Vali Rezai

• Doctor of Philosophy
• Professor (Associate) at University of Isfahan

The aim of this paper is to investigate the impact of prototypical transitivity components presented by Hopper and Thompson (1980) on object omission construction in Persian. Object omission is a valency-reduction process in which a verb which is transitive in nature, appears without its object but the construction makes sense for the hearer. As th...

This paper studies clause structure in Persian within the framework of Role and Reference Grammar (RRG). This theory deals with the interaction of syntax, semantics and pragmatics in grammatical systems and believes that understanding grammatical structure can only be possible through considering semantic and pragmatic functions of language. This t...

Synonymy is a natural phenomenon in human languages. It may be the consequence of borrowing, semantic changes or geographical and stylistic variations.This paper explores a new source of synonymity in Modern Persian, i.e. word coinage for foreign terms. In recent decades, thousands of Persian equivalents have been coined for loan words. Despite the...

This article investigates the obsolescence of Arabic loanwords in Persian press. For this purpose the Ettelaat newspaper of the years of 1310 and 1311 was selected and some of the Arabic words having been extensively used in Persian at that time was gathered. The major reason of obsolescence of these words is word coinage and the tendency to replac...

naccusative constructions are one place predicates and their single core argument, like a passive predicate, functions as un undergoer rather than actor. This study attempts to explore the characteristics of these constructions as well as their differences with passive predicates in Bakhtyari dialect of Masjed Soleiman. Unaccusative constructions a...

Communication is the main function of the human language as a social institution. It is constantly changed in order to meet the communication needs of the speakers. Due to the specific characteristics of sport media, innovations occur mainly in this type of text. In this study, we tried to investigate the innovations in contemporary Persian sports...

Causative constructions play an important role in the mental and linguistic system of human beings. The methodology that is used in this paper for studying causative constructions in Persian is the combination of the Morphology-based approach and Song’s model (1996, 2001). Emphasizing the causer NP and the causee NP, we draw the semantic map of the...

In addition to suffisticated instructional instruments and resources, the advent of networks such as the internet has caused a revolution in instructional methods and has made it possible to deliver virtual instruction to a wider range of learners across the globe. Based on principles of web-based learning, the present study aimed to explore vitrua...

Adverbs are among those complicated subject's different aspects of which have been investigated throughout history. However, linguists have not reached an agreement on the diverse issues related to adverbs, from its definition to the fact that whether it should be considered as a lexical category in addition to nouns, adjectives and verbs. This res...

This paper investigates intonational characteristics of yes/no questions in contrast to statements in Persian. Based on Tilt model, acoustic variables including duration, pitch amplitude and tilt are compared between these two sentence types. Since studies (Eslami, 2000; Mahjani, 2003; Mahootiyan, 1997; Sadat Tehrani, 2007) have shown the differenc...

Bakhtiyari dialect, a member of the Lori branch of Iranian languages, has many geographical varieties. In this paper we attempt to survey some typological characteristics of the syntax of this dialect such as possession ,word order, definiteness, case marking, and passive constructions. It will be demonstrated that in this dialect the passivization...

This paper presents grammatical aspect in the Bakhtiari dialect. The study is based on the theoretical framework of Comrie (1976). The data are gathered through speaking with the elderly and illiterate monolingual people in Dehno village of Kohrang town in Chaharmal o Bakhtiari. These people are selected because they exposed with formal language le...

A term in one language rarely has an absolute synonymous meaning in the same language; besides, it rarely has an equivalent meaning in an L2. English synonyms of seeing and hearing are particularly grammatically and semantically different. Frame semantics is a good tool for discovering differences between synonymous words in L2 and differences betw...

This paper aims at investigating evidentiality in contemporary Persian from a typological point of view. First the category of evidentiality and its types in the languages of the world is introduced. Gathering and analysing data of spoken and written form of this language as well as classic texts, an attempt was made to see whether evidentiality ex...

This paper explores passivization in Persian, the most important intraclausal process in simple sentences. Based on Role and Reference Grammar formulation for passivization, it is demonstrated that Persian has two distinct types of passive constructions.The first type involves both Privileged Syntactic Argument Modulation and Argument Modulation ca...

this paper gives a typological account for negation in Persian and presents a cognitive explanation. Conceptual space is universal and general, but each language has its own semantic map within this space. Persian semantic map expresses its formal differences with other languages. Bond's multi-dimensional conceptual space of negation is used as a b...

Using a descriptive-analytical method, this research investigates adjectivalization and deadjectivalization in Persian within the framework of the Typological Prototype Theory. The research specifically aims at describing and explaining the two phenomena of adjectivalization and deadjectivalization in Persian, determining the prototypicality degree...

State verbs, with the characteristic of non-dynamicity, denote no action and usually describe internal feelings, possession and place. They lack internal structure, stages and end point. The present study, within the framework of Role and Reference Grammar (RRG), investigates the interaction of state verbs and different grammatical aspects in Persi...

In Role and Reference Grammar (RRG), based on stativity, telicity, and punctuality, verbs are classified into six classes named state, activity, achievement, accomplishment, semelfactive, and active-accomplishment. The predicates in these classes can take one, two, or three argument(s) according to the number of participants involved in an event as...

The present study aimed to investigate diachronic changes in the frequency and function of marked syntactic structures, namely passive constructions, preposing, and cleft sentences that manifest information structural elements in Persian. The study examined these structures across three periods of Persian, i.e., Middle Persian, Dari, and Modern Per...

Aspect refers to different ways of viewing the internal temporal constituency of a situation. It is divided into grammatical and lexical aspects. The focus of "grammatical aspect" is on the event being completed, in progress, or prospective, while in "lexical aspect", such characteristics as dynamicity, duration, and telicity are considered based o...

Researchers have variously investigated Persian in generative, functional, and cognitive frameworks, although, failed to account for some structural changes and the emergence of marked structures such as Left dislocation. The main goal of this article is to investigate left dislocation based on Optimality Theory. The present research is based on th...

Abstract This study presents a minimalist analysis of complement small clauses in Persian by reviewing different approaches to their categorial status. By the emergence of Chomsky’s Government and Binding Theory (GB) (Chomsky, 1981), small clauses have garnered the attention of linguists and, led to diverse opinions about their category. In this re...

Object complement construction as one of the most important and challenging categories of grammar has been noticed by linguists and grammarians from past to present. The present study investigates the Object complement construction based on three basic hypotheses: Small Clause Theory, Predication Theory, and Complex Predicate Theory. Most of the li...

Discourse marker is a functional-pragmatic category, not affecting truth conditions of the sentence. These linguistic elements encode procedural rather than representative or propositional meanings. Discourse markers have been the subject of increasing attention in recent years, and have been investigated in different theoretical frameworks. Among...

This descriptive and corpus-based study examined the role of genres and their discourse features in information structure and its syntactic representations in Persian. It aimed to investigate three genres of Persian spoken language, that is, political, scientific, and everyday conversation, in terms of their information structure as realized throug...

The aim of this research is to investigate object omission based on Role and Reference Grammar.

ازنظر رویکرد‌های نقش‌گرا، بشر زبان را به‌منزلۀ ابزاری برای ایجاد ارتباط به‌کار می‌برد تا بتواند به بازنمایی آنچه در جهان رخ می‌دهد، بپردازد. با توجه به اینکه در زبان شیوه‌های مختلفی برای بازنمایی این وضعیت‌ها و رخدادها، یا به‌عبارتی این وضعیت‌های امر وجود دارد، یکی از بخش‌های اصلی، حداقل در انگارة دستورهای نقش‌گرا، طبقه‌بندی شیوه‌های مختلف بازنمایی...

This study seeks to examine the lexical category of adjective in Persian using the Typological Prototype Theory (TPT) as its theoretical framework. This study aims to (a) evaluate TPT in determining the prototypical features of Persian adjectives, (b) account for the morphological and syntactic differences between prototypical and non-prototypical...

This paper explores the linguistic characteristics of placement and removal events in Ilami Kurdish and investigates the Goal-over-Source predominance hypothesis in such events. By testing the asymmetry hypothesis in placement vs. removal events, we determined that various predicates are used to encode these events in Ilami Kurdish. Data were colle...

The aim of this paper is to investigate adverbs within the framework of Role and Reference Grammar. Testing the hypothesis of layered structure suggested for the adverbs in this theory, presenting ternary classification of nuclear, core and the clausal for them and explaining the reasons behind their order are the main goals of this study. What div...

Extended abstract 1-Introduction Locative alternation is a type of multiple argument realization of three-argument transitive verbs involving variable syntactic expression of the arguments. The present paper is, then, an attempt to find an account for this kind of alternation in Persian placement verb based upon the theory of Role and Reference Gra...

Adjectives are considered predicates of sentences and take features normally associated with verbs when used predicatively. Functional linguists divide predicate-functioning verbs into stative and non-stative predicates. The aim of this paper is to show through syntactic and semantic evidence that stativity/non-stativity is not limited to verbs; ra...

The aim of this article is to establish the present perfect functions syntactically and semantically in Persian. Taking the definition of perfect, typically functioning to express anteriority or perfect aspect, the authors analyzed this construction in Persian in terms of function, meaning, and usage. Using functional-typological approach, the cate...

As far as obfuscation of the truth is taken into account, passivization seems to be one of the most prominent processes by which the agent of an action may become evasive (by being omitted or demoted to non-obligatory prepositional constituent) in certain contexts. Cross-linguistically, these constructions may not necessarily be formed in an identi...

This paper is concerned with the study of locative predicates in Persian within the Role and Reference Grammar (RRG) framework and two different analyses presented by Van Valin and LaPolla (1997) and also Boutin (2004). Providing a semantically based classification of mentioned predicates in Persian is one of the objectives of this study. The other...

This paper attempts to assess motion events in Ilami Kurdish through Talmy’s binary typology (1985. Lexicalization patterns: Semantic structure in lexical forms. In Timothy Shopen (ed.), Language typology and lexical descriptions: Vol. 3. Grammatical categories and the lexicon, 36–149. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; 2000a. Toward a cognitiv...

The present study seeks to investigate the demarcation between noun phrases (NPs) and compound nouns (CNs) in Persian at the syntax-morphology interface. This objective is accomplished through the examination of two most complex nominal patterns, viz. N + A, N + N, with special focus on boundary cases, i.e. the intermediate constructs which possess...

This paper set up to investigate the word “didan” (see) based on frame semantics to explore how the sense of words can be traced back through human’s experiences and background knowledge. In other words, the purpose of this paper is to clarify such delicate meaning distinctions, which are mainly overlooked in dictionaries. To solve this problem, we...

This paper investigates the prosodic structure of simple prepositions and dependent personal pronouns as weak function words in Leilakhi Dialect with the theoretical framework of Prosodic Phonology or Phonology of Domains. Weak function words (fnc) of this dialect are proclitics or enclitics that form Clitic Group (CG) with their host. One such fea...

The present study aims at investigating the nature of object indexed elements in Persian. This is an essential element for deciding about the layered structure of the clause in the framework of the Role and Reference Grammar.Because of the inefficiency of the mere formal approaches, we appeal to the Role and Reference Grammar, a functional-structur...

Today, Linguistic researches on literature play an important role in studying each language. Linguistic analysis of literature has interested critics to give a better knowledge of literary texts and their stylistic features via different linguistic approaches. This paper aims at investigating textual cohesion in “Munajat Namih” by Khajih Abd-Ollah...

Noun incorporation is considered as a word formation process which is not treated similarly in different languages and has various representations. The incorporated noun is unmarked for features of definiteness and specificity; it does not take definite article, demonstratives or case marking. This study aims at finding an explanatory account for t...

The present study investigates the auxiliary selection in the languages which use this way to encode perfect and progressive aspect, future tense and passive. In other words, it investigates how Persian makes use of the universal auxiliary categories, be and have, and then it attempts to find out the similarities and differences between this langua...

Object indexation is a grammatical phenomenon in which a clitic pronoun, co-referential with the free nominal object, appends to the verb. Optionality of indexation in Persian leads us to consider the role of pragmatic and discoursal factors such as definiteness, specificity, and identifiability in its occurence. The present study aimed at investig...

Object indexation is a grammatical phenomenon in which a clitic pronoun, co-referential with the free nominal object, appends to the verb. Optionality of indexation in Persian leads us to consider the role of pragmatic factors in its occurring. The present study aims at investigating the influence of information structure on direct object indexatio...

The present research deals with the investigation of subject-intransitive verb agreement in the Persian language. The corpus of this research has been extracted from articles as well as spoken and written utterances. The data are analyzed based on Minimality and Optimality approaches each of which has been explained under generative framework. The...

Generally speaking, cleft constructions are marked syntactic structures, which represent a simple logical proposition by two clauses. The relation of these constructions to more basic structures is determined in regard with the theoretical framework chosen for the analysis. In the one hand, transformational studies try to determine the underlying s...

The objective of this paper is to investigate the relationship holding between metaphor and cultural models within the context of interlingual translation. More specifically, the paper seeks to ascertain the extent to which metaphors which are dependent on cultural models are translatable. For this purpose, we draw on the concept of ‘experiential e...

This paper tries to deal with ditransitive constructions in Persian based on Malchukov et. al.(2007) which focus mainly on a semantic definition of these constructions. They regard a ditransitive construction as consisting of a predicate that takes three arguments: an agent (A), a recipient-like argument (R), and a theme (T). The event coded in thi...

Prepositional phrases may take different roles in Persian sentences as independent constituents. They can also act as constituents dependent to nominal, adjectival and adverbial phrases. Role and Reference Grammar presents a general classification of prepositional phrases. This classification is applied to prepositional phrases in Persian in this p...

Some syntacticians claim that a non-referential second argument of an activity predicate expresses an intrinsic aspect of the meaning of the verb and does not refer specifically to any participants in the event denoted by the verb. The aim of this paper is to examine activity predicates in Persian to see whether they follow this proposal or not. Pr...

The aim of this article is to study Sanandaji consonant clusters in relation with their conformity to the principle of sonority sequencing. Analyzing the data provided in this paper, we found out that, of the three kinds of consonant clusters existing in all languages, only core clusters—clusters that conform to the sonority sequencing principle (S...

The studies regarding information structure and its distribution in sentences are traced back to works of Prague School linguists such as Mathesius in 1920s. Recently, the issue of information structure has been dealt with by functionalists. In Role and Reference Grammar (RRG), information structure constitutes one of the main components of syntax....

This article provides a syntactic analysis of Topicalization and Focalization processes in Persian within the framework of minimalist syntax. According to Haegeman and Gueron’s Split CP Hypothesis (1999), Topicalization is a recursive process and can apply to more than one constituent in a sentence, while Focalization is unique and therefore appear...