ارسلان گلفام

This paper provides an Optimality-Theoretic account of dissimilation in standard Persian as well as some other accents and dialects of Persian. As such, this work starts by introducing Optimality Theory (henceforth OT) and its basic concepts and then it investigates dissimilation in this framework. It argues for the superiority of OT over derivational approaches regarding a case in which both dissimilation and assimilation, with no clear feeding order, are involved.

Legal translation is a special type of Language for Special Purposes (LSP) translation involving cross-linguistic communication in the legal context and it tends to involve more cultural specific components. Since the main functions of legal language are normative and performative, it is important to make sure what the actual purpose of the translation of a legal text is. On the other hand, legal translators are expected to produce not parallel texts but texts that are equal in legal effect. So, they must be able to understand not only the legal concepts and the legal effects they are supposed to have, but also how to achieve those legal effects in the target language, especially when it is based on a different legal system. The vast differences in Persian and English legal systems and legal cultures, and consequently the associated incongruity of terminology, highlight the many challenges in legal translation. This paper aims at presenting a strategy through which we can convey the legal culture of SL (Persian) to TL (English) and while creating similar legal effect in TL, improve the quality of legal translation, relying on the two notions inspired by Venuti (1998), i.e. domestication and foreignization. In this regard we analyzed legal translation of 20 Persian to English Divorce Decrees within the domain of Private law, the study of which has been seldom attempted despite the customary presence of these instruments in the legal routine. As a result of this analysis we can conclude that legal texts in different legal systems are translatable and a similar legal effect can be created in TL provided that the legal genre of the source text is preserved and also functional and conceptual equivalences are employed through foreignization and domestication.

It is a typological observation in more than 90% of languages where the basic word order is either subject–verb–object (SVO) or subject–object–verb (SOV). Functional typologists believe that the prevalence of these two orders; in which the subject precedes the two other elements, and the verb and the object are contiguous is due to the functions of language in the real world. Hence, the two principles of subject salience and verb-object contiguity have been proposed. The typological explanations put forward for these two principles hold that transitive sentences of a language have come into existence as a result of the encoding of the prototypical transitive action scenario. In such a scenario, subject salience is a result of the fact that the transitive action scenario is started by the doer of the activity. Also, because of the tight causal relationship between the activity and its receiver, the linguistic counterparts of these two elements, too, tend to be contiguous. Since functional pressures can only be manifested in language through human cognition, the present paper looks at the cognitive processes involved in the cross-linguistic prevalence of the afore-mentioned word orders.

In this study, we have examined the effectiveness of operant conditioning on the development of linguistic skills in Persian children with autism. It was a quasiexperimental study, and done by using pre- and post-tests. We randomly selected 40 children (6 girls and 34 boys, 5-10 years old) and divided them into experimental and control groups comprising of 20 children each. We used the Autism Spectrum Screening Questionnaire (ASSQ) to screen subjects and the Test of Language Development (TOLDP: 3) to measure their language skills. Both groups received grammatical comprehension and grammatical completion subtests. Using the Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) method, the experimental group was then subjected to 48 one-hour intervention sessions ran for 24 weeks. After the intervention, we ran a post-test in both experimental and control groups. The data were analyzed using SPSS software. In the experimental group, the mean score in the grammatical completion subtest had increased by 4.2, and in the grammatical comprehension subset, the mean score had increased by 3.6. In contrast, in the control group, the mean score of the grammatical completion and comprehension subtests had increased by 0.25 and 0.3, respectively. The findings suggested that operant conditioning had direct effects on the improvement of the 5-10 years old Persianspeaking children with autism.

In this paper, we argue the effects of explicit multimodal metaphor training in developing speaking and listening skills in an EFL context. To examine the effects of using conceptual metaphors in English language classrooms and assess the metaphorical ability of EFL students, we directed two measuring instruments: pre-test and post-test for control and experimental groups in both listening and speaking skills. The pre-test and post-test scores of the experimental group who were exposed to explicit multimodal metaphor training were compared with the control group's scores through this bipartite study. The outcomes of this paper can shed light on teaching and learning the multimodal language in an EFL context. The findings showed that learners who were exposed to multimodal metaphors and received explicit instruction from their teacher resulted in better scores. In other words, this paper found that explicit multimodal metaphor instructions can lead to some improvements in metaphor comprehension and production in an EFL context.

This paper is an attempt to explore the prepositions used to encode the agent in Persian passive constructions. According to Givón (1983) the main function of the passive constructions is to defocus the agent. As the general trend in Persian is to omit this defocused agent, we will stylistically divide the passive constructions into two main sub branches, namely unmarked and marked passives according to whether or not the agent is included. Having analyzed the prepositions using in the passive construction (e.g. t { v { ssot-e, be d { st-e, b A , { z suy-e, { z t { r { f-e, and be v { sile-y-e) a complete semantic characterization of the type of agent that normally occurs with these prepositions will be provided. The results indicate that, in contrast to some linguists who treated the prepositions in the passive construction as stylistic forms, they are not always interchangeable; in fact they are meaningful which have a prototype for the type of agent that co-occurs with them.

This paper investigates the conflation of “Path” conceptual semantic in Motion events in the Central-Kurdish (Sorani) Language, Ardelani Dialect, in light of Talmy notions in this regard. According to Talmy, in each Motion event, four main elements i.e. “Figure”, “Ground”, “Path” and “Motion” are involved. These conceptual meanings can be lexicalized either on “Verb Root” or on “Satellite”. By considering a conceptual meaning like “Path” and investigating the surface element that shows it, we can define the typology of languages as “Verb-Framed” or “Satellite-Framed”. In this paper, after analyzing sample sentences containing “Path” concept, in addition to showing the way this concept is lexicalized in Kurdish, we would define typology of Ardelani dialect among Indo-European languages. Data used in this paper is a selection of 23 sentences extracted from a corpus of 890 sentences containing Motion event that have lexicalized Path concept. These sentences have been produced by 18 different native Ardelani speakers in three different groups.

This paper aims to study 7 to 12-year-old Persian-speaking children’s comprehension of polysemy through semantics. The research method is descriptive-analytic, and two kinds of methodology in data collection such as documentary resources and fieldwork have been applied. For collecting data, each of the six elementary school grades course books ‘Farsi’ (2018) has been studied and all polysemous words within each of these course books have been extracted. Accordingly, to evaluate polysemy comprehension in children, a multiple-choice test containing two questions was prepared for each grade and asked 25 participants to answer in each grade and each gender from among elementary schools in Tehran. In each grade, 100 answers were received and based on the number of correct answers children’s polysemy comprehension was evaluated. These tests were administered under school authorities’ control and children had to answer in 15 minutes. The results show that most children found the polysemous words without problem only within a context and in relation to the collocated words. Also, children can comprehend the exact meaning of polysemous words based on the encyclopedic viewpoint of meaning which is rooted in human social and physical experience. Moreover, children based on their background knowledge differentiate between multiple meanings of polysemous words.