Phonology
Sharareh Sadat Sarsarabi; Abolfazl Mazinani
Volume 15, Issue 2 , September 2023, , Pages 77-99
Abstract
Vowel reduction has been significantly investigated and classified in previous studies, especially by Crosswhite (2000), Harris (2005) and Anderson (1996). The present study was conducted aiming to describe the vowel reduction of /a/ to /e/ after affixation, which is observed in Mazinani Persian Dialect ...
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Vowel reduction has been significantly investigated and classified in previous studies, especially by Crosswhite (2000), Harris (2005) and Anderson (1996). The present study was conducted aiming to describe the vowel reduction of /a/ to /e/ after affixation, which is observed in Mazinani Persian Dialect (Sabzvar-Khorasan Razavi) in the framework of Optimality Theory. Then, its compatibility to the aforementioned classifications was tested to explain the reduction. According to generalization obtained from the Optimality analysis, the vowel change /a/ to /e/ occurs in syllables the stress of which is lost after affixation and coumpounding. However, if there is a glottal consonant such as /h/ or /Ɂ/ adjucent to /a/, the reduction will not take place. In addition, the compatibility analysis showed that Crosswhite's classification can be used to justify the happening reduction. In other words, the described reduction was classified as a sonority-driven change. On the other hand, the analysis based on the [AIU] model showed that the /a/ to /e/ reduction implies the process of headedness-reversal. According to Crosswhite, the category [A] can not be the head of the vowel which is located in the nucleus of an unstressed syllable; of course, an opposite example was observed in the reduction of /α/ to /o/ in Mazinani Dialect. The comparison between the dialect's data and their equivalent in Standard Persian showed that these two varriant of Persian behave opposite to each other.
MAZINANI ABOLFAZL; Ali Alizadeh; Alireza Azad
Volume 12, Issue 2 , December 2020, , Pages 203-225
Abstract
Epistemology of different phenomena, i. e. the human’s endeavor to achieve an ideological/philosophical insight about their nature, can be his conduct in making decisions how to realize them. Since this is also true for bringing justice about the world, this research was carried out to investigate ...
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Epistemology of different phenomena, i. e. the human’s endeavor to achieve an ideological/philosophical insight about their nature, can be his conduct in making decisions how to realize them. Since this is also true for bringing justice about the world, this research was carried out to investigate the epistemological basics of Alavi/Shiite justice in Nahj-al-balāqa, a reference book compiled from the lectures and letters of Ali, the first Imam of Shi’as. Applying Topic-based Discourse Analysis Model as our methodology, we arrived at two different categories of conclusions. As a result of theoretical analysis, ‘the consistent selection of our mental, verbal, and practical behaviors based on right’ was concluded to be a definition of the nature of justice, while meanings of ‘right’ are to be from ‘correctness of doing’ to ‘religious assignments’. So, the extentions of the term ‘right’ were divided into these three categories: a) religious instructions/rights, b) private personal rights, and c) exchange and service rights. Meanwhile, 7 topoi, or addresses to rational schemes, were also identified as a result of linguistic analysis.
Abolfazl Mazinani
Volume 9, Issue 16 , November 2017, , Pages 109-132
Abstract
Extended Abstract
1- Introduction
Generally, the term ‘clitic’ refers to those bound linguistic elements that phonologically attach to the beginning/end of their adjacent words, while, at the same time, play a significant syntactic role in their respective clauses. In other words, as Zwicky (1994) ...
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Extended Abstract
1- Introduction
Generally, the term ‘clitic’ refers to those bound linguistic elements that phonologically attach to the beginning/end of their adjacent words, while, at the same time, play a significant syntactic role in their respective clauses. In other words, as Zwicky (1994) also puts it, they are affixes since they attach to other free words, and besides, they are words because they can function as an argument or the head of a (single-word) phrase; and this is why they have been placed in different categories, e.g. ‘pronominal clitics’ (See Halpern, 1995; Klavans, 1985; Zwicky, 1997; Zwicky & Pullum, 1983).
Spencer lists three reasons why pronominal clitics need to be linguistically studied: a) the existence of interactions between cliticization and argument structure, b) the importance of such studies for syntactic theorizations, and c) the change of most pronominal clitic systems to agreement systems in the course of history (1991, p. 180).
Taking another step in the direction of studying different aspects of Pronominal Clitics of Persian (See Bahrami & Rezayi, 2013; Mazinani, 2008; Mazinani, Kambuzia & Golfam, 2013; Mazinani & Sharifi, 2015; Mazinani, Alizadeh, & Sharifi (2016); Mofidi, 2007; Rasekh-Mahand, 2007, 2008, 2010, among others), the Clitic System in Mazinani Dialect (MD) of Persian - in which some remnants of Middle Persian (MP) can be found (See Mazinani, 2008, 2016) - was intended to be compared with those of MP, Classic New Persian (CNP), & Contemporary Standard Persian (CSP); consequently, following a descriptive-comparative approach, the research was carried out by answering the following questions:
1. Which clitic system does Mazinani Pronominal Clitics respond to?
2. What are the differences between Pronominal Clitics of MD and the abovementioned periods of Persian in terms of placement and the syntactic roles they can play?
3. What linguistic effects may practically or theoretically be considered to be the consequence of the possible answer to the 2nd question?
2- Methodology
To answer the first question, the researcher adopted the classification introduced by Halpern (1995) and its extension by Mazinani and Sharifi (2015):
2-1- Second Position Clitic System
a) Second Word Clitic System: a subdivision of the Second Position System in which the clitic encliticizes to the first phonological word of a sentence.
b) Second Daughter Clitic System: a subdivision of the Second Position System in which the clitic encliticizes to the first syntactic constituent of a sentence (Halpern, 1995, p. 15-16).
2-2- Verbal Clitic System:
It’s a system in which the clitic is placed immediately adjacent to the verb before or after it (See Halpern, 1995, p. 183-187). Mazinani and Sharifi (2015) have extended this system and divided it into two categories:
a) Preverbal Clitic System: a subdivision of Verbal System in which the clitic encliticizes to a possible host and appears immediately adjacent to the verb.
b) Post-Verbal Clitic System: a subdivision of Verbal System in which the clitic encliticizes to the last element of the verb (Mazinani & Sharifi, 2015).
3- Clitic System in the course of Persian history
3-1- MP
Like Old Persian (OP), MP also makes use of Second Word System. Nevertheless, some differences can be observed between the forms and the functions of their correspondent clitics. Unlike the OP, MP’s Clitics were assigned abstract case thanks to the loss of OP’s morphological endings. In addition, it was also added to their syntactic functions to play the role of the subject in MP’s Ergative Constructions (See examples in Mazinani & Sharifi, 2015).
3-2- CNP
In this period, and henceforward, morphological changes have not affected the clitics’ form. However, compared to MP, a significant change in the placements of clitics can be seen in this period. Besides, one can hardly find Ergative Constructions in CNP. Mazinani and Sharifi (2015) state that they have encountered many constructions that could serve a fine example for all the above mentioned clitic systems by the following specified constraints:
Second Word Clitic System: if Complementizer Phrase (CP) has an overt Complementizer such as ke (which) and agar (if), a clitic simply assigned genitive case may encliticize to it.
Second Daughter Clitic System: both direct object and indirect object clitics may encliticize to the last word of the first syntactic constituent of the clause.
Preverbal Clitic System: both direct object and indirect object clitics appear frequently in preverbal position and encliticize to the last word of a wide range of syntactic constituents.
Post-Verbal Clitic System: both indirect object and direct object clitics may encliticize to the last morpheme of the verb. (See examples in Mazinani & Sharifi, 2015).
3-3- CSP
The main system one encounters in CSP is Post-Verbal Clitic System. However, in this period, contrary to the CNP, one can hardly find an indirect object clitic in post-verbal position. Beside the main verb, there are lots of prepositions that assign case to CNP’s clitics. A genitive clitic necessarily encliticizes to its own modifier.
3-4. MD
Pronominal Clitics of Mazinani Dialect are placed immediately-adjacent to the verb as its internal arguments whether they are direct or indirect objects. They encliticize mostly to the preverbal permitted hosts, and if none present, they attach to the verb itself. The results of this research showed that the permitted hosts are usually one of the obligatory constituents subcategorized by the verbs.
Other hosts in the VP domain include Imperative/Negative/Present Perfective/Past Morphemes, Past Participles in Past Perfect Tense Constructions, nominal or adjectival parts of Complex Predications and Interrogative Pronouns questioning direct objects (see examples in Mazinani, 2008).
4- Comparison & Conclusion
In this research, the MD’s Clitic System was compared to those of MP, CNP, and CSP. This comparison is illustrated by five different versions of a sentence meaning ‘I took her/him from home to the market’ which is supposed to have been produced in different periods/dialects of Persian. The historical linguistic changes are also explained in their respective footnotes:
1. [az=om= iš xānag] [pad bāzār] bord.
2. [az xāna]=š [be bāzār] bord-om.
3. [az xāna] [be bāzār] =eš bord-om.
4. [az xāna] [be bāzār] bord=eš-om .
5. [az xune] [be bāzār] bord-am=eš.
Table 1: the CNP, MD, & CSP’s Clitic System Compared and contrasted
Sentence
No. A typical example
of Permitted
to be produced in Mostly
produced in
1 Second Word Clitic System MP MP
2 Second Daughter Clitic System MP / CNP CNP
3 Pre-verbal Clitic System CNP / MD MD
4 Mid-verbal Clitic System CNP?!! / MD MD
5 Post-verbal Clitic System CNP / MD / CSP CSP
After analyzing and comparing the data, the following results emerged: a) hypothetically, the Dialect’s Clitic System represents the mid-state of change in the same system from CNP to CSP in the course of Persian history; b) diachronically, this research confirmed that the process of ‘reanalysis’, suggested in the literature, has been the main factor of change in Persian’s Clitic System; c) the syntactic roles played by the Persian Pronominal Clitics has been reduced step by step as a result of another change from MP’s Abstract to CSP’s Structural Case-assigning. Therefore, according to the principle of functional transparency, it was approved that the grammaticalization of these pronouns has been at work coupled with the change in Persian's Clitic System; d) results of the comparison shown in the 3rd column of the above table reminds us of Hawkins’ (1983) ‘Dual Acquisition Hypothesis’; beside this, referring to what is seen in the 4th column, it was emphasized that researchers interested in linguistic change should consider different historical mid-states between the so-called Old/Middle/New eras of Persian as the order OP>MP>CNP>MD>CSP can be regarded to be a hypothetical chain of change in the Persian cliticization.
MAZINANI ABOLFAZL
Volume 8, Issue 14 , November 2016, , Pages 141-162
Abstract
Extended Abstract
1. Introduction
Mazinan, a village and the center of a rural district, is a subdivision of Sabzevar City located in the eastern part of Razavi-Khorasan Province. The fact that this village has been mentioned and described as a cultivated town in hodud al-alam men al-mašriq ila l-maqrib ...
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Extended Abstract
1. Introduction
Mazinan, a village and the center of a rural district, is a subdivision of Sabzevar City located in the eastern part of Razavi-Khorasan Province. The fact that this village has been mentioned and described as a cultivated town in hodud al-alam men al-mašriq ila l-maqrib (see Sotudeh, 1983) written in the10th century A.D. indicates that Mazinan is at least15 centuries-old. The only language spoken in this old area is Mazinani Dialect of Persian. The most outstanding difference between the dialect and standard New Persian is due to the morphosyntax of its pronominal enclitics which behave much more similarly to those of Middle Persian (See Mazinani, 2008).
It’s generally believed that, diachronically, the dialects spoken in rural areas change slower than their standard counterparts because of which they may indicate a midpoint between the courses of change from the so-called Middle to New languages. This characteristic adds to the significance of studying dialects as promotional sources of investigating the causes of linguistic/typological change since a successful answer to the question of how such a change occurs in the generation-to-generation transmission of language is of some theoretical importance; it may “tell us much about the nature of parameters, the kind of primary linguistic data required to set them to a particular value, whether there are default values, and potentially many other matters” (Roberts, 2007, p. 109).
After Mazinani (2008), this is the second academic research done to describe and record another linguistic aspect of this dialect i.e. verb construction. Observing some formal variations in the construction of a particular tense with different verbs, we decided to answer the following questions:
1.In which tense constructions of Mazinani Dialect (MD) are the aforementioned variations observed?
2.Keeping an eye to verb constructions in Middle Persian, what is the possible justification behind the observed formal variations and the respective dissimilarities of the Dialect to SNP?
2. Methodology
This study was carried out by a descriptive-analytic approach to compare and contrast some verb constructions of MD to those of SNP and MP. We used SNP’s grammatical terms/tenses/definitions to describe different verb constructions in MD. The APA alphabet was used to transcribe the data of MD and SNP; the data of MP were also written by McKenzie’s method of transcription. Closing the eyes to the phonological processes because of which MD may seem hard to decipher to SNP speakers, there are no significant morphological/syntactic mismatches between these two counterparts, except for their clitic systems; consequently, due to lack of space we focused on recording the conflicting verb structures of MD and SNP.
3. Tense structures compared and contrasted
Present Simple Construction:
SNP: /mi-/ + Present Stem +AGR
MD: /me-& mo-/ + Present Stem + AGR
MP: Present Stem +AGR
Except for some phonological divergences, there is no morphological/structural difference between MD and SNP in terms of Present Simple Construction. The SNP, MD, and MP’s paradigms of Subject Agreement Suffixes are [am, i , ad , im , id, an(d)] ,[om, i , a , im, e. ,e.n(d)], and [om , ē(h) , ēd , ēm, ēd, ēnd] respectively. However, the MP’s AGR suffixes did not attach to past stems, i.e. the combination of ‘present stems + PAST’.
Present Subjunctive Construction:
SNP: /be-& bo-/ + Present Stem + AGR
MD structure 1: /be-& bo-/ + Present Stem + AGR
MD structure 2: Present Stem + AGR
MP: Present Stem + Subjunctive AGR
Present Subjunctive Tense is of two variations in MD, the dominant one of which is exactly constructed the same as that of SNP and the other one is reminiscent of that of MP. Keep it in mind that MP had a distinctive paradigm of AGR suffixes attaching to present stems to signify Present Subjunctive: this paradigm is [ān, āy, ād , ām, ād, ānd].
Past Simple Construction:
SNP: Present Stem + PAST+ AGR
MD structure 1: Present Stem + PAST +AGR
MD structure 2: /be- & bo-/ + Present Stem + PAST + AGR
MP: (host=Pronominal EncliticsERG) + …+ (bē) +Past Participle
Past simple Tense is also of two variations in MD one of which is exactly constructed the same as that of SNP while the second one has kept on carrying a currently-meaningless element from MP. In MD, structural variations are in complimentary distribution in terms of using a particular verb.
Present Perfect Construction:
SNP structure 1: Past Participle + /?-/ + AGR (used for all, other than 3sg)
SNP structure 2: Past Participle + /?ast/+ AGR (used only for 3sg)
MD structure 1: Past Participle + /y-/+ AGR (used for all, other than 3sg)
MD structure 2: Past Participle + /-st/ + /-a/3sg (used only for 3sg)
MP structure 1a: Intransitive Past Participle + /h-/ +AGR (used for all, other than 3sg)
MP structure 1b: Transitive Past Participle + /h-/ +AGR (used for all, other than 3sg)
MP structure 2a: Intransitive Past Participle + /ēst/ + AGR
MP structure 2b: Transitive Past Participle + /ēst/ + AGR
/?-/ and /y-/ are phonologically changed forms of the AUX /h-/ in MP which means ‘to be + PRESENT’ and functions as Perfective Aspect Morpheme in SNP & MD.
Two Present Perfect structures have been at work in MP made by adding two AUX paradigms to past participles. MP’s 1b & 2b structures are considered passive due to the transitivity of the main part i.e. past participle. So, in such constructions the AUX agreed to the formal subject of the sentence i.e. the real object of the verb.
Interestingly, led to a mixed paradigm, the gap in 3sg form of the paradigm [h + AGR] in MP has been filled by the 3sg form of the other AUX i.e. ēstad in MD (See two variations of MD).
Future Simple Construction:
SNP: /xah-/ + AGR + (Present Stem + Past)
MD: /xa/ + (Present Stem + Past) + AGR
Despite SNP, MD’s AGR suffixes attach to the end of the main verb rather than the AUX.
4. Conclusion
In this study, we focused on analyzing the construction of MD’s verbs in different tenses in which there was found a sort of inconsistency to SNP. Consequently, Present/Past/Future Simple, Present Subjunctive, and Present Perfect were studied along with keeping an eye to their equivalents in Middle Persian and the following results were achieved: a) the dialect’s AGR suffixes are more correlated with their counterparts in MP than SNP; b) Simple Past’s construction was also seen of two variations- different from and the same as SNP; c) Present Perfect’s paradigm was considered to be a blend of two Present Perfect variations existing in MP; and d) over all, the observed dualities and results remind the researchers of the Hawkins’ (1983) ‘Dual Acquisition Hypothesis’ and, therefore, the dialect’s mid-state in comparison to MP and SNP. Moreover, a trace of MP’s ergative system was seen in only one verb both in its past and present tenses.
