Iranian Language Research Articles

خویشتنداری بنابر آموزه بودا در متنی به زبان ختنی

The book of “Zambasta” is a long poem in ancient a khotanese language, a branch of middle Eastern Iranian language. This book , containing wide set of common concepts and various aspects of Buddhism. Chapter 12 of this book is educational and includes a set of goodness and badness. The stanza which translated from Khotanese language into Persian in this article, includes the first 52 paragraph of this chapter that allocated to the description of Saṃvara(=continence, moral continence or stopping the effects of karmas or human beings previous actions). Saṃvara which considered as one of the most important steps to reach knowledge of continence and is like a guard trying continually to take man away from everything that is wrong and disagreeable, and to help him in order to reach Nirvānā(=salvation). Under the etymology of the word of Saṃvara, philosophical view about Saṃvara, steps of achievement, commitment ceremonies and conditions that lead to the loss of Saṃvara, are investigated.

Word Order Variations in Shabaki

Word order types constitute the most well- established and frequently cited generalization in language typology. Basic or canonical word order tends to fall into two main types: SOV (about 48% of world languages) or SVO (about 41%). SOV is assumed to have been the predominant and unmarked word order in most of the oldest attested Indo-European languages, as well as in Iranian languages. This paper investigates the basic word order in Shabaki, a modern northwest language of the Indo-Iranian family spoken by the Shabaki minority in Iraq. This study also measures the word order variation and provides a typological description of this language. An examination of Shabaki data reveals that it follows SOV, OSV, SVO, VSO, OVS, and VOS word order patterns in mono-transitive sentences. The most frequent (predominant and unmarked) word order in declarative sentences in Shabaki is SOV where the initial position is occupied by a nominative noun phrase, but constituents can appear at any position, creating grammatical sentences with different discursive distributions. In ditransitive sentences, (S) DO V IO is proven to be three fold higher in number than (S) IO V DO. (S) DO IO V and (S) IO DO V were also found in data. Keywords: Agreement, basic word order, case, clitics, Indo-Iranian languages, language typology, Shabaki Introduction Grammatical relations in human languages, such as those between a noun phrase and the verb, are primarily expressed by means of three different morphosyntactic strategies: word order, case marking, and agreement (Croft 1990: 101). All languages, rather than relying on just one of these mechanisms, use some combination of the three. In this paper, it is the intention to explore what elements of these three strategies Shabaki language employs to indicate the relationship that a noun bears to the verb in a clause. It also tries to explore the order of objects in ditransitive sentences.

Bo Bi, Nicholas Sims-Williams. Sogdian Documents from Khotan in the Museum of Renmin University of China

This small volume is the result of a fruitful cooperation over the last years. It presents the edition, with commentary, glossary and photos, of thirteen Sogdian fragments kept in the Museum of Renmin University of China; these are part of a collection of manuscripts which was acquired by the University in 2010 and contains texts in Iranian languages (Sogdian and Khotanese), Sanskrit, Tibetan and Chinese. Coming apparently from the Khotan region, they share the origin of some of the “Turco-S...

Ghazaleh Vafaeian. Progressives in use and contact: A descriptive, areal and typological study with special focus on selected Iranian languages

Cette these, soutenue en 2018, est une etude approfondie de l’emploi du progressif, une categorie grammaticale definie par l’A. comme signalant que « a dynamic event is ongoing at a specific time » (p. 1), dans certaines langues iraniennes ainsi que d’un point de vue typologique. La these contient une introduction generale assez dense, qui presente la terminologie associee au progressif ainsi qu’un apercu typologique de cette categorie telle qu’elle est decrite dans les ouvrages publies a ce ...

The Wakhis of Gojal (Upper Hunza): An Historical Analysis within the Context of Ismailism in Badakhshan

This paper aims to present an historical analysis of when and how the Wakhis of Upper Hunza became Ismaili. Upper Hunza, known locally as Gojal, is a part of Badakhshan located in the Karakoram Mountains in Pakistan. The Wakhis belong to the Eastern Iranian language group like all the other nations of Badakhshan. This is why we have to consider the Wakhis living in Gojal in the scope of the Central Asian cultural circle, just like the Wakhis of Afghanistan, Tajikistan and Eastern Turkestan of China. Part of their identity stems from the Wakhi culture and the other part from the Dawat-i Nâsir tradition which can be defined as the Central Asian interpretation of Ismailism. The peoples of Upper Hunza have been named according to their belief system as Nâsiri, Panjtani, Mawlavi or Agha Khani. However the name they acknowledge and use is Dawat-i Nâsir, stemming from Nâsir-i Khusraw. Dawat-i Nâsir, their local belief system, which is one of the most prominent characteristics of their identity, now gives way to the Nizari Khoja tradition of India. This is the most striking point of conflict among the intellectuals of Gojal today. Another important characteristic of the region for both Central Asian studies and Ismaili studies is the existence of Turkish speaking Ismaili Kyrgyzs in Gojal who have completely converted to Ismailism and adopted Wakhi culture. Unlike the Sunni Kyrgyz who moved to the Ismaili settlements in Tashkurgan (China), Murgab (Tajikistan), and Wakhan (Afghanistan) yet retained their Sunni faith, those who moved to Upper Hunza converted to Ismailism. Their conversion to Ismailism seems to have paved the way for their assimilation into Wakhi culture. The mountainous Tajiks of Badakhshan, and the Wakhi branch of them, have never been central to the main narratives of Central Asian and Iranian political history, and much of it comes down to us only in the form of oral tradition. For this reason, besides few historical sources, this study based largely on fieldwork I carried out in Upper Hunza in 2015.

Gender factor in the expression of politeness in Farsi

ABSTRACTThis paper focuses on the role of gender in the expression of politeness in the Iranian language, Farsi (Persian). Expressions of linguistic politeness are believed to be cultural universals. Farsi is known for the complexities of its politeness system, called ‘ta’aroff’, which reflects social hierarchies. This study employs a questionnaire interview and dialogical text analysis (ta’aroff expressions count) to explore whether the production and perception of ta’aroff differs across genders. The questionnaire contained demographic information and statements related to attitudes to ta’aroff. The participants were also requested to create dialogues based on a presented shopping prompt scenario. Iranian women (30) and men (30) of two age groups (20–29 and 40–59 years old) participated in the study. The results show statistically significant differences in the attitudes to ta’aroff in that men’s attitudes to ta’aroff are generally more positive than women’s. In the shopping prompt dialogues, women produced fewer ta’aroff expressions than men. There were also some differences found in the use of specific ta’aroff expressions across genders. The results suggest that gender should be considered a factor influencing both ta’aroff use in speech production and the attitudes to ta’aroff.

Spilling the Beans on Understanding English Idioms Using Multimodality: An Idiom Acquisition Technique for Iranian Language Learners

Idioms are ubiquitous in English language. Despite their ubiquity, learning idioms is a thorny issue for second language learners. Multiple researchers have scrutinized different aspects of idiom learning by second language learners: important factors in processing idioms in L2 (Cieślicka, 2015); the incorporation of technology in idiom learning (Khoshnevisan, 2018b); idiom assessment (Khoshnevisan, 2018a). A number of studies have been conducted concerning the application of the Idiom Diffusion Model—an L2 idiom processing model—to develop the idiomatic competence of learners, however, the pertinent literature is sparse: Greek, German, and French (Liontas, 1997); Greek (Katsarou, 2013); Korean (Türker, 2016). It turns out that the application of the model to Persian language learners is missing. To address the gap, the author conducted a qualitative study to explore the perceptions of Iranian language learners about using a website to learn idioms. The researcher employed an online questionnaire to delve into the learners’ perceptions. The findings imply that the majority of the participants used video and picture modules to arrive at the figurative meaning of the idiomatic phrases. However, in terms of semi and post-lexical idioms, most learners benefited from translations to decode the meanings. The findings corroborate the theory that translation facilitates learning idioms.

The Atlas of the Languages of Iran (ALI): A Research Overview

There have been a number of important efforts to map out the languages of Iran, but until now no language atlas, or even a comprehensive and detailed country-level language map, has been produced. One of the recent initiatives which aims to fill this gap is the online Atlas of the Languages of Iran (ALI) (http://iranatlas.net). This article delineates objectives of the ALI research programme, atlas architecture, research methodology, and preliminary results that have been generated. Specific topics of interest are the structure and content of the linguistic data questionnaire; the handling of contrasting perspectives about the status of “languages” and “dialects” through a flexible multi-dimensional classification web; and the role of ongoing comparisons between language distribution assessments and hard linguistic data.

Swāt Hydronymy at the Border between Iranian and Indo-Aryan Languages

Swāt valley, located in the Khyber Pukhtunkhwa (KPK) province of the northern part of Pakistan, was known since the antiquity with the names of Uḍḍyāna (‘the garden’) and Suvāstu (‘the place of fine dwellings’). The Yusufuzai Pashtuns, whose penetration in the valley begun towards the 16th century, little by little replaced the probably autochthon Dardic populations who are actually confined in the northern mountainous part of the district, i.e. the Tehsils of Bahrain and Kalam. This article focuses on hydronymy and presents the first results of the toponymic project of the Swāt valley, held with the support of the Italian archaeological mission, working in Swāt since 1956 and continuing its researches under the direction of Luca Olivieri and the auspices of the ISMEO of Rome. As it is known, hydronymy is one of the most conservative branches of the toponymy: in the Swāt context, nearly all stream names are of Indo-Aryan (Dardic) origin, except names derived from the denomination of the Pashtun villages: this confirms all data provided by the archaeological excavations. This article will also provide some specific etymologies, aimed at showing the frontier position of Swāt at the border between Iranian and Indo-Aryan languages and cultures.

Дардские и иранские языки: сравнительно-сопоставительный анализ

Дардские и иранские языки: сравнительно-сопоставительный анализ

On the place of Parachi and Ormuri among the Iranian languages according to the data of annotated Swadesh lists

On the place of Parachi and Ormuri among the Iranian languages according to the data of annotated Swadesh lists

The Effect of Scaffolding on the Vocabulary Improvement of EFL Iranian Language Learner

The Effect of Scaffolding on the Vocabulary Improvement of EFL Iranian Language Learner

Etimologija nekih općeupotrebnih persizama u bosanskom jeziku / Ethymology of some commonly used persisms in the Bosnian language

The author etymologizes Persian language lexemes, presenting commonly used persisms in Bosnian onomastics. In particular, the etymology of the examples of persism presented refers to the vocabulary present in the Bosnian language, which makes it universally applicable. The Bosnian language is extremely rich in words from other languages, especially Oriental languages (Arabic, Turkish and Persian), hence the author devotes his work to lexemes that include adaptations and borrowings from the Persian language. In the first place, it was sought to determine for which persisms incorporated into the Bosnian language it is possible to determine the most thorough etymological sequence, and then to enrich the vocabulary of the Bosnian language with the etymological sequence represented by the persisms recorded in the languages of the Persian language family of Iranian languages.

Efficacy of Electronic Versus Traditional Type of Metalinguistic Feedback in Correct Use of Prepositions: An Experimental Study

Background: In education and learning, teaching to write well is still one of the challenges of Iranian English teachers. Objectives Since the writing skill has different aspects, this study aimed at investigating the impact of metalinguistic feedback and electronic feedback on the correct use of English prepositions in Iranian learners’ writings. Methods: The study utilized a semi-experimental design. The participants of the study were 84 Iranian language learners. These learners were randomly divided into one control and two experimental groups to take a writing pretest. One of the experimental groups received electronic feedback while the other was exposed to metalinguistic feedback. After the treatment period, the participants took a writing posttest. The writing products of the learners at both pretest and posttest were evaluated and scored in terms of the correct use of prepositions. The scores were analyzed through a combination of statistical tests of Kruskal-Wallis and Mann-Whitney. Results: The results of the Mann-Whitney test on the gained scores (posttests-pretest) of the three groups indicated that there was a significant difference between the sets of scores (H = 50.82, P = 0.00). Nevertheless, the result of Mann-Whitney U test showed that there was no significant difference between electronic and metalinguistic feedback (U = 433.500, P = 0.642), which means both types of electronic and metalinguistic feedback were equally effective on the correct use of English prepositions. Conclusions: In conclusion, the study led to a better understanding of the impact of electronic and metalinguistic feedback on the writing skill, which provided a basis for English as a foreign language (EFL) teachers to integrate them in the teaching and learning process.

THE OSSETIC CASE SYSTEM REVISITED

The Ossetic case system has attracted some attention from Iranists, as it is the most elaborate of all declensional patterns found in any modern Iranian language. But this is quite deceptive, some of the endings are clearly not old: the adessive goes back to the postpositional use of *upari, whereas the comitative -imae is attested solely in Iron. Scholars in the past, notably Vsevolod Miller, and present, such as Dieter Weber, Roland Bielmeier, Alain Christol and Fridrik Thordarson attributed most (oblique) Ossetic endings to endings of various Plr. nominal classes.

Voice onset time and beyond: Exploring laryngeal contrast in 19 languages

In this special collection entitled Marking 50 Years of Research on Voice Onset Time and the Voicing Contrast in the World’s Languages, we have compiled eleven studies investigating the voicing contrast in 19 languages. The collection provides extensive data obtained from 270 speakers across those languages, examining VOT and other acoustic, aerodynamic and articulatory measures. The languages studied may be divided into four groups: ‘aspirating’ languages with a two-way contrast (English, three varieties of German); ‘true voicing’ languages with a two-way contrast (Russian, Turkish, Brazilian Portuguese, two Iranian languages Pashto and Wakhi); languages with a three-way contrast (Thai, Vietnamese, Khmer, Yerevan Armenia, three Indo-Aryan languages, Dawoodi, Punjabi and Shina, and Burushaki); and Indo-Aryan languages with a more than three-way contrast (Jangli and Urdu with a four-way contrast, and Sindhi and Siraiki with a five-way contrast). We discuss the cross-linguistic data, focusing on how much VOT alone tells us about the voicing contrast in these languages, and what other phonetic dimensions (such as consonant-induced F0 and voice quality) are needed for a complete understanding of laryngeal contrast in these languages. Implications for various issues emerge: universal phonetic feature systems, effects of language contact on linguistic levelling, and the relation between laryngeal contrast and supralaryngeal articulation. The cross-linguistic VOT data also lead us to discuss how the distribution of VOT as measured acoustically may allow us to infer the underlying articulation and how it might be approached in gestural phonologies. The discussion on these multiple issues sparks new questions to be resolved, and provide indications of where the field may be best directed in exploring laryngeal contrast in voicing in the world’s languages.

Did Mani Travel to Armenia?

This paper will present new evidence to resolve a long-standing problem in the biography of Mani, the founder of Manichaeism, who lived in Sasanian Iran during the third-century A.D. There are a number of important early references to Armenia in Manichaean texts. These include a Sogdian account of how Mār Gabryab brought the religion to Armenia and contains the earliest known literary reference to the name of the capital city of Erevan; and various notices of Mani’s own Letter to Armenia in Arabic, Middle Persian and Sogdian. But the principal focus for this paper is to resolve the question as to whether Mani himself travelled to Armenia in the early/mid 270s A.D. The account of his final travels, before his imprisonment and death under King Bahrām I in Gondēšāpūr, has been the subject of sustained debate since late antiquity. The early Christian polemical tradition represented by the Acts of Archelaus (ca. 330 A.D., extant in Latin, with parallels and elaborated traditions in Greek, Syriac etc.) placed him in the mysterious Castellum Arabionis near the border of the Roman Empire, and in the 19th-century it was common to locate this in Armenia. However, discoveries of primary Manichaean texts in Coptic and Middle Iranian languages in the 20th century turned attention to sites in Mesopotamia. This paper aims to reconcile these accounts and will utilise a newly-edited Coptic source to demonstrate that Mani did, indeed, travel to Sasanian Armenia in the company of a local nobleman named Baat.

Restructuring of the Iranian tense/aspect/mood system

Abstract The purpose of this paper is to outline the fundamental grammaticalization and degrammat(icalizat)ion processes observable in the restructuring of the tense/aspect/mood systems of the West Iranian languages during their historical development. Their core aspectual systems will be presented as consisting of three categories: Imperfective, Perfective and Perfect. Special attention will be paid to the rise of the analytic Perfect in Middle Persian and its further development in Early New Persian and other West Iranian languages. It will be shown that the degrammation of the copula played a significant role in the formation of compound temporal (Perfect, Pluperfect) and modal categories (Evidential, Conjectural) in New Persian, Kurdish, Balochi and Tajik. The Evidential mode of New Persian is based on the analytic Perfect rafte ast ‘he is gone’ and it is found in all the three aspectual categories (Imperfective, Perfective and Perfect) and both voices. It is usually claimed that it developed in the Iranian languages probably under Turkic influence. We intend to address the contentious issue of syntactic borrowing in terms of language contact in another paper.

The Impact of Focused Mini Grammar Lessons on Iranian EFL Learners’ Most Frequent Grammatical Errors in Writing

Corrective feedback (CF) is still a controversial issue among researchers. The present study took a new approach and investigated the effect of CF in the form of focused mini-grammar lessons with self-study materials in a group of 24 Iranian EFL learners at an Iranian language institute. The learners were randomly assigned into experimental and control groups; each class consisting of 12 male intermediate students aged between 14 and 17 years participated in the study for two and a half months All the participants produced 200-250 word writing samples in three pre-tests on pre-determined topics based on which their three most recurring grammatical errors were identified. Next, the learners in the experimental group received nine sessions of the treatment on their faulty structures. Both groups took part in three post-tests, and wrote on the same topics the results of which were assessed by two raters. Descriptive statistics revealed improvement of the experimental group; also inferential analysis of the data indicated significant progress resulting from CF contrary to some opposing suggestions in the literature.

Split noun phrase topicalization in Eshkevarat Gilaki

AbstractSplit noun phrase topicalizationhas been the subject of intense studies across languages in the syntactic literature of the last few decades. One of the key questions raised for these constructions is whether they involve syntactic movement or base-generation. This paper explores this phenomenon in two understudied Iranian languages, Gilaki (Northwestern Iranian, Caspien) and Persian. In particular, we explore splits in two contexts, possessive constructions and numeral constructions. We develop diagnostics for distinguishing the two derivational possibilities, movement or base-generation, for the cases under investigation. We show that while Gilaki uses both derivational possibilities, movement in possessor split and base-generation in numeral split, Persian only allows for the latter with very similar behavior. We argue that possessor split occurs when the whole possessum DP/DemP moves out of its base position in a small clause. Numeral split occurs when the NP is replaced by a null nominal element, which is associated with an overt or pragmatic antecedent. We end the paper with a discussion of why an operation, movement or base-generation, is available for one construction but not the other.