Abbas Ali Ahangar; ebrahim morady
Volume 8, Issue 15 , January 2017, Pages 1-26
Abstract
This paper studies the semantic contribution of –e suffix based on Lieber (2004). This theory using seven semantic features and a principle called Coindexation Principle studies the semantic contribution of lexical items and their function in compounding, derivation and conversion. In this theory each ...
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This paper studies the semantic contribution of –e suffix based on Lieber (2004). This theory using seven semantic features and a principle called Coindexation Principle studies the semantic contribution of lexical items and their function in compounding, derivation and conversion. In this theory each lexical item even affixes have a semantic skeleton and a semantic body. Each affix has to have only one skeleton. If an affix has more than one semantic contribution, it should be explained based on other factors such as semantic extension conserving the same skeleton. Concepts such as subject, object, instrument, etc. have no relationship with skeleton but they are the result of other factors such as the interaction of coindexation of base argument with the argument of the affix. Having studied –e affix, we came to the following conclusion: it has at least three semantic skeletons: one which derives concrete nouns, another one derives abstract nouns having event or process meaning, and adjectival one. Subject oriented and object oriented nouns, instrument, similarity and location are the result of semantic extension of concrete noun making function of the affix or different coindexation on the argument of the affix with different arguments of the base.
Sara Yazdani; Shahla Sharifi; Mahmoud Elyasi
Volume 8, Issue 15 , January 2017, Pages 27-51
Abstract
1. Introduction
Hyland (2005) defines metadiscourse as a “cover term for the self-reflective expression used to negotiate interactional meanings in a text, assisting the writer (or speaker) to express a viewpoint and engage with reader as members of a particular community” (p. 37). Hyland has admitted ...
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1. Introduction
Hyland (2005) defines metadiscourse as a “cover term for the self-reflective expression used to negotiate interactional meanings in a text, assisting the writer (or speaker) to express a viewpoint and engage with reader as members of a particular community” (p. 37). Hyland has admitted that these rhetorical features convey the relation between the writer, text and reader which is more than a pure exchange of information. In this vein, newspapers are important means of information exchange. Readers of any social level in communities have access to it and on the other hand, unlike TV and radio, it would not oblige its users to confine themselves to a specific time or place. Therefore, the role of newspapers in reflecting the news is really significant. In spite of the importance of newspaper discourse, it has not been successful in absorbing researchers’ attention to study on language devices like metadiscourse markers in this type of texts.
2. Theoretical Framework
In analyzing the data of this study, Hyland’s (2005, p. 49) framework was utilized since it is a more elaborated and convincing model for metadiscourse categorization and it has been used in most of the recent studies. Hyland (2005) divided the metadiscourse markers into two broad categories: interactive and interactional, each of which is divided into five sub-categories. The interactive metadiscourse group contains: (1) Transition: expresses relations between main clauses, e.g. in addition, thus, and, (2) Frame marker: refers to discourse acts, sequences or stages, e.g. finally, my purpose is, (3) Endophoric markers: refers to information in the parts of the text, e.g. noted above, see figure, (4) Evidential: refers to information from other text, e.g. according to X, Z states, (5) Code gloss: elaborates propositional meanings, e.g. e.g. such as. The second group of metadiscourse markers includes: (1) Hedge: expresses writer’s uncertainty, e.g. might, perhaps, (2) Booster: expresses writer’s certainty, e.g. in fact, definitely, (3) Attitude marker: expresses writer’s attitude, e.g. unfortunately, surprisingly, (4) Self-mention: Explicit reference to author(s), e.g. I, we, (5) Engagement marker: explicitly build relation with a reader, e.g. consider, note.
3. Methodology
The data of the present study were collected from the leading and most widely read newspapers in the U.S. and Iran by means of random sampling. Random sampling is a contributing factor to overcome the diversity of writers’ styles. The English news articles were retrieved from an online newspaper archive, while the Persian ones were collected from Astan-e-Qods- Razavi library archive. The data sampling was based on easy accessibility, popularity and mass circulation of news articles. To normalize the present study to a common basis to compare the frequency of occurrence, this research employed 100 words approach. In fact, all of these articles were published on 12 September in 2001. All news articles were examined to determine and classify metadiscourse markers manually. Furthermore, to analyze the data statistically, SPSS 18 software was applied. To find out whether there is any difference between the metadiscourse distribution in both English and Persian news and to explore the meaning beyond this difference, the chi-square test was employed.
4. Results and Discussion
The findings revealed that all types of metadiscourse markers were present in both sets of data, but that there were similarities and differences between the two groups regarding their distribution and frequency. In general, interactive metadiscourse markers were employed the most in news reports, in comparison to interactional metadiscourse markers, according to chi- square test results. As for the subcategories of interactive metadiscourse, transitions and evidentials were meaningfully the most frequent markers in English and Persian news reports. Regarding the subtypes of interactional metadiscourse, hedges, attitude markers and boosters were statistically employed the most in both sets of data in terms of frequency of occurrence. Moreover, attitude markers, hedges, boosters and evidentials were used in both groups of news articles to display the hidden ideology for achieving power, but engagement markers and self-mentions were only present in English news reports to show the totalitarian ideology.
5. Conclusion
This study tried to investigate the role of metadiscourse markers about 9/11 news articles published in 2001 in the U.S. and Iran. This comparative study might provide pedagogical implications. It would be practical to train journalism students about using metadiscourse markers appropriately in order to achieve more success in reporting the world’s events. Hence, journalists by exerting metadiscourse markers not only would be able to deepen their readers’ understanding, but also might ensure to conduct them to grasp the content completely and ideally.
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.
Mohammad Hadi fallahi; Leyla Karimi
Volume 8, Issue 15 , January 2017, Pages 75-93
Abstract
1. Introduction
This paper presents the report of Bilingual Aphasia Test (BAT) on a trilingual (German-L1, Persian-L2 & English-L3) aphasic patient's speech disorders. Having had a precise neurological report that has been done in a neurology clinic (including the patient's type of aphasia that has ...
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1. Introduction
This paper presents the report of Bilingual Aphasia Test (BAT) on a trilingual (German-L1, Persian-L2 & English-L3) aphasic patient's speech disorders. Having had a precise neurological report that has been done in a neurology clinic (including the patient's type of aphasia that has been described as Broca, the exact size and locations of his traumatism, his age in acquiring each language in his life before the accident, his level of education, …), a detailed linguistic analysis of his speaking disorders has been carried out.
2. Methodology
To assess the current condition of the patient's amount of impairment and disorders in the levels of phonology, syntax and lexicon, "Bilingual Aphasia Test-part B" has been used to determine the amount of his speech abilities through the linguistic skills of "repetition and reading" (applying repetition and reading skills is in that, he is not able to speak spontaneously fluently) in his three languages through comparison of them, English-Farsi, German-Farsi and German-English after analyzing the transcriptions, linguistically in both qualitative and quantitative methods. In the quantitative way, sores are based on 10 points and their percentage; and in the qualitative method (according to Garman, 1990), the achieved scores have been interpreted into a description by using some expressions such as, very good, good, with difficulty or with a lot of difficulties.
3. Results and Discussion
According to the gained scores, it is concluded that:
A. The patient's speaking skill in three levels (phonology, syntax and lexicon) of his three known languages in average is 72.7 % in German, 59% in Farsi, 59.7% in English. Also, the mean percentage of each level in three languages is 85.3% in phonology, 56% in syntax and 78% in lexicon.
B. According to the test's results, the patient speaking is impaired in his three languages. It could be interpreted qualitatively (based on Garman, 1990: scores higher than 80 percent mean "very good", scores between 75-80 percent indicate "good", scores of 70-75 percent mean "with difficulty", and less than 70 percent signify "with a lot of difficulties". The gained scores' could be interpreted as: "very good" in the level of phonology in his three languages (German, Farsi and English); in syntax the scores are different: "good" in German, but "with a lot of difficulties" in Farsi and English. And the level of his lexicon in German is "very good" while it is "with difficulty" in both Farsi and English.
Generally, the least problem was seen in the phonology part, and the most problems in syntax. This trend is the same in his three languages.
C. In spite of differences in the features and elements of agrammatism in three languages, constant omissions of the grammatical elements are observed (especially free functional morphemes) as their similarity. A few substitutions were observed as well. Some difficulties such as substitution and addition had been known as Wernicke's features in other researches; however, they were seen in this Broca's patient through evaluation.
D. His non-fluent speech in three languages is along with omissions or shortening of consonant clusters especially in the words having more than one syllable.
E. Comparing the results of test on three levels his known three languages shows that there is not a significant difference in the speech ability of the levels of phonology and lexicon between three languages (only 5-10 percent difference), but the percentage of his correct answers related to the applied test in syntax is much better in German than two other languages, i.e. Farsi and English (with 30 percent difference).
4. Conclusion
This case study was done 11 years after the patient's brain stroke and he was living in his L2 environment (Farsi) during those years (He is bigeneric: German-Persian, he had lived in Germany before the accident). It was expected and hypothesized that he be fluent or much better in his L2 i.e. Farsi because of living his last eleven years (after the accident until now) in Iran. However, the BAT results showed the better performance of him in German, L1, that is his first language, and his dominant language before stroke.
It must be mentioned that some other studies on multilingual aphasic patients shows the dominancy of their L2 or L3 after the brain stroke, quite the contrary in this study.
Ultimately, the results of this case study have proved the previous researchers' conclusions on Broca's impairments. The main disorders of his speech could be named as 1) syntactic deficiencies such as, omitting articles, prepositions, and conjunctions; 2) telegraphic and incomplete speech by producing the key or content words; 3) omission or shortening the consonant clusters, and at last 4) stuttering.
sedighesadat meghdari; marjan sobhani
Volume 8, Issue 15 , January 2017, Pages 95-120
Abstract
1. Introduction
In recent decades, social scientists have been increasingly interested in research that examines the role of language in creating reality around us. This interest has been associated with developments and new disciplines in the study of language use and its role in human societies. The ...
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1. Introduction
In recent decades, social scientists have been increasingly interested in research that examines the role of language in creating reality around us. This interest has been associated with developments and new disciplines in the study of language use and its role in human societies. The present study investigates advertisements in the area of business. In today’s commercial world, advertisement is of paramount importance, which, if done improperly, can bring about detrimental effects rather than profits. The objectives of the present study are determining linguistic and visual factors employed in billboard texts, linguistic analysis of discourse-oriented structures and presenting a practical discourse model of advertising using language. Since every organization benefiting from the propaganda tool try to attract public opinion to create a positive attitude toward itself, so access to the easiest, the most economic and effective method can be of great help to them. Because in regard to the commercial advertising billboards in Iran has not been so far a comprehensive study, an all -inclusive research can provide the organizations with such solutions. So this research can be useful to factories, organizations, enterprises that tent to have the best billboards advertising in the city of all kinds of goods and services produced. The billboards developers and designers can also benefit of these solutions in their construct
2. Methodology
In this study, Tehran and Shiraz billboards are analyzed based on critical discourse analysis with emphasis on their positive and constructive dimensions and within the framework of Halliday's textual analysis and multimodal discourse analysis. These billboards are examined according to their written text and color and the way their elements are arranged, as well as they are examined based on the location of the billboard, its height, two or three-dimensional being, the size of writings, the shapes and other factors that affect the attention of passers.All billboards (37 cases) were photographed in Shiraz and Tehran. Among all, 20 billboards were chosen to be analyzed which were commercial and multimodal. Then due to the systematic approach of Fairclough, his three-dimensional model was determined as the theoretical base of the research. But as the tools introduced by Fairclough are more suited to writing texts, by using social semiotics and applying Iedema, Rose and Kress and Van Leeuwen's approaches and integrating these approaches in Fairclough three-dimensional model, a good model is achieved for images or films' analytics.
3. Results and Discussion
After linguistic analysis of data, they are compared with other advertising texts to evaluate their discursive level. In this kind of discourse, adjectives and adverbs are of the most use as well as the majority of sentences are stated in imperative or affirmative aspects. In fact, 79/1% of adjectives and 29/2% of adverbs were used. 25% are imperative sentences and 75% are affirmative. So it can be said that adjectives are used more to describe the product features in billboard advertising in Iran and the aspect of most sentences and semi-sentences is affirmative and not imperative.
Data semiotic analysis based on critical discourse analysis examines two matters, that is, social distance and social relationships. According to the social distance in a visual semiotic system, people who appear in the distant are considered as strangers and people with close-show are subjects that are considered as part of us and social relationships have different meanings based on camera angle, and upward or downward look at subjects. Looking from above at someone means applying symbolic power on him or her. The viewer's look from the bottom to up shows that the person displayed has a symbolic power on the viewer. Look into the eyes of the same level represents equality. 15 %of these research advetising billboards show the demand element and 85% the supply one. This means that advertisment in Iran is presented quite independently of demand and the customer and so there is not enough customers to be attracted. The ratio of 40% close up and 40% medium shot to the distant view reflects a desire to establish friendly individual and social relations between advertising promotional images with the audience. The zero percent and the lack of image with high camera angles in data indicates a lack of interest in Iran advertising to provide power to the spectator.80% of advertising pictures with the same level and across from camera angel detects the inclusivity and the equality of the audience so that the advertisements tends to consider the spectator as a part of advertisement.
4. Conclusion
The linguistic and visual elements influence the word selection and sentence grammatical structure that is the verbal arrangement. That is why the advertisements try to affect the customer mind to change his or her view on its side. Deep analyzing the discourses, we can find out the concealed ideas in them. To do so, examining a number of billboards, we tried to detect their concealed signs and discursive practices. So the research data are analyzed based on the integrated model of this research. Analyzing the elements used by the advertisements for customer attraction shows that how advertisements change the audience attitude and how highlights a matter. This research is one of the first attempts in Iran to provide a practical model to study advertising discourse. This pattern is in the early stages and should be perfected with using other components of sociological and semantic. Fairclough's three-dimensional pattern in combination with Iedema, Rose, Van Leeuwen and Kress can be capable in the analysis of verbal and visual elements to some extents, but there is still a need for a more perfected modle in this field.
Zahra Roohi Bygi
Volume 8, Issue 15 , January 2017, Pages 122-148
Abstract
1. Introduction
In addition to simple verbs, Persian employs a large number of complex predicates consisting of a preverbal element and a light verb. The preverbal element can be a noun, an adjective, an adverb or a preposition phrase, which combines with a verb to form a single syntactic predicate. ...
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1. Introduction
In addition to simple verbs, Persian employs a large number of complex predicates consisting of a preverbal element and a light verb. The preverbal element can be a noun, an adjective, an adverb or a preposition phrase, which combines with a verb to form a single syntactic predicate. Persian complex verbs have attracted some researchers (e.g. Folli, Harley & Karimi 2005, Karimi 1997; Karimi Doostan 1997; Megerdoomian 2001; Mohammad & Karimi 1992; Vahedi-Langroudi 1996; ;). This paper aims to analyze co-occurrence of preverb and the light verb “KARDAN” in Persian compound verbs, based on the theory of Generative Lexicon (Pustejovsky, 1995) and to investigate how these two elements combine in the compound verbs made with this light verb.
2. Theoretical Framework
Generative Lexicon (henceforth, GL) introduces a knowledge representation framework which offers a rich and expressive vocabulary for lexical information. GL is concerned with explaining the creative use of language. In GL, the lexicon is the key repository holding much of the information underlying this phenomenon. More specifically, however, it is the notion of a constantly evolving lexicon that GL attempts to emulate; this is in contrast to currently prevalent views of static lexicon design, where the set of contexts licensing the use of words is determined in advance, and there are no formal mechanisms offered for expanding this set. This theory of linguistic semantics focuses on the distributed nature of compositionality in natural language. Unlike purely verb-based approaches to compositionality, Generative Lexicon attempts to spread the semantic load across all constituents of the utterance .Following standard assumptions in GL, the computational resources available to a lexical item consist of the following four levels:
a. Argument Structure (ARGSTR): specifying the number and nature of the arguments to a predicate.
b. Event Structure (EVENTSTR): defining the event type of the expression and any subeventual structure it may have; with subevents.
c. Quali Structure (QUALIASTR): a structural differentiation of the predicative force for a lexical item.
The qualia structures are defined as the modes of explanation associated with a word or phrase in the language, and are defined as follows (Pustejovsky, 1991):
• Formal : the basic category of which distinguishes the meaning of a word within a larger domain;
• Constitutive: the relation between an object and its constituent parts;
• Telic: the purpose or function of the object, if there is one;
• Agentive: the factors involved in the object’s origins or “coming into being”.
d. Lexical Typing Structure (Lexical Inheritance Structure):
giving an explicit type for a word positioned within a type system for the language.
A set of generative devices connect the four levels, providing for the compositional interpretation of words in context. These devices include: selective binding, type coercion, and co-composition (Pustejovsky, 2007).
3. Methodology
Among the possible factors and characteristics, we will focus particularly on semantic factors. This study will show that the co-occurrence of preverbs and ‘KARDAN’ in Persian Complex Predicates is a function of their semantic information (such as information in qualia structure). In this regard, preverbs are firstly classified into predicative /non predicative. Non predicative preverbs in turn are divided into several subtypes: natural types, functional types and complex types.
Co-occurrence of preverbs and the light verb “KARDAN” is then accounted for by applying generative devices (such as type coercion, and co-composition) on the information encoded in the lexical-semantic representations (such as qualia structure) of preverbs and “KARDAN”. The research is descriptive-analytic. Studied compound verbs and meanings and examples are cited from Anvari (2002).
4. Results and Discussion
This analysis indicates that encoded information in multiple levels of the lexical-semantic representations of preverbs and light verbs plays an important role in restricting their co-occurrence. It is argued that qualia have the necessary information to explain the lexical semantic relation between words and co-occurrence constraint. Exploiting the information encoded in the lexical-semantic representations (in particular qualia structure), which consists of limited but necessary information to explain the lexical semantic relations and co-occurrence constraints, allows us to explain the co-occurrence of two elements of compound verb, based on the concepts of the theory.
5. Conclusion
Studying the co-occurrence of light verbs alongside the preverbs, shows the role of information encoded in the lexical-semantic structures of preverbs and light verbs (including arguments types of predicative preverbs and aspectual characteristics of each light verb) in co-occurrence of light verbs with the preverbs.
