Semantics
Seyed Mohammad Hosseini Maasoum; Marjan Akbari
Articles in Press, Accepted Manuscript, Available Online from 23 October 2024
Abstract
Discourse-semiotics is a discipline that carries out a process study of language. This discipline considers the sign as the source and meaning as the goal of its work. Semiotics chooses discourse as its field of work. Since literature is one of the examples of dynamic discourses, discourse-semiotics ...
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Discourse-semiotics is a discipline that carries out a process study of language. This discipline considers the sign as the source and meaning as the goal of its work. Semiotics chooses discourse as its field of work. Since literature is one of the examples of dynamic discourses, discourse-semiotics aims to discover hidden semantic spaces by examining the elements involved in these discourses and the relationships between these elements. This research uses the discourse-semiotic approach to investigate the process of meaning generation in the narrative elements of Zal and Rudabeh of Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh. The results indicate that the actional subject wants to have a child in order to gain value and eliminate the disadvantage. However, amending this shortcoming causes the first tension and challenge in the course of the narrative. The subject tries to solve the challenge by abandoning the albino baby, which is incompatible with social norms, but the abandonment of the child poses more challenges to the main character and even other narrative actors. The abandonment of the child in this narrative provides the possibility of the degeneration of meaning. In the meantime, what keeps the process of meaning-making going is the transformation of the actional subject into a sensible subject and the change of the narrative space into a sensory-perceptive space. Thus, Hakim Ferdowsi continues the meaning-making flow by using emotional solutions and applying semantic systems such as action, sensation, existence, imagination and myth.
Seyed Mohammad Hosseini-Maasoum; Maliheh Hajian Nezhad,
Volume 14, Issue 1 , April 2022, , Pages 183-208
Abstract
Speech repair, also called conversational repair, as one of the most important instruments for the maintenance of the conversation and preventing communication breach, can be an effective factor in daily conversations and relations. Here, gender, as a sociolinguistic factor, can cause differences in ...
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Speech repair, also called conversational repair, as one of the most important instruments for the maintenance of the conversation and preventing communication breach, can be an effective factor in daily conversations and relations. Here, gender, as a sociolinguistic factor, can cause differences in the frequency and manner of using this instrument by speakers. The present study compares Persian-Speaking men and women in using repair in their conversations, as well as the distribution of different types and strategies of repairs. Schegloff’s classification of repair types (1977) and Fox & Jasperson’s (1995) classification of repair strategies were used. The results indicate that, in general, women tend to use significantly more repairs than men do. Although both groups showed a similar pattern of ranking in the frequency of repair types and in both of them self-initiated self-repair had the highest frequency and self-initiated other-repair the lowest frequency, in the meantime, two types of repairs in women had frequencies twice those in men. Moreover, the analysis of the data by means of Fox & Jasperson’s sevenfold classification of repair strategies showed that in both men and women’s speech, “recycle word” was the most frequently used strategy and “aborting syntactic stream and starting new structure” was the least frequently used one while in both strategies, the percentage of use as higher in women’s speech compared to that of men.
reza Heidarizadi; Seyed Mohammad Hosseini-Maasoum; Arezoo Najafian; Belqeis Roshan
Volume 8, Issue 15 , January 2017, , Pages 53-74
Abstract
1. Introduction
Persian compound verbs have been the topic of much research and have been investigated on the basis of various approaches. A clear fact about complex predicates is that they are constructions formed by more than one lexeme. The light verb in a complex predicate is the head and the other ...
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1. Introduction
Persian compound verbs have been the topic of much research and have been investigated on the basis of various approaches. A clear fact about complex predicates is that they are constructions formed by more than one lexeme. The light verb in a complex predicate is the head and the other segments are considered as nonverbal. This paper tries to describe how complex predicates formed by the light verb "Kard-an = to do" are derived. On the one hand, complex predicates are regarded as lexical units as they are input to morphological rules; on the other hand, they have been supposed to be syntactic because they can split in syntax like independent lexical items. This paper describes morphological derivation of Persian complex predicates and their syntactic separability on the basis of Phase Derivation Theory which has recently gained much attention in the minimalist tradition. The data were extracted out from Sokhan Dictionary and the online version of the Persian Linguistic Database. Tree diagrams are usually used in this theory to show the details of the structural derivations. Phase derivation theory (Chomsky, 2000, 2001, 2008) is the newest version of the generative grammar. Marantz (2001, 2007), Di Sciullo (2003) referred to the morphological phases inside word structure and explained how derivation is performed morphologically. Megerdoomian (2002) following Marantz (1997) and Chomsky (2000) claimed that there is a phase head in Persian complex predicates. In studies by Vahedi-Langrudi (1996), Karimi (1997), Megerdoomian (2002), Folli, Harley, and Karimi (2005), and Pantcheva (2008), Persian complex predicates are syntactic unites as output of the syntactic operations. Karimi Doostan (1997) regarded complex predicates as morphosyntactic units.
2. Methodology
This paper deals with two theoretical problems: first, how is the complex predicate derived, which leads to the interaction of morphology and syntax; second, why does the interaction between morphology and syntax take place during the derivation of complex predicates. In this paper, complex predicates are the output of the derivational operations in morphology that are in turn the input of the syntactic operations, so the interaction between morphology and syntax emerges. The derivation method suggested here is that roots and categories are merged first. Roots are bare and have no category and inflection. Then, a phase head is merged which carries inflectional or functional information. Phase head in complex predicates is a light verb head (v) which is merged after the merge of all the roots. The sister of the phase head is called the phase domain. This domain is impenetrable. By phase impenetrability condition, phase domain is transmitted to the interface levels and remains out of the access of syntactic operations; while, phase head plus Spec-phase is at the phase edge which is accessible to the syntactic operations. Before the spell-out, every segment should satisfy its computational needs.
3. Results and Discussion:
In Persian grammar, verb roots represent out as a tensed stem. In other words, verb root is [u-tense] which should be checked during the derivation. It is possible for a phase head to have [tense] feature (Chomsky, 2008; 2013); so, it is assumed that phase head (v) carries feature [tense]. Before spelling out, the verb root "Kon = do" in the phase domain is adjoined to (v) to check [u-tense]. By default, in Persian the nonverbal segment is represented before the verb head. Based on the correspondence axiom principle (Chomsky, 1995) the linear order is dependent on the c-command in the derivation; that is, the nonverbal element is located at the phase edge and c-commands the light verb. The nonverbal element moves in order to omit [EPP] feature of the phase head and to remain in a common derivational domain near the light verb, so that they spell out in a common step of the derivation and hence, the interpretation of the complex predicate is performed in a common minimal domain. Therefore, the verb root adjoined to the phase head (v) operates as a light verb head, and the nonverbal is adjoined to the phase edge, which is accessible to syntactic operations and can split in syntax. In some cases, a lexical root which moves to the phase edge is adjoined to an affix head. According to Lieber's (1980) morphological theory, every affix has a subcategorization frame containing the category information and the selectional restrictions. When a lexical root moves to edge of the morphological phase; if adjoined to an affix, it is inserted into the subcategorization frame.
4. Conclusion
It is concluded that the complex predicates are derived by a morphological phase. The domain of the phase remains out of access to syntactic operations. But the nonverbal element in the phase edge is accessible to the syntactic operations and becomes separable in syntax. Then, the complex predicates are derived by a phase the edge of which can split in syntax and remain separable during the syntactic derivation.
Seyed Mohammad Hosseini-Maasoum; Zahra Rezayee
Volume 7, Issue 12 , July 2015, , Pages 1-27
Abstract
Autosegmental-metrical (AM) phonology distinguishes two types of accents (stresses), namely: lexical accent and pitch accent. The present study offers an acoustic analysis of the prosodic feature, pitch accent, in the Persian speech of Persian speakers who are fluent in English as a second language (English ...
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Autosegmental-metrical (AM) phonology distinguishes two types of accents (stresses), namely: lexical accent and pitch accent. The present study offers an acoustic analysis of the prosodic feature, pitch accent, in the Persian speech of Persian speakers who are fluent in English as a second language (English instructors). Language interference has often been dealt with as the effect of firs language on the second, but this paper deals with a reverse effect, that of the second language on the first, which has often been neglected. Thus, the accent patterns of Persian and English have been introduced and the Persian speech of Native Persian bilinguals has been analyzed from this point of view. Former studies have shown that English has leftmost accent pattern and Persian has rightmost accent pattern. The data were analyzed by means of PRAAT 5.3.71 and the accent pattern of the subjects was extracted in separate male and female groups. The results indicated a relative effect of the English accent pattern on the Persian speech of Persian bilinguals. The effect was found to be stronger in females.
Seyed Mohammad Hosseini-Maasoum
Volume 4, Issue 7 , September 2013
Abstract
The link between studies in discourse analysis and corpus linguistics has created new fields of research previously unattended. One of these areas is the study of semantic prosody produced through frequent collocation of a lexical item with a collection of words. Semantic prosody is the positive, negative ...
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The link between studies in discourse analysis and corpus linguistics has created new fields of research previously unattended. One of these areas is the study of semantic prosody produced through frequent collocation of a lexical item with a collection of words. Semantic prosody is the positive, negative or neutral shade of meaning which a seemingly neutral word adopts after frequent collocation with positive, negative or neutral words. This is an important concept in corpus linguistics which has recently interested the linguists and attracted their attention. The present paper introduces this concept in Persian for the first time, reviews its applications and provides examples in a corpus of Persian texts. The theoretical framework of this study is based on the contributions of Sinclair (1987) and Louw (1993) and later studies following these two. A number of verbal complexes were searched in the internet in order to compile a corpus of Persian sentences containing these verbs and their collocating words. The results indicated that statistically significant differences can be observed in the semantic prosody of these sample verbs, hence the realisation of semantic prosody patterns in Persian collocations
S. Mohhamad Hosseini-Maasoum; Toktam Hosseini
Volume 5, Issue 9 , July 2013, , Pages 119-141
Abstract
In sociolinguistics, the role of factors such as level of education in different aspects of language has always been the focus of attention. The present research, which was conducted in Mashhad, seeks to study phonological processes among educated and uneducated speakers compared to Standard Persian. ...
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In sociolinguistics, the role of factors such as level of education in different aspects of language has always been the focus of attention. The present research, which was conducted in Mashhad, seeks to study phonological processes among educated and uneducated speakers compared to Standard Persian. The data was gathered through field method and interview to analyze processes such as assimilation, vowel harmony, devoicing, metathesis, addition and deletion. The results indicated that the level of education is a distinctive factor in the speech of Mashhadi speakers. Highly educated speakers have much care in their use of words and mostly use the standard variations while the phonological processes in the speech of less educated ones deviate their speech from the standard. The only process which was found not to be highly influenced by education was the deletion process. It had a high frequency among all speakers. The data analysis has been provided in details and in different methods
Seyed Mohammad Hosseini-Maasoum
Volume 3, Issue 5 , January 2012
Abstract
One of the main dichotomies in syntactic analyses deals with the distinction between lexical and functional categories. Functional categories gain in stature as the generative grammar moves ahead. They come into play in explaining the derivation stages of phrases and sentences. The present study critically ...
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One of the main dichotomies in syntactic analyses deals with the distinction between lexical and functional categories. Functional categories gain in stature as the generative grammar moves ahead. They come into play in explaining the derivation stages of phrases and sentences. The present study critically evaluates different approaches to the role and function of one of these functional categories, namely negation. Given the evidence provided in the paper, the researcher rejects the proposal that this category is located above TP. Rather, it is suggested that NegP immediately dominates [little]vP. Accordingly, when there is a tense auxiliary (after the main verb) or a modal (before the main verb), the structure in v which includes the main verb is incorporated into the tense auxiliary or modal in the T node. Then, the negative morpheme (ne/næ) moves from Neg to T, joining the aforementioned resulting constituent. After this movement, the negation morpheme is attached to the modal+main verb combination, thus yielding the well-formed surface order of the negative verbs (næ-xahæd neve∫t). Moreover, for the first time, a minimalist model is suggested for the negation of passive sentences in Persian.
Mohammad Reza Pahlavannezhad; Mehdi Meshkatod Dini; Seyed Mohammad Hosseini Masoum
Volume 2, Issue 2 , October 2010
Abstract
The Minimalist Program is the most recent approach in generative linguistics. The program mainly seeks to analyze the hierarchical structure of the sentences in human languages with regard to the mental linguistic knowledge of the speakers. An interesting aspect of the structural analysis in this approach ...
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The Minimalist Program is the most recent approach in generative linguistics. The program mainly seeks to analyze the hierarchical structure of the sentences in human languages with regard to the mental linguistic knowledge of the speakers. An interesting aspect of the structural analysis in this approach is the introduction of functional categories, which help to define the syntactic relationships between lexical categories. Providing a comprehensive description of functional categories, the present study deals with the one of the functional categories i.e. Tense, in the syntax of Persian sentences. In line with the definitions applied in the Minimalist Program, we study verb inflection through agreement and the checking process of uninterpretable features on T and V nodes. Moreover, with regard to the fact that the feature Infl is a strong feature in Persian, the verb is attracted to the head T and placed in a position outside vP, vP deletion and tag questions support this hypothesis