Reza Kazemian; Mohammad Amouzadeh
Volume 11, Issue 2 , June 2020, , Pages 255-280
Abstract
The study of parentheticals in Persian can still be regarded as an unexplored area of investigation. Persian Parentheticals can be divided into different types; one of them is va-parenthetical. This paper is set forth to study væ-parentheitcal clauses. It opens with a discussion on their typical ...
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The study of parentheticals in Persian can still be regarded as an unexplored area of investigation. Persian Parentheticals can be divided into different types; one of them is va-parenthetical. This paper is set forth to study væ-parentheitcal clauses. It opens with a discussion on their typical places of interpolation and their mobile nature. It then continues with the discussion on their general characteristics, namely, omissibility, ellipsis-licensed, and remaining beyond the scope of subordinators. The available data confirm that except ellipsis-licensed feature, all other noted characteristics could be true in case of væ-parentheitcals. This study also reveals that væ-parentheitcals can be interpolated in three different positions (beginning, middle and final). This paper follows a moderate approach, a way between the integrated and the unintegrated approaches, to study væ-parentheitcals. In this vein, it mainly adopts Kavalova’s model (2007) to study væ-parentheitcals. Finally, in spite of quite similar features between væ-parentheitcals and væ discourse marker, some distinctions are made between them. This study argues that by taking some modifications, Kavalova’s model (2007) is quite appropriate to analyze Persian data. The Persian examples illustrated in this study are derived from both written and spoken corpora. It draws on written data from Persian Talk Bank, and the spoken data are collected by authors from some TV round table programs.
Seyed Hamzeh Mousavi; Mohammad Amouzadeh
Volume 11, Issue 1 , May 2019, , Pages 193-225
Abstract
Extended Abstract
Introduction
Collocation is defined as the combination of two or more words, which generally go together in a specific context (Lyons, 1995). As an illustration, only one of the synonymous lexemes such as big and large fill the blank space in Example (1).
You are making a ...
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Extended Abstract
Introduction
Collocation is defined as the combination of two or more words, which generally go together in a specific context (Lyons, 1995). As an illustration, only one of the synonymous lexemes such as big and large fill the blank space in Example (1).
You are making a ____big_____ mistake.
* You are making a ___large___mistake.
Example 1 indicates that mistake only collocates with big on a syntagmatic axis, and not large.
The study aimed at investigating certain semantic and pragmatic motivations behind lexical collocations based on frame semantics demonstrating what words collocate with certain words such as ‘dast’ (hand) and what motivates their constructions. In other words, the question is whether it is the frame correspondence that brings two or more words together. This research aimed to answer the following questions:
What motivates specific words to go together?
How does frame semantics provide us with information about collocations?
What cultural, metaphorical and metonymic factors play roles in lexical collocations?
The argument is that what motivates collocations reside in the speakers’ background knowledge and their ability to use syntactic and semantic phenomena properly.
Theoretical Framework
Frame semantics was introduced by Charles Fillmore in 1970s. It aimed to explain the configuration processes of encyclopedical knowledge of words (Ungerer & Schmid, 2006). This framework was primarily used for designing dictionaries which include our background knowledge, whether structural or semantic (Fillmore, 2007).
Fillmore (1982, p. 111) defines ‘frame semantics’ as “a particular way of looking at word meanings, as well as a way of characterizing principles for creating new words and phrases for adding new meanings to words, and for assembling the meaning of elements in a text into the total meaning of the text”. By the word ‘frame’ he means all other previously known terms such as ‘schema’, ‘script’, ‘scenario’, ‘ideational scaffolding’, ‘cognitive model’, or ‘folk theory’.
Croft and Cruse (2004) believe that words are not randomly saved in our memory. But they are not only organized based on relations within structural semantics, but also they are connected based on experience. For example, a “restaurent” is not just a place to eat food, it is related to other concepts such as customer, waiter, ordering, eating, and bill. They mention that these concepts are not connected to RESTAURENT by structural semantic relations such as hyponymy, antonymy and etc., but they are connected to restaurent by our daily experiences.
Furthermore, Fillmore (1982) elaborates how frame semantics can help us explain the subtle differences between various synonymous words. For instance, the words “shore” and “coast” are considered to be synonymous; however, within frame semantics they are different because a person that is at the deck of a ship may say ‘We are close to the shore’, and a person that is on land may say ‘This is the coast of France’.
Method
For conducting the present research, a corpus consisting of 2000 sentences was used. Most of the data were collected from the website The Persian Database and Sokhan Persian Dictionary. All data included the word dast (hand) as a subpart of the Body-Part Frame. For the investigation of collocations with dast, two types of data were found: nominal collocations and verbal collocations.
A kind of analytical-descriptive method based on frame semantics was used to carry out the current study. In this method, series of collocates with dast were collected to be compared with their near synonyms to discover the compatibility of bases, collocates and the whole construction. In nominal collocations, Body-Part Frame should be compatible with the frame in which the collocation is defined. In verbal collocations, the Body-Part Frame may literally or metonymically affect the verbal element. Moreover, cultural concepts might influence the quality of the collocation.
Results and Discussion
Mel’čuk (1998), and Gelbukh and Kolesnikova (2013) used the lexical-functional approach to study collocations. They do not, however, look at the semantic motivations behind their combination. Since lexical-functional appach is not based on our experiences and background knowledge, it appears to be difficult to find a way to the nature of lexical concatenations.
Fillmore (1975, 1977a, 1982, 1985) aimed to use frame semantics for describing lexemes and preparing FrameNet. However, Ruppenhofer, Baker and Fillmore (2003) believe that it is possible to use FrameNet for collecting information about the collocations and multi-word phrases. In fact, such information is hidden and this paper aims at dicovering motivations behind collocations based on such a theory.
Explaining motivations behind collocations without defining the terms collocations, metaphor and metonymy based on frame semantics becomes very difficult. Collocation is defined as combination of a word from one frame with another word from the same or a different frame, wich creates a construction wich can be defined within either of each elements’ frames or a completely new frame. Metaphor is defined as mappring from a frame into another frame. Metonymy is a frame-to-frame mapping, in which on frame is the subpart of the other frame.
Conclusion
In verbal collocations the verbal element is dominated by the frame in which the nominal elemenet is defined, whereas in nominal collocations the nominal elements should be defined in compatible frames. If they are not literally compatible, then they must be fixed metaphorically, metonymically or culturally.
Reza Soltani; Mohammad Amouzadeh
Volume 10, Issue 18 , August 2018, , Pages 79-100
Abstract
Extended abstract 1. Introduction Light verb constructions (LVCs) are so pervasive in Persian that a heavy verb may act in various constructions as a light verb (LV). This makes the heavy verb lose some parts of its main meaning in such constructions and get away from its prototype meaning. However, ...
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Extended abstract 1. Introduction Light verb constructions (LVCs) are so pervasive in Persian that a heavy verb may act in various constructions as a light verb (LV). This makes the heavy verb lose some parts of its main meaning in such constructions and get away from its prototype meaning. However, this does not imply that no systematic relationship can be found between the heavy verb and its light counterpart. The purpose of this paper is to explore these relationships among the heavy verb, dâdӕn (to give), and the resulting LVCs. 2. Theoretical Framework The framework adopted in this study is cognitive semantics in general and cognitive lexical semantics and force-dynamics in particular. Cognitive lexical semantics consists of various theories including prototype categorization, image schemas, conceptual metaphor and foregrounding. According to this approach, different meanings of a word form a semantic category whose semantic similarities and commonalities are greater in more central meanings than in more peripheral ones. Moreover, the relationships among these meanings may be explained in terms of conceptual metaphor, image schemas and foregrounding. LVs also form a network of related meanings that could be explained in this way. Another concept is force-dynamics which deals with interaction of entities in relation to force. Regarding the LVCs, it is assumed that the characteristics of the interactions of the forces of heavy verbs would be preserved in LVCs. These may include the source of energy, its direction and the recipient of the energy. For example, if a heavy verb denotes a self-oriented action, light uses also refer to a self-oriented event. 3. Methodology This paper is a descriptive-analytical study. The data included LVCs using the verb dâdӕn and were collected from various library resources and previous studies. To analyze the data, first the semantic structure of the heavy verb, dâdӕn, was examined based on the Newman (1996)’s model and various aspects of this structure was identified. Then, drawing on the principles of cognitive lexical semantics, the light uses of dâdӕn and their relations to the components of the semantic structure of the heavy verb were established. Furthermore, the force-dynamics of the heavy verb dâdӕn and its traces in the light uses were examined. As a result, the ways dâdӕn could be lightened were discussed and characterized in different categories. 4. Results and Discussion LVCs maintain one or more semantic aspects of the heavy verb dâdӕn. The concept of “interpersonal communication” can be accounted for by the metaphoric mapping between elements of communication and the conduit metaphor. “Causality” is directly related to literal transfer of objects into the receiver’s control domain and the control aspect is associated with the concepts of “permission” or “strength” in LVCs. Moreover, control domain may be related to the concepts such as “emergence” of a phenomenon. Concerning the force-dynamic properties, light uses of dâdӕn mostly tend to keep these properties as other-oriented outward actions. 5. Conclusion and Suggestions At first it seems that the heavy verb, dâdӕn, has a simple structure and its main parts consist of a sender, an object, and a receiver. However, there are more to this structure such as control domain, force-dynamics, and transfer. The light uses of dâdӕn are systematically related to various aspects of the semantic structure of the heavy dâdӕn. In other words, these literal aspects are mapped onto more metaphorical concepts such as causality which is one of the most common concepts expressed by the light dâdӕn. This means that the light dâdӕn has turned into a causal verb in the process of losing the meaning of its prototype as a heavy verb. This may be directly a function of the force-dynamics of heavy dâdӕn which similar to a causative verb, expresses actions towards other entities. In other words, transfer or imposition of a state on an entity is perceived as transfer of an object to a receiver.
Mohammad Amuzadeh Mahdiraji; Fatemeh Bahrami
Volume 2, Issue 2 , October 2010
Abstract
Deicticity in language is an important issue that can be analyzed pragmatically. So the present paper aims to investigate the pragmatic aspects of time deictic terms in Persian and the way they are used by Farsi speakers. Much information which is transferred in speech has pragmatic aspects and relates ...
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Deicticity in language is an important issue that can be analyzed pragmatically. So the present paper aims to investigate the pragmatic aspects of time deictic terms in Persian and the way they are used by Farsi speakers. Much information which is transferred in speech has pragmatic aspects and relates to the certain context of situation and social context. One of the goals of this paper is to reveal the role of time deixis in transferring pragmatic concepts in context of situation that grammar is unable to explain exhaustively
