. This descriptive-analytical study aims to investigate flexibility in Persian Idioms at the above-mentioned levels. The corpus contains 427 examples containing 160 "Hand-Idioms" in Najafi (1387/2008). The findings show that lexical flexibility occurs through the process of addition (nouns, adjectives, adverbs, quantifiers) and substitution (verbs and prepositions); morpho-syntactic flexibility happens through the addition of the plural marker "-ha" and the indefinite marker "–ya", and the syntactic flexibility happens through "postposing", "scrambling", "causative and intransitive structures", "objects substitution" and the addition of the "complements". Furthermore, it was found that Persian "Hand-Idioms" are more inclined towards "addition" and factors such as "definiteness", "information structure", "linguistic economy", "specification" and "expression of quantity" cause the motivation for the flexibility of the idioms. The findings of this research can be used by the authors of books on teaching idioms to non-Persian speakers and the relevant teachers to provide the learners with appropriate examples to show the features of flexible idioms.
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A resumptive pronoun is a pronoun appearing in a relative clause, which restates the antecedent. The use of resumptive pronouns in relative clauses appears to be governed by structural complexity in grammar and usage. Hawkins's (2004)... more
A resumptive pronoun is a pronoun appearing in a relative clause, which restates the antecedent. The use of resumptive pronouns in relative clauses appears to be governed by structural complexity in grammar and usage. Hawkins's (2004) Efficiency and complexity in grammars predicts a parallel effect in usage: when the grammar permits the option of either resumptive pronoun or gap, resumptive pronouns should be used more often as structural complexity increases. By the results of four experiments including processing assessment, production task, an acceptability judgement task and listening experiment, the relation of relative clauses' weight and the presence of a resumptive pronoun with an objective antecedent or lack of it is verified. The hypothesis was that with the increase of grammatical weight of relative clause, the need for a resumptive pronoun will be more. Finally, the results of four experiments are analyzed by SPSS software. The results which were based on the hypothesis, were not meaningful. It means that the presence or absence of resumptive pronoun in different grammatical weights does not make a meaningful difference. It means Persian speakers use lots of resumptive pronouns without attention to grammatical weights of relative clause.
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Language is a social phenomenon. What happens in society is reflected in language. For this reason, the social study of language can reveal facts about the language community. If a society is violent, rude or sad, it manifests itself in... more
Language is a social phenomenon. What happens in society is reflected in language. For this reason, the social study of language can reveal facts about the language community. If a society is violent, rude or sad, it manifests itself in language. With this assumption, the present paper examines the rate of the three social characteristics of violence, politeness, and sadness and happiness and its reflection in the Persian language in the last five decades. The two main questions of the research are: Has the Persian-speaking community become more violent, rude and sad in the last five decades? Is there a connection between important political and social events and the rate of these changes? To answer these questions, a corpus from the past five decades were analysed, including movies, newspapers, stories, speeches by politicians, and songs. The corpus was divided into five decades, in each decade one or more important political and social events took place in the country: the fifties (revolution), the sixties (war), the seventies (construction and reformations), the eighties (kindness and election issues), and the nineties (moderation and sanctions). In this corpus, we have sought to find, analyse and determine the frequency of language tools that show the desired characteristics such as metaphors, adjectives, forms of address, and taboo words. This study shows that generally the Persian-speaking community has become more violent, rude, and sad at least in the last two decades. There is also a clear relationship between the main socio-political events in each decade and the rate of increase or decrease of these characteristics.
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این مقاله به بررسی نقشهای مختلفی پرداخته که «مگر» از قرن چهارم هجری تاکنون در متون زبان فارسی برعهده داشته است. به این منظور پیکرهای مشتمل بر 24 عنوان کتاب از سه دورۀ تاریخی قرنهای چهارم تا هفتم، هشتم تا یازدهم و دوازدهم تا زمان حاضر... more
این مقاله به بررسی نقشهای مختلفی پرداخته که «مگر» از قرن چهارم هجری تاکنون در متون زبان فارسی برعهده داشته است. به این منظور پیکرهای مشتمل بر 24 عنوان کتاب از سه دورۀ تاریخی قرنهای چهارم تا هفتم، هشتم تا یازدهم و دوازدهم تا زمان حاضر تهیه شد. از این سه دوره، تعداد 360 جمله که شامل «مگر» هستند استخراج شد. پس از بررسی و دستهبندی آنها دو کارکرد عمده برای «مگر» بهدست آمد: کارکرد پرسشی و غیرپرسشی. ویژگیهای هرکدام بهتفصیل بررسی شد. هر دسته شامل زیرمجموعههایی است که ویژگیهای نحوی خاص خود را دارند. اما بهطور کلی، نقش پرسشی «مگر» در حدود این 12 قرن روندی افزایشی را نشان میدهد و نقش غیرپرسشی آن روبه کاهش بوده است. همچنین بهنظر میرسد در متون مکتوب «مگر» در حال عبور از مرحلۀ غیرذهنی به ذهنیشدگی است.
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This paper aims to investigate postposing in Modern spoken Persian. Persian is a verbfinal language; however, some constituents frequently follow the verb and appear in the post-verbal domain. Among the factors motivating this phenomenon,... more
This paper aims to investigate postposing in Modern spoken Persian. Persian is a verbfinal language; however, some constituents frequently follow the verb and appear in the post-verbal domain. Among the factors motivating this phenomenon, one of them is grammatical weight. The universal tendency proposed by typologists is the "shortbefore-long principle"; locating the heavy constituents after the light ones in order to ease the process of production and comprehension. Some studies advocate the position of long constituents before short ones in verb-final languages like Japanese and Korean. Based on the Persian spoken corpus, this research analyzes the postposed constituents according to their grammatical weight. It is observed that the heavier constituents are postposed more easily compared with the light ones; supporting the universal trend of placing heavy constituents after the light ones.
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n this research, we have had an exact categorization for different kinds of derivational , compound and derivational-compound present participles in the frame of typological prototypes which is a universal approach towards the parts of... more
n this research, we have had an exact categorization for different kinds of derivational , compound and derivational-compound present participles in the frame of typological prototypes which is a universal approach towards the parts of speech. In this theory, prototypical and with no morphemes adjectives belong to the semantic class of ‘property’ and to ‘modification’ in terms of propositional act constructions. These prototypical adjectives should be simple and without any morphemes on the basis of structural coding of typological prototypes theory. And the adjectives which are not simple and have morphemes, are considered as marked and non- prototypical adjectives. present participles do not act similarly and are not uniform on the basis of behavioral potential. So, they are not in the same level. They are different in terms of their adjectival, nominal functions. By studying present participles in this research, it is shown that they follow the both criterion of typological prototype, and on the basis of these criterion they are non-prototypical adjectives in Persian. In other words, they are unmarked category in terms of both structural coding and behavioral potential. Finally, their position is specified on the semantic map and their behavioral potentials are shown through diagrams
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This study investigated grammatical gender in Āmora’I language. This language is spoken in Āmora village in Khalajestan rural area in Qom province. It has two grammatical genders: Masculine and Feminine. Feminine gender is marked by... more
This study investigated grammatical gender in Āmora’I language. This language is spoken in Āmora village in Khalajestan rural area in Qom province. It has two grammatical genders: Masculine and Feminine. Feminine gender is marked by inflectional suffixes '-a' and '-iya'. This suffix appears as -a in consonant ending words and -iya in vowel ending words. These markers are added to nouns, pronouns, indefiniteness markers, adjectives and verbs to distinguish the gender of a word. The grammatical gender of the verb, adjective, pronoun and indefinite marker is determined based on the gender of head in noun phrase. The gender agreement is a regular-based method for distinguishing the gender of nouns in the rest of the components of the sentence. The gender agreement of verbs with adjectives is also observed with any type of noun (human, animate and inanimate) and with plural nouns. While indefinite marker agreement can be seen only in singular names attributed to humans. The verb gender agreement is only possible for past tenses. In this agreement, although third person singular pronoun which expresses the gender marker but also, it is true for all other persons.
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The following paper aims at investigating Persian formal and substantive idioms which include "agar (if)" within the framework of construction grammar. Conventionally, "agar (if)" is used in Persian conditional sentences. Following... more
The following paper aims at investigating Persian formal and substantive idioms which include "agar (if)" within the framework of construction grammar. Conventionally, "agar (if)" is used in Persian conditional sentences. Following Fillmore et al. (1998), this study attempts to investigate the peculiar syntactic, semantic and phonological features of "agar (if)-constructions" which differentiate them from the regular conditional sentences. Formal "agar (if)-constructions" indicate weak possibilities, denial, certainty, persuasion, emphasis, and threat while substantive "agar (if)-constructions" denote wishes, haste, requests, impossibilities, and objection. The findings showed that formal "agar (if)-constructions" are inclined towards unfamiliar syntactic structures while substantive "agar (if)-constructions" tend to prefer familiar syntactic constructions. Moreover, changes in the word order and the tense could change the idiomatic interpretation in both formal and substantive idioms. Falling intonation is also an idiosyncratic feature in some formal and substantive "agar (if)constructions".
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In this research, we have had an exact categorization for different kinds of derivational and derivational-compound past participles in the frame of typological prototypes which is a universal approach towards the parts of speech. In this... more
In this research, we have had an exact categorization for different kinds of derivational and derivational-compound past participles in the frame of typological prototypes which is a universal approach towards the parts of speech. In this theory, prototypical adjectives with no morphemes belong to the semantic class of ‘property’ and to ‘modification’ in terms of propositional act constructions. These prototypical adjectives should be simple and without any morphemes on the basis of structural coding of typological prototypes theory. Furthermore, the adjectives which are not simple and have morphemes, are considered as marked and non- prototypical adjectives. Indeed, the structural coding criterion specifies only that the marked member is encoded by at least as many morphemes as the unmarked member (croft, 1999:73). This generalization is an implicational universal. If a language codes a typologically unmarked member of a grammatical category by n morphemes (n > 0), then it codes a typologically marked member of that category by at least n morphemes. Past participles which are studied in this research, are marked and are not simple structurally. They are divided to derivational and derivational- compound ones which have all morphemes. Derivational past participles are made by the past stem of verb + a suffix (-h) and the derivational-compound past participles are made by a noun, adjective, adverb, pronoun + derivational past participle (stem of a verb+ suffix(h)). Therefore, they are not prototypical in terms of their structure and their different semantic class. Typological markedness also constrains the distribution of constructions exhibiting the behavioral potential of the categories; if a construction encoding the behavioral potential of members of a grammatical category is found in that category, it is found with at least the unmarked member of that category for that construction.
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One of the most puzzling facts about human language is also one of the most basic: Words occur according to a famously systematic frequency distribution such that there are few very high-frequency words that account for most of the tokens... more
One of the most puzzling facts about human language is also one of the most basic: Words occur according to a famously systematic frequency distribution such that there are few very high-frequency words that account for most of the tokens in text and many low-frequency words. In his pioneering research, G. K. Zipf observed that more frequent words tend to have more meanings, and showed that the number of meanings of a word grows as the square root of its frequency. One aspect that all dynamical models of grammar emphasize is that frequency of occurrence is an important determinant of linguistic structure and language use. This paper surveys the effects of frequency on Aspects in Persian and considers the correlation between Frequency and the numbers of different types of Aspect member in Persian. Aspect is a grammatical category that expresses how an action, event, or state, denoted by a verb, extends over time. Based on Bybee (1985, 1995, 201, 2003, 2006, 2011) and Haspelmath (2002, 2005, 2006, 2008, 2014) and Croft (2003), we try to clarify the frequency effect in decreasing numbers of different types of aspects in Persian. frequency-based form minimization, is probably the most important economy effect that shapes grammatical systems. Since Greenberg(1966a) and Croft (1990), this economy effect has been widely known, and has often been discussed under the heading of markedness. We conclude that There is a Reverse Relationship between the number of different types of aspect members and the frequency.
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Pronominal clitics play different roles in different construction in Persian. They could appear in possessive constructions to show possessor, after prepositions as complements, and as arguments beside verbs. I argue in this paper that... more
Pronominal clitics play different roles in different construction in Persian. They could appear in possessive constructions to show possessor, after prepositions as complements, and as arguments beside verbs. I argue in this paper that these clitics act as reflexive pronouns in possessive constructions, if referring to subjects. This means that, in addition to reflexive well-known reflexive pronouns in Persian, this language exploits clitics in reflexive functions. While a special reflexive pronoun is used in object position, the normal clitic pronoun is used in adnominal possessive position. Based on natural spoken corpus, it is shown that adnominal possessive clitics are much more likely to be coreferential with the subject than object pronouns. Hence, they do not need special marking to the same extent as object pronouns and this higher frequency explains their use in possessive constructions.
Key words: clitics, possessive construction, binding, reflexive, frequency.
Key words: clitics, possessive construction, binding, reflexive, frequency.
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This paper studies some of the less-studied constructions in Persian in which a dependent describes a participant in a clause. The participants which are described or attributed a feature are normally subject and object, but sometimes... more
This paper studies some of the less-studied constructions in Persian in which a dependent describes a participant in a clause. The participants which are described or attributed a feature are normally subject and object, but sometimes complements, too. These dependents are either complements or adjuncts. The complements could be subject complements, object complements and complement of prepositional complement. The participant-oriented adjuncts include adverbial adjunct and predicative adjuncts. The adverbial adjuncts are agent-oriented adverbs. The predicative adjuncts are in three groups: resultative, predicative and circumstantial. This paper introduces this novel categorization of participant-oriented dependents with some criteria to distinguish among them.
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This paper addresses the grammatical category and syntactic role of the word 'kur' "blind" in a sentence like ' u kur be donyā āmad', "he was born blind" and similar sentences. It is argued that the grammatical category of this word is... more
This paper addresses the grammatical category and syntactic role of the word 'kur' "blind" in a sentence like ' u kur be donyā āmad', "he was born blind" and similar sentences. It is argued that the grammatical category of this word is adjective, not adverb. Syntactically, this construction is an example of a secondary predicate construction in which a main verb is used with a depictive predicate. Depictive predicate is a kind of predicative complement. We have tried to demonstrate that the syntactic role of this word is depictive predicative. The differences between depictive and resultative predicative are also clarified
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در دو شمارة اخیر مجلة نامه فرهنگستان، دو مطلب دربارة ارتباط بین ویرایش و دستور زبان منتشر شده است. ابتدا، دکتر حسین سامعی مطلبی با عناون «ویرایش و دستور زبان» (شمارة 65، ص 151-160) نوشتند و سپس دکتر امید طبیب¬زاده بحث را با مطلبی تحت... more
در دو شمارة اخیر مجلة نامه فرهنگستان، دو مطلب دربارة ارتباط بین ویرایش و دستور زبان منتشر شده است. ابتدا، دکتر حسین سامعی مطلبی با عناون «ویرایش و دستور زبان» (شمارة 65، ص 151-160) نوشتند و سپس دکتر امید طبیب¬زاده بحث را با مطلبی تحت عنوان «دربارة ویرایش و دستور زبان» (شمارة 66، ص 138-145) ادامه دادند. همچنین دکتر علاءالدین طباطبایی در سرمقالة شماره 66 به بحث دربارة «زبان نامة فرهنگستان» پرداختند. من ابتدا به طور فشرده دیدگاه-های مطرح شده در دو مطلب نخست را مرور می¬کنم، و در ادامه نظر خودم را در مورد اهمیت دستور زبان در ویرایش بیان می¬کنم و نکته¬ای در مورد مطلب دکتر طباطبایی نیز اضافه می¬کنم.
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The Persian language has so far undergone various historical periods. In each of these periods, a number of morphosyntactic, phonetic, and lexical features of the language have been changed. In some cases, this change is in a way that has... more
The Persian language has so far undergone various historical periods. In each of these periods, a number of morphosyntactic, phonetic, and lexical features of the language have been changed. In some cases, this change is in a way that has shifted the language toward typological change. One of these changes has made Persian to become more analytical. But all of these changes have come about with the passing of time. Therefore, in order to study these changes, we have to take a viewpoint which examines them both synchronically and diachronically. To reach this aim, in this study, two translations of a single text have been used as two parallel texts. Tabari's translation of the Holy Qur'an, which was written in the 10th century is compared with the translation of Bahaedin Khoramshahi, belonging to the contemporary period. The question is whether Persian has become more analytic or not. Since the type of analysis of this research is based on statistical and quantitative data, first, all of the vocabularies of each of the two texts are counted and classified according to frequency of occurrence in the frequency / rank index. At the same time, they are arranged in a different list regarding to the part of speech they belong. In the second stage, each sentence of the first text is compared with the corresponding sentence of the second text and their changes are recorded. Since there is a gap of more than a thousand years between the two texts, it is assumed that the Persian language has progressed towards being analytic in this period; therefore, in order to prove this linguistic metamorphosis quantitatively, it is necessary to use a proven instrument and criterion. Zipf's law is a tool that can be used to test the analyticity of Persian language. The findings show that Persian has become more analytic.
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در اين مقاله به قرض¬گیری ساختاری و روند دستوری¬شدگی یک نشانه تازه برای زمان آینده در زبان فارسی پرداخته¬ایم. نشانه فوق، ساخت تحلیلی «می¬ریم که...» در زبان فارسی است که در سال¬های اخیر از راه تماس زبانی با زبان انگلیسی وارد زبان فارسی شده... more
در اين مقاله به قرض¬گیری ساختاری و روند دستوری¬شدگی یک نشانه تازه برای زمان آینده در زبان فارسی پرداخته¬ایم. نشانه فوق، ساخت تحلیلی «می¬ریم که...» در زبان فارسی است که در سال¬های اخیر از راه تماس زبانی با زبان انگلیسی وارد زبان فارسی شده است. در این بحث سعی کرده¬ایم نشان دهیم با اینکه در نگاه اول احتمالاً برخی وجود این ساخت در زبان فارسی را بسیار عجیب و نادرست می¬دانند، اما بر اساس ملاک¬های قرض¬گیری دستوری و محدودیت¬های رده¬شناختی، این ساخت اکنون بخشی از دستور زبان فارسی است و به نوعی دستوری¬شده است. البته ریشه این دستوری¬شدگی، تماس زبانی بوده است. این ساخت، یک نشانه تازه برای زمان آینده، با استفاده از فعل «رفتن» است که در زبان¬های دیگر سازوکاری رایج برای نشان دادن زمان آینده است.
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Introduction: According to performance theory and efficiency principles, constituent ordering is influenced by processing efficiency, i.e. the ordering of constituents is intended to facilitate processing. Adopting an online reading time... more
Introduction: According to performance theory and efficiency principles, constituent ordering is influenced by processing efficiency, i.e. the ordering of constituents is intended to facilitate processing. Adopting an online reading time paradigm, the research was aimed at studying the role of grammatical weight in likelihood of post-verbal movement and processing loads of pairs of corresponding sentences. Method: The aforesaid paradigm, as an efficient experimental technique to assess processing speed of syntactic structures, was designed by OpenSesame Software. Two sets of 24 sentences in three levels of weight (light, medium and heavy) and two structural levels (unmarked preverbal constituent and post-verbal one) were presented to 40 randomly selected Persian-speaking participants (between the ages 18 and 40) with university education. The first set consisted of sentences containing relative clause in two configurations and the second set of pairs of scrambled (post-verbal) and unscrambled sentences. Sentences were followed by a yes/no question. Data was analyzed using SPSS and ANOVA test. Results: In light level, the mean reading time of sentences with canonical constituent ordering was less than those with post-verbal constituents. However, this trend got reversed by the increase of grammatical weight of the constituent subjected to scrutiny. In other word, the post-verbal movement of constituents resulted in reduction of mean reading time in medium-weight sentences. This decline was markedly more significant in heavy sentences. Conclusion: The ordering of constituents and the likelihood of movement is highly weight-sensitive. As a conclusion, the end-weight principle as an incentive to optimize the processing efficiency was approved in Persian.
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constituent ordering, is not arbitrary; rather, it is aimed at fulfilling efficiency principles. Length effect- as a formal characteristic- is a significant determinant in the occurrence of movement rules. The ultimate structural... more
constituent ordering, is not arbitrary; rather, it is aimed at fulfilling efficiency principles. Length effect- as a formal characteristic- is a significant determinant in the occurrence of movement rules. The ultimate structural configuration of sentences is interwoven with processing ease. Adopting eye movement registration technique, the current research study aims to explore eye behavior in response to processing difficulty of syntactically different but semantically identical sentences and provide behavioral evidence for the effect of length on the occurrence of movement in structural sentence pairs in Persian. Encompassing two syntactic movements (relative clause extraposition and postposing) through 2 sets of 40 sentence pairs in two length levels (short and long), some eye behavior such as fixation count/duration and regression were registered and analyzed using SPSS. Regarding the patterns of fixation, when the constituents under study were short, there was either no significant difference before and after the occurrence of syntactic movement, or the mean of fixation count and duration was lower in sentences with canonical constituent ordering; however, the patterns appeared to be reversed and hence a significant difference was spotted by the increase of constituent length. Regarding regressions, the mean regressions declined after the post-verbal movement of constituents by the increase of length. It can be concluded that syntactic movement is weight-sensitive and aimed at easing processing difficulty. Also, the likelihood of post-verbal movement in extraposition and scrambling increases by the rise of length and driven by the incentive of increase of processing efficiency.
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In usage-based linguistics (Bybee 2010), the importance of frequency as a factor in shaping grammar is well-established (Bybee and Thompson 1997, Bybee and Hopper 2001, Bybee 2003, Diessel 2007, 2016, Haspelmath 2008 b, c, in press). Zipf... more
In usage-based linguistics (Bybee 2010), the importance of frequency as a factor in shaping grammar is well-established (Bybee and Thompson 1997, Bybee and Hopper 2001, Bybee 2003, Diessel 2007, 2016, Haspelmath 2008 b, c, in press). Zipf (1935) suggested that language form can be related to language use. In this approach, linguistic structure is often characterized as an emergent phenomenon (Hopper 1987), which is influenced by frequency of occurrence. The asymmetry between short (and zero) and long forms could be seen in expressing singular/plural number; present tense/future tense; same-subject complement/different-subject complement; etc. Basically, those meanings which are expressed frequently tend to be expressed by short forms. These short forms are used not only at the level of words, but also at the level of grammar.
In this paper some of these asymmetries in Persian grammar are investigated and frequentist explanations (Haspelmath 2008c) are suggested.
In this paper some of these asymmetries in Persian grammar are investigated and frequentist explanations (Haspelmath 2008c) are suggested.
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Dependency is one of the significant relations in syntactic elements. . In subordination, a unit is subordinated to another. One kind of subordination is complement clauses. In this study, the rate of semantic and syntactic integration is... more
Dependency is one of the significant relations in syntactic elements. . In subordination, a unit is subordinated to another. One kind of subordination is complement clauses. In this study, the rate of semantic and syntactic integration is discussed. Relying on semantic factors, successfulness of main clause verb, co-reference and co-temporality of main clause and complement clause; complement-taking verbs of Farsi are put in different classes of dependence. the presence or absence of complementizer in complement clauses, co-lexicalization or case-marking of the subject and the object are marked in clauses to see which verbs show the most bond in main clauses and complement clauses by studying the semantic factors including the tense of complement clauses. The complement clauses with the most bonds dealing with main clauses tend to join to in a single sentence. It is revealed in this research that manipulation verbs have the most bonds between complement clauses and main clauses and their tendency in such verbs to join in a single sentence is high, so, they are placed above the complementation continuum. beside manipulation verbs, modality verbs with the same bonds are placed in the category, then, below complementation continuum, perception-cognition-utterance verbs are placed afterwards which have the lowest bond between main clause and complement clause. While studying semantic factors dealing with complement clauses and main clauses, it is revealed that Persian doesnot use co-lexicalization joined with complement clauses. This research provides a continuum of complement-taking verbs in Persian and the effect of iconicity on linking these verbs.
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زبان فارسی از حیث رده¬شناسیِ ترتیب واژه برخی از ویژگی¬های زبان¬های فعل¬پایان (OV) و برخی از ویژگی¬های زبان¬های فعل¬آغاز (VO) را دارد. دبیرمقدم (1392: 117-153) پس از بررسی رده¬شناختی ترتیب واژه در زبان فارسی، با استفاده از داده¬های تاریخی... more
زبان فارسی از حیث رده¬شناسیِ ترتیب واژه برخی از ویژگی¬های زبان¬های فعل¬پایان (OV) و برخی از ویژگی¬های زبان¬های فعل¬آغاز (VO) را دارد. دبیرمقدم (1392: 117-153) پس از بررسی رده¬شناختی ترتیب واژه در زبان فارسی، با استفاده از داده¬های تاریخی دوره¬های مختلف این زبان، نتیجه می¬گیرد که زبان فارسی در حال تغییر رده از فعل¬پایانی به فعل¬آغازی است. در این مقاله، با استفاده از چارچوب رده¬شناسی پردازشی، سعی شده است شواهدی از ویژگی¬های هم¬زمانی زبان فارسی ارائه شود که نشان می¬دهد این زبان گرایش بیشتری به سوی زبان¬های فعل¬آغاز پیدا کرده است. این داده¬ها در کنار داده¬های تاریخی زبان فارسی که دبیرمقدم (1392) ارائه کرده است، موید رانش این زبان به سمت زبان¬های فعل¬آغاز و تغییر رده این زبان است.
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Abstract Prepositional phrase is a group of words with a preposition and a noun phrase. In this study, we examine the order of prepositional phrases in Persian, considering factors: grammatical weight, MPT (manner+ place+time), lexical... more
Abstract
Prepositional phrase is a group of words with a preposition and a noun phrase. In this study, we examine the order of prepositional phrases in Persian, considering factors: grammatical weight, MPT (manner+ place+time), lexical dependency, lexical matching, ambiguity avoidance and information structure. To investigate, a written corpus over 500 sentences
having two prepositional phrase are gathered. Lexical dependency and lexical matching are the most important factors in determining the prepositional
phrase order in Persian. Considering the effect of prepositional phrases’ semantic class, Persian language like verb-initial languages prefers Manner+
Place+ Time generalization. Relating to information structure, phrases with new information precede phrases with given information. Grammatical
weight and ambiguity avoidance have no role in the order of prepositional phrases, since there is a little difference between two “short before long” and
“long before short” sequences.
Keywords: reduplication, morphological doubling
Prepositional phrase is a group of words with a preposition and a noun phrase. In this study, we examine the order of prepositional phrases in Persian, considering factors: grammatical weight, MPT (manner+ place+time), lexical dependency, lexical matching, ambiguity avoidance and information structure. To investigate, a written corpus over 500 sentences
having two prepositional phrase are gathered. Lexical dependency and lexical matching are the most important factors in determining the prepositional
phrase order in Persian. Considering the effect of prepositional phrases’ semantic class, Persian language like verb-initial languages prefers Manner+
Place+ Time generalization. Relating to information structure, phrases with new information precede phrases with given information. Grammatical
weight and ambiguity avoidance have no role in the order of prepositional phrases, since there is a little difference between two “short before long” and
“long before short” sequences.
Keywords: reduplication, morphological doubling
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In functional perspective transitivity is explained through functional and semantic factors, and is considered as a cline. This article investigates transitivity effect on Persian morpho-syntax in cases like noun incorporation, and... more
In functional perspective transitivity is explained through functional and semantic factors, and is considered as a cline. This article investigates transitivity effect on Persian morpho-syntax in cases like noun incorporation, and non-passivity of verbs based on prototypical definition of transitivity and its important related studies. Also, transitivity prominence in Persian will be elaborated on in comparison with Haspelmat´s studied languages. Then, transitivity effect will be investigated in discourse level on two short folk stories. The data show that on morpho-syntax level, transitivity decline leads to the emergence of incorporation constructions, and in case of passive construction, non-passive state verbs have low transitivity. Transitivity prominence is rather low in Persian compared to Haspelmat´s studied languages, and on discourse level high transitivity is correlated with foregrounding and low transitivity with backgrounding.
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Preferred Argument Structure in Persian This research, within the framework of Du Bois (1980, 1987, 2003 and 2006), is an attempt to investigate the phenomenon of ergativity and its relation to patterns of surface grammar and... more
Preferred Argument Structure in Persian
This research, within the framework of Du Bois (1980, 1987, 2003 and 2006), is an attempt to investigate the phenomenon of ergativity and its relation to patterns of surface grammar and information flow in discourse. The corpus for this study comprises a set of narratives about a short film, as told by speakers of Persian. First the key grammatical, morphological and information states of all the full NPs in argument positions were statistically examined and having recognized the Preferred Argument Structure in Persian discourse, which appeared as the speakers' tendencies in distribution of full NPs with new information, we then concluded that this tendency resulted in a preferred pattern corresponding to the grammatical pattern of ergativity in case system. In other words Persian speakers preferentially put the lexical arguments and new mentions in "S" and "O" positions and not in "A" position. Then the two other discourse tendencies i.e. Topic Continuity and Topic Animacy were examined to show that the dominant case pattern of Persian is a consequence of competition among different discourse factors. Therefor it was noted that, although the Preferred Argument Structure lead Persian in having a discourse ergative pattern, these two tendencies display a nominative/accusative,{A,S}{O}, alignment in successive clauses. Therefore it can be concluded that in discourse there is a motivation for the grammatical phenomenon of ergativity.
Key Words: Preferred Argument Structure, Ergative Structure, Topic Animacy, Topic Continuity
This research, within the framework of Du Bois (1980, 1987, 2003 and 2006), is an attempt to investigate the phenomenon of ergativity and its relation to patterns of surface grammar and information flow in discourse. The corpus for this study comprises a set of narratives about a short film, as told by speakers of Persian. First the key grammatical, morphological and information states of all the full NPs in argument positions were statistically examined and having recognized the Preferred Argument Structure in Persian discourse, which appeared as the speakers' tendencies in distribution of full NPs with new information, we then concluded that this tendency resulted in a preferred pattern corresponding to the grammatical pattern of ergativity in case system. In other words Persian speakers preferentially put the lexical arguments and new mentions in "S" and "O" positions and not in "A" position. Then the two other discourse tendencies i.e. Topic Continuity and Topic Animacy were examined to show that the dominant case pattern of Persian is a consequence of competition among different discourse factors. Therefor it was noted that, although the Preferred Argument Structure lead Persian in having a discourse ergative pattern, these two tendencies display a nominative/accusative,{A,S}{O}, alignment in successive clauses. Therefore it can be concluded that in discourse there is a motivation for the grammatical phenomenon of ergativity.
Key Words: Preferred Argument Structure, Ergative Structure, Topic Animacy, Topic Continuity
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در پژوهش حاضر ضمن بررسی توالی بندهای قیدی، به رابطة آن با عواملی چون معنا، کلام، وزن و تصویرگونگی پرداختهایم. بدین منظور پیکرهای با 1343 جمله حاوی بند قیدی گردآوری کردهایم که شامل شش نوع بند قیدی زمان، شرطی، سببی، منظوری، نتیجهای و... more
در پژوهش حاضر ضمن بررسی توالی بندهای قیدی، به رابطة آن با عواملی چون معنا، کلام، وزن و تصویرگونگی پرداختهایم. بدین منظور پیکرهای با 1343 جمله حاوی بند قیدی گردآوری کردهایم که شامل شش نوع بند قیدی زمان، شرطی، سببی، منظوری، نتیجهای و حالت میباشد. با استفاده از تحلیل آماری در این پژوهش درمییابیم که بندهای قیدی در فارسی در دو جایگاه آغازی و پایانی واقع میشوند و گرایش غالب آنها به قرار گرفتن در جایگاه آغازی است و همچنین از میان چهار عامل یاد شده سه عامل در تعیین توالی این بندها مؤثر است. بدین صورت که عامل معنا تاثیر به سزایی در توالی انواع بندهای قیدی داشته و عامل کلام نیز عامل بسیار مهمی در تعیین جایگاه بندهای قیدی میباشد. عامل وزن به عنوان عاملی شناخته شد که نقشی در تعیین این توالی ندارد؛ چرا که تحلیل آماری تفاوت معناداری را نشان نداد. عامل تصویرگونگی نیز عاملی مهم در تعیین جایگاه این گونه بندها، به ویژه بندهای آغازی شناخته شد.
واژگان کلیدی: جایگاه آغازی، جایگاه پایانی، وزن، تصویرگونگی
واژگان کلیدی: جایگاه آغازی، جایگاه پایانی، وزن، تصویرگونگی
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Presented at Post-predicate elements in Iranian and neighboring languages; Bamberg University, 6-7 Sep. 2019.
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Corpus linguistics is a rapidly growing discipline in linguistics, which broadens our understanding of human language by focusing on actual use of language in different contexts. Understanding Corpus Linguistics is an introduction to the... more
Corpus linguistics is a rapidly growing discipline in linguistics, which broadens our understanding of human language by focusing on actual use of language in different contexts. Understanding Corpus Linguistics is an introduction to the goals, methods, and achievements of corpus linguistics, which is written mainly as a textbook for undergraduate and graduate students, while advanced scholars also could benefit from reading it. The authors, who have been engaged in corpus linguistics as their main interest, try to show what corpus linguistics is and how it helps us to better understand language. After introducing corpus linguistics in the first chapter, the other ten chapters deal with different issues in this approach. In the first chapter, the authors discuss the basic idea of corpus linguistics, its relation to other disciplines and its importance in usage-oriented linguistics. The second chapter of the book is devoted to defining basic concepts of corpus linguistics. Corpus is defined as a collection of texts which must be machine-readable, i.e., collated and analyzed by computers. Corpus linguists try to find patterns of variation in language use and their relation to contextual factors. In order to be analyzable, non-written texts are transcribed into written form. The authors describe the distinction between word forms, directly observable items, and lexemes, and the abstraction underlying inflectionally related groups of word forms that share lexical meaning. Tokens are all individual word forms, while the different occurrences of tokens are considered as one type. Accordingly, tokenization, i.e., identifying and marking the tokens' boundaries, is an essential part of any corpus compiling. Finally, textual and contextual properties of texts are defined and the differences between linguistic or text-internal context, language external context and situational context are clarified. Collocation, colligation, collostruction, metadata, etc. are among concepts related to context which are discussed in this chapter. The third chapter is about corpus composition and corpus types. Among the important characteristics of corpus, the authors first discuss corpus size, emphasizing that it directly depends on resources and practical considerations. The corpora compiled during language documentation of lesser known languages are generally Zeitschrift für Sprachwissenschaft 2023; aop Open Access.
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... Reviews, Simin Karimi (ed.), Word order and scrambling. Malden, MA & Oxford: Blackwell, 2003. Pp. xx+385. MOHAMMAD RASEKH MAHAND a1 c1 a1 Bu Ali Sina University, Article author query. mahand mr [PubMed][Google Scholar]. ...
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In this paper, we give an account of dative functions in a number of Iranian languages from a typological perspective. To analyze the functionality of dative markers in the selected languages, we follow a semantic map approach and take... more
In this paper, we give an account of dative functions in a number of Iranian languages from a typological perspective. To analyze the functionality of dative markers in the selected languages, we follow a semantic map approach and take Haspelmath’s map of dative functions as a typological grid to examine our data. We collected our data from descriptive grammars and, for Ossetic and Wakhi, from interviews. The data show that five additional connections should be added to the semantic map of dative functions; these connections are confirmed by data from at least three languages within the Iranian language family. The main semantic property for the dative in Iranian languages is indirect affectedness. Moreover, in some languages spatial functions of the dative are also attested. The distribution of dative functions is mainly explained by the preservation of the oblique case and the areal distribution. In addition, in some languages, a grammaticalization cycle is observed, as a result of which purportedly beneficiary markers are transforming into dative markers.
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This paper aims to study instrumental related functions in some Western Iranian languages. The data were collected from descriptive grammars, and interviews in some cases. Narrog’s instrumental semantic map is the basis for analyzing... more
This paper aims to study instrumental related functions in some Western Iranian languages. The data were collected from descriptive grammars, and interviews in some cases. Narrog’s instrumental semantic map is the basis for analyzing polysemy patterns in these languages. The data show that two main polysemy patterns are attested: (1) Instrumental and companion functions are coded alike. (2) They are coded differently. These two patterns are distributed areally. Furthermore, some languages are shifting/have shifted between these two types mainly as a result of contact-induced matters. In languages in which two or more functions are not directly connected, one marker generally has both instrumental and dative functions.
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This paper aims to study instrumental related functions in some Western Iranian languages. The data were collected from descriptive grammars, and interviews in some cases. Narrog’s instrumental semantic map is the basis for analyzing... more
This paper aims to study instrumental related functions in some Western Iranian languages. The data were collected from descriptive grammars, and interviews in some cases. Narrog’s instrumental semantic map is the basis for analyzing polysemy patterns in these languages. The data show that two main polysemy patterns are attested: (1) Instrumental and companion functions are coded alike. (2) They are coded differently. These two patterns are distributed areally. Furthermore, some languages are shifting/have shifted between these two types mainly as a result of contact-induced matters. In languages in which two or more functions are not directly connected, one marker generally has both instrumental and dative functions.