Aliyeh Kord-e Zafaranlu Kambuziya; Farzaneh Tajabadi; Ailin Firouzian Pouresfahani
Volume 11, Issue 1 , May 2019, , Pages 1-38
Abstract
Extended Abstract Introduction Weakening is the process by which a sound is turned into a sound of lesser degree of stricture or duration. Among different forms of weakening, deletion is the most complete form. Deletion is a phonological process that often occurs in continuous speech. In the sense ...
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Extended Abstract Introduction Weakening is the process by which a sound is turned into a sound of lesser degree of stricture or duration. Among different forms of weakening, deletion is the most complete form. Deletion is a phonological process that often occurs in continuous speech. In the sense that whenever the combination of phonemes result in creating an ill-form linguistic unit which is not in agreement with the phonological system of the language, a phonetic unit of the speech chain is deleted to resolve this problem. This process changes the structure of the syllable and creates an acceptable syllabic or lexical pattern coincided with the phonotactics rules and restrictions of a language. The current study aimed to shed light on the process of deletion in Standard Persian language in view of the optimality theory. The following questions were addressed in this research: 1. In what phonetic environment does the deletion process arrive in standard Persian language? 2. Among consonants and vowels, which of them is exposed to the deletion process? 3. What is the category and kind of words in which the deletion process appeared? Review of Literature On the phonological process of deletion, valuable studies have been carried out that can be broadly divided into two categories: standard Persian language researches and studies on different dialects of Persian. In the case of different dialects of Persian, the following studies can be mentioned: Kalbasi, (1991), Shokri, (1995), Borughani, (2004), Alamdari (2005), Korde Zafaranlu Kambuzia and Sha'bani (2007), Kambuziya and Nemati (2007), Sharifi, (2008), Khodabakhshi (2008), Jabarooti (2010), Razmdide (2011), Kazemaini (2011), Miri (2011), Fadaei (2011), Soleimani (2012), Kambuziya, Tajabadi, Esmailimatin, and Khordbin, S.(2016) etc. Furthermore, Lazard (1992), Meshkatodini, (1995), Bijankhan (2006), Kord-e Zafaranlu Kambuziya (2007), Sadeghi (2007), Jam (2009) etc. have studied Standard Persian. A review of the research literature indicates that all studies have focused on only one aspect of this process and so far no comprehensive study has been conducted, especially on the Standard Farsi, which clearly demonstrates the need for the present study. Method This descriptive-analytical study describes and explains the phonological process of deletion in the Standard Persian language. For this purpose, in addition to the authors’ intuition and linguistic knowledge, written sources such as books, theses in dialectology and dialect dictionaries have been used to collect the research data. In order to extract the data, in addition to the Standard Farsi, a total of 25 other language varieties were randomly selected. Data extracted from these linguistic varieties were examined only as an evidence to validate the results of this study. Totally, 881 samples from Standard Farsi and 200 samples from different dialects were extracted. Then these data were examined in terms of the type of linguistic unit removed, the context and also the structure and lexical category of the word in which the deletion process occurs. Furthermore, the percentage of units affected by the process was calculated. Finally, these data were analyzed within the framework of standard optimality theory (Prince & Smolensky, 1993). Results and Discussion In this section, we examine the different types of deletion in the Standard Persian language in terms of the deleted unite, the position and context in which the deletion take place. A close look at the data shows that the deleted unit can be consonant, vowel, consonant-vowel sequence, or vowel-consonant sequence. Depending on the number of deletions in each datum, it can be categorized into single deleted item group or multiple deleted items group. In items of the second group, two consonants or one consonant with a consonant-vowel sequence or vowel-consonant sequence, are deleted. It is worth noting that the deletion of only one consonant is the most frequent ones; however the deletion of two consonants is more varied than other types of deletion. Among all kind of consonants, stops make a greater contribution to the deletion process and fricatives rank second. In addition, among stop consonants, the share of coronal consonant and among fricatives, the contribution of glottals is greater than others. In multiple deleted items group, deletion of stop-stop consonants accounts for the most. On the other hand, examination of data in which only vowel deletion has occurred (51 cases) indicates that out of the six Persian vowels, only three short vowels (a, e, o) are deleted in a single word. Of the 47 cases of vowel-consonant deletion, 83% of deleted vowels were short ones. In addition, out of the 38 consonant-vowel deletions, only 18% of the deleted vowels were long vowels. Regarding the relationship between deletion and number of word syllables, it can be said that among the one-to-five syllable words, the three syllable words have the highest and the two syllable words have the least tendency toward the deletion process. With regard to the relation of deletion to lexical type and category, it seems that words with the lexical category of noun and derivative structure have the highest share. In terms of the position in which deletion occurs (initial, middle, final position of syllable or word, syllables boundary, the boundary of two morphemes), it can be said that in Standard Persian there is only a middle and ending deletion, and the final deletion is much more than the middle deletion. Analysis of the results demonstrated that consonants underwent the deletion process more than vowels. Meanwhile stop consonants and short vowels (a, e, o) were ranked first in deletion process as compared with others. The findings also indicated that derivations, nouns, and two or three syllable words were more likely to be deleted. Furthermore, last syllable of the words tends to be the best place for applying the deletion process. Conclusion It can be said that when some of the universal principles like Sonority Sequencing Principle (SSP) and Syllable Contact Law (SCL) are violated, a series of phonological processes, including the deletion process, are used to modify the existing structure. In addition, the presence of heavy syllables or an abundance of light syllables creates a kind of asymmetry in words. This type of sequence is both productively and audibly problematic. In these cases, phonological processes, such as deletion, operate to bring the desired structure as close as possible to the optimal syllable of the language studied.
Ailin Firoozian Pooresfahani; Ferdows Aghagolzadeh; Arsalan Golfam; Aliyeh Kord-e Zafaranlu Kambuziya
Volume 10, Issue 19 , January 2019, , Pages 1-21
Abstract
Extended Abstract Introduction Although it is believed that language is the sheer truth (Cook, 2003), this fact should not be ignored that language specifically the socio-political discourse is sometimes used to conceal the truth and conveys the purport the way that affects people and persuade them ...
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Extended Abstract Introduction Although it is believed that language is the sheer truth (Cook, 2003), this fact should not be ignored that language specifically the socio-political discourse is sometimes used to conceal the truth and conveys the purport the way that affects people and persuade them to accept the untruth. The translator who is responsible for transferring the content that in turn, includes meta-language elements such as culture, history, politics, authority, and different ideologies from the source language (SL) to the target language (TL) and by manipulating and altering the linguistic forms of source language, he affects the readers' schools of thoughts and feelings and finally lead them to a certain ideology (Mason, 2010; Penycook, 2004). therefore, it can be said that in a translation process, the translator can convey the source of language's content to the target language the way he likes by applying diverse strategies and techniques, consciously or unconsciously (Schäffner, 2007, 2009). As far as the way a socio-political translator’s choice of any of the linguistic forms considerably influences the reader’s mind, the research aims to augment the precision of translations done by students of English translation from different social classes, to improve people's critical thinking, to find and analyze manipulative syntactic structures of socio-political texts, and to express translators’ ideology or the dominant ideology of their society. Theoretical Framework The framework of this paper is based on critical discourse analysis and socio-cognitive Van Dijk’s approach (2004). His analytical method, suggest two levels of analysis: macro level and micro level. Macro-level is related to the analysis of meta-linguistic elements such as ideology. For investigating this level in this study, “ideological square” defined by Van Dijk (2004) will be used. The concept of this square based on polarization, designate the following dimensions: Emphasizing our positive actions or properties Mitigating their positive properties and actions Emphasizing their negative properties and actions Mitigating our negative properties and actions Microstructure as another level is related to the analysis of the text in terms of linguistic forms. This research focuses on all syntactic strategies which might be applied by translators’ in order to represent their ideologies. Methodology Among approximately 600 texts collected from different written English socio-political content that were translated to Persian language and were limited to national, international or regional issues related to subjects about Iran, 250 utterances were selected for analyzing. These excerpts had the most obvious syntactic manipulation done by Persian translators. They were taken from written news, interviews, resolutions and the like from different sources such as websites, press, and magazines. Searching all syntactic strategies and manipulations, the Persian translators’ ideology were then challenged within CDA framework and Van Dijk’s theoretical pattern (2004). After that, Van Dijk’s ideological square was used to analyze how Our and Their actions and properties were polarized and how they were reflected in translation were examined. In the end, the frequency of the applied syntactic strategies was calculated. Results and Discussion In this part of the research according to Van Dijk’s theoretical pattern (2004), the frequency and percentage of each syntactic manipulations including eight strategies (word order, passivization, topicalization, nominalization, addition, deletion, modality and tense shift) which were used to manipulate the syntactic structures of English (ST) in order to convey Persian translator’s dominant or intended ideology, are excluded and analyzed. Conclusion and Suggestions The conclusions show that the syntactic strategies and manipulations do have a salient role in representing Persian translators’ ideologies in English written translated socio-political texts through the polarization of us and them. In other words, the effectiveness of syntax, manipulations, and changes made on syntactic structures and the Van Dijk’s theoretical pattern (2004) syntactic strategies could considerably echo the Persian translators’ ideologies in translated socio-political English discourses. Hence, studying these analyses clearly demonstrates that the major strategies or strategies used for emphasizing and mitigating actions in the content that Van Dijk explained in his ideological square has been significantly effective in justifying syntactic changes and the manipulations done by Persian translators. Also, comparing syntactic frequencies showed that the findings of the mostly applied strategies such as deletion and addition represent that among all such strategies, Persian translators pick the clearest and most direct way to express intended ideologies and hitherto, they have been trying to affect the meaning and the ideology of the target language indirectly. As far as the current research chose to study syntax among different discourse terms, studying other terms can show a more comprehensible picture of changes that represent the efforts translators have made to demonstrate beliefs, principles, personal and social culture through words, structures, and ideological meanings.
