ارسلان گلفام

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.

Compounding is one of the most common and also very productive word formation processes among languages in the world. Because of its productivity and high frequency, it has precisely been studied by many Iranian and non-Iranian linguists. However, this productive process has not yet been studied in Mazandarani. In the present study, first Mazandarani compound words taken from Tabari dictionary, have been analysed in the form of a table and based on the criteria such as syntactic category, semantic classification of compound types (endocentric, exocentric and dvandva), the position of head and being verbal or nonverbal. By taking into consideration the above mentioned criteria and based on three fundamental concepts, namely, head, dependent (non-head) and feature percolation, the resulting compounds have been analysed separately. At the end of the article, after studying and evaluating the hypotheses, appropriate explanations have been presented. The high frequency of “N+ N → compound noun construction” refers to their predictability in meaning compared to other constructions. It means that there is a direct relationship between high frequency of a word formation process and its semantic predictability. Also, the reason why endocentric compounds are more frequent than others is due to the fact that both constituents of the compound are used in their original meanings. Hence, endocentric compounds are unmarked elements and are easier to learn in the process of language learning. The above mentioned findings are in line with markedness theory. That is why the frequency of occurrence of unmarked elements is higher than marked ones which is related to language universals.

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.

Davison has two famous articles against conventionalism. The core of his argument is to scrutinize erroneous but successful conversations which happen in language occasionally and conventional meaning cannot explain how the speaker and the listener understand each other in these cases. However, his premises are not clear and it makes it difficult to study and criticize his main point. We believe there are at least five premises such as: 1) The listener comprehends the words the speaker has said in their conventional meaning; 2) If the conversation is successful then the listener has understood the words and sentences in their general first meaning; 3) Sometimes the conversation is successful although there are some misuse of words; 4) In these cases the conventional meaning is not the same as general first meaning; 5) If the listener comprehends the words in their general first meaning, then he has not in his mind their conventional meaning; so (Conclusion) conventionalism is not acceptable. We claim that we can save the conventionalism by analyzing these premises and pointing out that users of a language can have several meanings of a word in their mind and choose between them according to hints and backgrounds. Besides, conventional theory of meaning can accept new and different uses of words that have already been used in some old fashion ways, and in addition, special cases occur rarely in everyday use of linguistic expressions. So, opposing Davidson, we have sound grounds to keep conventionalism.