Abstract
This article studies the spatial interpretation of the left-right and front-back axes in Persian in the theoretical framework of Levinson (2003) and Danziger (2010). On the horizontal plane, there are three main Frames of Reference. Of these three, the Absolute FoR is not used routinely in Persian. The ...
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This article studies the spatial interpretation of the left-right and front-back axes in Persian in the theoretical framework of Levinson (2003) and Danziger (2010). On the horizontal plane, there are three main Frames of Reference. Of these three, the Absolute FoR is not used routinely in Persian. The other two, the Relative and Intrinsic FoRs, can potentially be the interpretation of the two main axes of the horizontal plane. In order to obtain real data from the native speakers, the “Ball & Chair” game (Bohnemeyer, 2008) was used. Data analysis shows that in all the cases where the speaker’s description caused misunderstanding for the listener, the speaker’s intended interpretation has been relative, while the listener has understood them intrinsically. For the left-right axis, whenever the speaker has considered “[az negah-e] ma” redundant and has had it decreased from the sentence and used phrases such as “chap/rast-e sandali”, there has been a possibility of misunderstanding for the listener. However, when they have used it even in its decreased form of “chap/rast-e ma” the listener has well understood the intended relative meaning. According to the data, in Persian the absolute dominant usage of left and right is relative and only in special cases are they used intrinsically. The front-back axis is also used in the relative sense but with small dominance over intrinsic.
Abstract
In certain languages, vowel quality changes in unstressed syllables. In acoustic phonetics, this characteristic, namely vowel 'undershoot' under certain conditions and the tendency to centralize, is referred to as 'vowel reduction'. Previous researches have shown that Persian vowel space reduces and ...
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In certain languages, vowel quality changes in unstressed syllables. In acoustic phonetics, this characteristic, namely vowel 'undershoot' under certain conditions and the tendency to centralize, is referred to as 'vowel reduction'. Previous researches have shown that Persian vowel space reduces and is centralized in unaccented syllables and as a result have considered the change in vowel quality to be an acoustic correlate of lexical stress in Persian. The present paper is an investigation of the effect of stress on the duration and quality of simple vowels in accented and unaccented open syllables of bisyllabic words in the speech of 14 female and male speakers of Persian. Results showed a reduction of vowel duration in unaccented syllables, but no reduction or centralization of vowel space. Rather, the vowel space was larger in unaccented syllables. Vowel quality changed, but this change was not statistically significant for all vowels. Previous research has shown that a reduction in vowel duration is not necessarily accompanied by vowel undershoot, as articulators can move faster to achieve ideal vowel quality under time limitations. Thus, vowel reduction cannot be considered as an acoustic correlate of lexical stress in Persian, since besides stress, many other factors, including speaking style, syllable type, word length and type, influence vowel quality.
Abstract
There are two different views on the nature of Universal Grammar at birth; namely, the lexical view and Full Tree view. Lexicalists contend that UG is incomplete, and maturity is the main factor for its development. But the advocates of Full Tree view insist on the child’s language tree being complete/full ...
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There are two different views on the nature of Universal Grammar at birth; namely, the lexical view and Full Tree view. Lexicalists contend that UG is incomplete, and maturity is the main factor for its development. But the advocates of Full Tree view insist on the child’s language tree being complete/full since the beginning, and believe interaction and input to be the reason for its actualization and development. Both views firmly believe that in the process of language acquisition, the child learns lexical categories before the functional ones.The consequence of this shared idea is a belief in a lack of representation of functional nodes, such as TP, CP, TopP, and FP in the early child syntax. Longitudinally studying the process of learning Persian of a Persian-speaking child, this study assesses this shared idea, and, presents several considerable evidence, to show that in the acquisition of Persian, firstly, the functional categories are learnt concurrently with the lexical categories, not after them, and, secondly, the functional nodes are fully discernable in child language, and the activity of functional categories is so extensive that it is even possible to present evidence of the child’s access to information structure.
Zia Tajeddin
Abstract
Learning tenses is one of the problems encountered by the learners of Persian. To address the problem, teaching tenses through various tasks was considered in this study. To this end, the study focused on structural and communicative tasks for teaching Persian tenses. Participants were intermediate ...
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Learning tenses is one of the problems encountered by the learners of Persian. To address the problem, teaching tenses through various tasks was considered in this study. To this end, the study focused on structural and communicative tasks for teaching Persian tenses. Participants were intermediate learners studying Persian at DehkhodaInternationalCenter for the Teaching of Persian. Each group consisted of 40 non-Iranian learners, divided into structural and communicative groups. Both groups were homogeneous based on a Persian tense pretest. The structural and communicative groups were taught Persian tenses in terms of the principles of structural and communicative syllabuses, respectively. T-tests were employed to analyze the two groups’ pretest and posttest performance and to compare their posttest scores. Results showed the communicative group’s significant gains in recognizing and producing Persian tenses. By contrast, no significant difference was found between the pretest and posttest scores of the structural group. Moreover, the communicative group outperformed the structural group in the posttest. These findings imply that the communative task is more effective that the structural task and hence can be used in designing lessons for the teaching of Persian tenses in Persian language centers.
Abstract
The direct reference theory encounters problems in face of some semantic issues, including reference to non-existents and the substitutivity of co-referent proper names in propositional attitude sentences. That is because the only thing which constitutes the meaning of an expression in this theory is ...
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The direct reference theory encounters problems in face of some semantic issues, including reference to non-existents and the substitutivity of co-referent proper names in propositional attitude sentences. That is because the only thing which constitutes the meaning of an expression in this theory is the referent associated with that expression. This paper, relying on a concept referred to as "discourse referent", attempts to answer two basic questions in this regard: a) Why does the substitution of two co-referent expressions in a propositional attitude sentence change the truth value of that sentence? b) How is it possible to refer to identities in a text while there are no real referents in the outside world to associate with them? In response to the above questions, it is said that what constitutes the reference of an expression is a discourse referent which is, in turn, associated with one or more real and formed referents or with one abstract and non-formed referent. In fact, reference is a dynamic and multi-level phenomenon that simultaneously involves language and world.
Mansooreh Shekaramiz
Abstract
Two anterior aphasic patients (one man and one woman) were recorded for their productions of six Persian vowels and were compared to a group of four normal speakers (two men and two women). Praat was used to obtain the spectrograms of the sound files. Vowel duration values showed that normal women produced ...
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Two anterior aphasic patients (one man and one woman) were recorded for their productions of six Persian vowels and were compared to a group of four normal speakers (two men and two women). Praat was used to obtain the spectrograms of the sound files. Vowel duration values showed that normal women produced longer vowels compared to normal men. The male patient produced all vowels shorter, and the female patient produced all vowels longer than all four normal subjects. Although there were no significant differences in the formant frequency values of the four non-round vowels across groups, the two round vowels /o, u/ showed a pattern different from that of other vowels in aphasic speech
Shohreh Sadeghi
Abstract
In the present study, the developmental process of metaphor comprehension in Persian-speaking children of 6, 7 and 8 years old was investigated. There are different viewpoints regarding metaphor comprehension in children. To evaluate children’s metaphoric competence, a multiple-choice test was ...
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In the present study, the developmental process of metaphor comprehension in Persian-speaking children of 6, 7 and 8 years old was investigated. There are different viewpoints regarding metaphor comprehension in children. To evaluate children’s metaphoric competence, a multiple-choice test was designed. After the test, the children’s responses were analyzed using descriptive statistics methods. The findings indicated that metaphor comprehension process is a hierarchical trend, in which the capacity of metaphorical expressions’ comprehension increases regularly with the age increase and cognitive development.
