Language Studies

Abstract Language is a social phenomenon, which emersion goes back to the emersion of the first human societies. Such a phenomenon is the same as a human inclination, owned by society which is formed in accordance with societies’ social and historical evolution. The sociolinguistics studies has already indicated that the infrastructure and application of the language is inseparable from the social factors such as gender, age, education, tribal bias, social levels, etc. Meanwhile, the study of urban dialectology considers as a part of sociolinguistics, which has been ignored regarding to scientists’ intention toward rural dialects. Rural dialectology is basically founded on comparative philology, therefore cities which were faced a huge emigration from variety of regions have lost their philological values. However, the focus on philology is changed in the recent studies and the study of urban areas drew the attentions toward itself. In this paper, the author's focus is on the lexical changes in Gorgan’s urban society, regarding to three social factors: age, gender and education. In the other words, the paper mainstream is on the correlation between lexical changes and social variables which is assessed by using the field method, asking randomly from the statistical society. The results of the research has shown that the age is the major factor of lexical changes in Gorgan and other variables, gender and education, stand at the second and third position respectively. The age variable also plays a significant role in phonological changes in the mentioned language society. All in all, it seems that age is the most important changing factor in the Gorgan language society, which considers as a warning about the gradual death of the dialect.

Abstract Text linguistics attends to texts and their properties. Various approaches have been put forth to explore the organization of texts and the way they are produced and comprehended. One of which is Michael Hoey’s problem-solution approach (2001). This model consists of four components including situation, problem, recycling, response and evaluation. In this approach, texts are rewritten in the form of conversations, questions and answers. We attempt to answer these questions: in what extend we can generalize this pattern to newspaper articles and by using the problem solution pattern, how we can achieve a degree of anticipation, predictiveness and quicker comprehension of narrative texts as hypotheses. To fulfill the objectives, benefiting from the problem-solution pattern (2001), 20 articles from four newspapers including E’temade and Aftabe yazd, were analyzed based on this pattern. In conclusion, the analysis revealed how newspaper articles of these groups using PS pattern. Therefore, the first hypothesis was confirmed and the relationship between components of problem-solution pattern was shortly displayed by diagrams in each article. Texts were analyzed on the bases of socio-cultural and discursive structures and also rewritten in conversations. Furthermore from data analysis via a t- test calculation, it became clear that the comprehension, anticipation, predictiveness of reader enhanced on the basis of this pattern. Consequently the second hypothesis of the current study has been confirmed.

Abstract Mani was born from the Persian parents in Babylonia, which was a part of the province of Asoristan in the Parthian empire. According to the Historical evidences, Iranians have been eloquent people, and Mesopotamia was consideredas the confluence of the various ideas, thoughts and myths. Being in an Iranian family and training in Babylonia caused to improve mani's thought and art Undoubtedly, we can find in his poetry, an aspect of pre-Islamic Iranian rhetoric which is survived in middle Persian and parthian hymns. Part of Iranians' attainments in the field of poetical imagination are displayed in these hymns. In this article two hymns, attributed to mani, one in the middle Persian and the other in the Parthian language, have been studied from aestethical point of view. The rhetorical speeches used in these two hymns such as, simile, metaphor, metonymy, kenning, repetition, taxis, synesthesia, amphiboly and opacity can display a kind of excellent achievement in poetic imagination that is very important in the history of Persian literature in Iran. In these hymns, literary and rhetorical features have been applied to express Mani’s thoughts that, if necessary, have been explained too.

Abstract The most important practical distinction of language derived from the medium of expression is that of speech and writing which produces the spoken and written variants, observed more or less in all the languages. The differences of the two variants depend on the distance or proximity of the spoken from the written forms. Owing to the conspicuous differences of speech and writing in the Persian language, learning Persian as a foreign language accompanies abundant difficulties for the learners. The difficulties become more noticeable when we consider that most teachers in the field are non-Iranians, Iranian teachers have specialties other than language teaching, students learn the language in alien linguistic environment, they feel poor stimulation for language learning and, finally, learners are deprived of audio visual sources. Referring to the formation of spoken-written studies at the start of the article, the general situation of teaching Persian to non-Persian speakers has been briefly introduced and, then, the chief structural differences of the spoken and written variants have been discussed. An analysis of the differences, based on recent linguistic researches, forms the main part of the article. The theoretical principles may be used as the basis for presenting appropriate tactics to teach the differences in Persian syllabuses, prove useful to language learners in acquiring spoken skills, and finally, end in the promotion of their language knowledge and the status of the Persian language. The article is derived from the writer’s knowledge and experience in teaching Persian to non-Persian speakers, the data being influenced by the works of prominent linguistics researchers on a documentary basis.

Abstract Speech and its etiquette have always been noticed in Middle Persian literary texts and texts on the advice (Andarznameh) as well. To express the etiquette of speech and its weight in the texts of this period, they can be divided into several general subjects. In this report, firstly, a short introduction about the importance of speech in ancient Persian an is given and then the etiquette of speech in Middle persian literature texts (Andarznameh) is elaborated. This etiquette consists of ‘truthfulness and avoiding lying’, ‘wisely spoken speech’, ‘equilibrium in speech’, ‘measurement of location and time of speaking’, ‘softness and politeness in speech’ and ... . It has also been tried in this paper to investigate some of the terminology in poetry and prose texts, and also in some dialects.

Abstract Asfar-e Kaateban by Aboutorab Khosravi is a polyphonic text in the light of the presence of associated and amalgamated various voices. Polyphony is a term that Mikhail Bakhtin used to refer to Dostoyevsky's works, in which characters have dialogue in some manner. By means of dialogue, characters renounce the dominance of author and they can illustrate their individuality.
In Pre-Modern works, narrator was the dominant recite in the whole text which did not authorize characters to express their impressions. In Modern era, this complete dominance of narrator is suppressing and we can identify the equality of characters' authority and narrator's authority in expressing the impressions. Nowadays in Post-Modern world, this equality converts to the complete independence of characters and even they disobey narrator. Consequently, text exemplifies the presence of numerous voices, and by means of polyphony, the polarity nature of postmodern atmosphere is illustrated. Here, a question arises that how polyphony is personified, or in other words, how polyphony is textualized. The focus of this paper is on the reflex of characters' psyche in their language. Therefore, the formation of embedded focalization and its affect on making polyphony is shown through the analysis of combination and competition of different characters and the presence of other characters in the mind of a character. The analysis of selected texts demonstrates that Khosravi managed to create polyphony and poly subjectivity, and consequently, the place and role of characters in the postmodern text is indicated. And it is multi-focalizer that collects other focalized in itself. Then, focalized are sometimes other person and other self of focalizer itself. In this situation, we have first person pronoun and third person pronoun that are used by focalizer to refer to it, to its subjective and objective self; me and him / her.  Therefore, different voices embody their effects in text, and the text, also manifests its polyphonic characteristic by means of poly-subjectivity, that is the resultant of these different self.

Abstract Pentateuch of London is the only dated translation of Torah in Judaeo-Persian or Hebrew-Persian. The text has written in 1319 AD, according to 719 AH. All of researchers follow up Lazar (1968) and attribute the text to the southwest of Iran. But it should be noted that some Eastern words (eg: the words of Transoxiana or Herat area) is also seen. In this article we will deal with the root of the following words in this text: b’z sknydn, bγr’wydn, bγr’w/bγr’y, br ryšydn/wr ryšydn, bprčn-, dr gwrx’nydn, jng k’rydn, snyl, syl, m’rh, mwžndh/mwzydg’r, nwxrys/nwxrys’nydn, wysh. Finally, we will see that most of these words in the Eastern kinds of Persian Language.