Persian Kinship Terms From sociocultural and cognitive points of view

Abstract

Kinship has been a highly disputed subject in anthropology and linguistics and kin terms have constituted one of the
most interesting areas of research in human and social sciences since the opening years of the twentieth century. So
far, researchers have studied the subject by different approaches and have arrived at different conclusions. One of
these approaches is Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) which is taken by Wierzbicka (2010, 2013) in exploring
kin terms of some Australian languages. The NSM approach is based on evidence that there is a strictly limited set
of basic, universal meanings, known as semantic primes, which can be used to describe complex meanings in all
languages. Besides, it proposes the notion of semantic molecules as complex meanings which are decomposable
into combinations of semantic primes but which function as units in the structure of other, more complex concepts. In
the present study we try to analyse Persian kin terms within the framework of NSM as a non-Anglocentric and cultureneutral
analytical framework to find out whether we can explicate Persian kin terms by use of seven semantic molecules
suggested by Wierzbicka (2010, 2013) - i.e. ‘mother,’ ‘father,’ ‘wife,’ ‘husband,’ ‘men,’ ‘women’ and ‘children’- and if
possible, how it can be accomplished with the techniques of NSM semantics. The initial results of the research propose
that these semantic molecules accompanied by semantic primes can successfully describe diverse kin terms in Persian
from an indigenous perspective intelligible for both Persian and Non-Persian Speakers.

Full text

Three Languages - Three Cultures:
Narratives from the Middle East Conference
22 & 23 NOVEMBER 2018
Centre for Arab &
Islamic Studies
(The Middle East &
Central Asia)
ANU College of
Arts & Social Sciences

Three Languages - Three Cultures: Narratives from the Middle East Conference Program 1
Three Languages - Three Cultures:
Narratives from the Middle East Conference
The Centre for Arab & Islamic Studies
(The Middle East & Central Asia)
The Australian National University
Thursday 22 & Friday 23 November 2018
The Centre for Arab and Islamic Studies (CAIS) at the Australian National University (ANU) is proud to host the
2018 Conference, ‘Three Languages - Three Cultures: Narratives from the Middle East’. The conference has
been convened by the CAIS language academic staff: Dr Huda Al-Tamimi, Dr Negar Davari Ardakani, Leila
Kouatly, France Meyer, Dr Zahra Taheri and Dr M. Murat Yurtbilir. Administrative assistance by CAIS research
scholar, Jon Norling.
The conference was sponsored and organised by the CAIS with nancial support from ANU College of Arts &
Social Sciences.
This interdisciplinary conference welcomes academics of all related subject areas and is open to all scholars,
students, professionals and members of the public with an interest in the three Middle Eastern languages:
Arabic, Persian and Turkish as well as their respective cultures.
Language is a vessel of communication through which humans have dened their worlds and shaped their
cultural identities. In fact, every language via the extension of its discourse is engaged in the evolutionary
process of the modern world. This conference seeks to provide an insight into the shifting identities of the
Middle East, through the lenses of these three widely spoken languages and inuential cultures.
The conference will delve into the complexity and the diversity of the region and will investigate both the
synchronic and diachronic characteristics of the three languages selected. This will reveal new insights
into the various aspects of Art, Culture, Gender, Identity, Language, Literature, Media and Communication,
Comparative Studies as well as Language Teaching and Planning.
This conference, the rst in Australia to simultaneously cover these three languages, will ignite your
imagination and enrich your understanding of the region. It will include renowned keynote speakers who will
examine the rich languages and cultural content of the Middle East: the poetry, calligraphy, art and literature.

Day 1 – Thursday, 22 November
8:30 – 8:55 Registration
9:00 – 9:15 Opening Address & Welcome - CAIS Director Prof. Amin Saikal
9.15 – 10:15 Keynote speech
Dr Stefano Carboni - Venice and its Artistic Relationship with the Islamic World: A tale of many
languages and cultures
10:15 – 10:30 Morning tea
10.30 – 11:15 Persian keynote speech
Dr Ali Mozaffari - Cultural heritage in Iran: the dialectics of continuity and sudden change
11:15 – 12:15 Persian Panel
Dr Michael King - The Hidden Wisdom of Ibn-e-Sina
Dr Bahar Davary - Sohrab Sepehri: A Muslim-Zen eco-critic
Chair: Dr Zahra Taheri
12:15 – 1:00 pm Lunch
1:00 – 1:45 Arabic keynote speech
Associate Professor Hakeem Kasem - Global Language Engagement Through Virtual Worlds:
Enriching Arabic learners’ prociency and cultural understanding
1:45 – 2:25 Arabic Panel
Luluh Alfurayh and Melanie Burns - Redening ‘me’: Identity change among female Saudi study
abroad students in Australia
Chair: Dr Huda Al-Tamimi
2:30 – 3:15 Turkish keynote speech
Dr Banu Senay - Musical Islam: Explorations in Su music
THREE LANGUAGES - THREE CULTURES:
NARRATIVES FROM THE MIDDLE EAST PROGRAM

Three Languages - Three Cultures: Narratives from the Middle East Conference Program 33
Parsa Bamshadi, Shadi Ansarian, Fatemeh Bahrami,
Negar Davari Ardakani (presenting)
Persian Kinship Terms: From sociocultural and cognitive points of view
Abstract
Kinship has been a highly disputed subject in anthropology and linguistics and kin terms have constituted one of the
most interesting areas of research in human and social sciences since the opening years of the twentieth century. So
far, researchers have studied the subject by different approaches and have arrived at different conclusions. One of
these approaches is Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) which is taken by Wierzbicka (2010, 2013) in exploring
kin terms of some Australian languages. The NSM approach is based on evidence that there is a strictly limited set
of basic, universal meanings, known as semantic primes, which can be used to describe complex meanings in all
languages. Besides, it proposes the notion of semantic molecules as complex meanings which are decomposable
into combinations of semantic primes but which function as units in the structure of other, more complex concepts. In
the present study we try to analyse Persian kin terms within the framework of NSM as a non-Anglocentric and culture-
neutral analytical framework to nd out whether we can explicate Persian kin terms by use of seven semantic molecules
suggested by Wierzbicka (2010, 2013) - i.e. ‘mother,’ ‘father,’ ‘wife,’ ‘husband,’ ‘men,’ ‘women’ and ‘children’- and if
possible, how it can be accomplished with the techniques of NSM semantics. The initial results of the research propose
that these semantic molecules accompanied by semantic primes can successfully describe diverse kin terms in Persian
from an indigenous perspective intelligible for both Persian and Non-Persian Speakers.
Biographies
Parsa Bamshadi is a PhD candidate at the Shahid Beheshti University (SBU). He holds a Masters in General Linguistics
from Razi University. His main research interests are Cognitive Construction Morphology (CCM), Cognitive Construction
Grammar (CCG), Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) and Teaching Persian to Speakers of Other Languages
(TPSOL).
Shadi Ansarian is a PhD student at the Shahid Beheshti University (SBU). She holds a Masters in General Linguistics
from Razi University. Her main research interests are Cognitive Semantics, Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) and
Teaching Persian to Speakers of Other Languages (TPSOL).
Fatemeh Bahrami is an Assistant Professor of Linguistics at Shahid Beheshti University (SBU). She received her PhD in
linguistics from the University of Isfahan in 2014. Her doctoral research was a typological-syntactic explanation of object-
indexation in modern Persian. Her academic focus is mainly on typological and morpho-syntactic aspects of Persian.
Her articles ‘Silbenstruktur des Deutschen und des Persischen’ and ‘Information Structure and Direct Object Indexation
in Persian’ have respectively been published in ‘Zeitschrift für germanistische Linguistik’ (2012) and ‘Theory and Practice
in Language Studies’ (2014). She is the author of a book titled ‘An Introduction to Typology’ published by Shahid
Beheshti University Press/Tehran and has contributed in writing 20 other articles. She has also given some lectures on
Persian linguistics in national conferences.
Negar Davari Ardakani is an Associate Professor in Shahid Beheshti University (SBU) and an honorary Persian Lecturer
at CAIS/ANU. She received her PhD in linguistics from the University of Tehran in 2007. Her doctoral research was a
survey of overt and covert Persian language policy in Iran.