English Loanwords in Persian: Vowel Adaptation

The aim of this research is to analyze English loanwords adaptation in Persian language. It especially, focuses on different phonological and phonotactic systems of the two languages and the English vowel adaptation in Persian vocalic system. This process would lead into (a); the change of English lax vowels into Persian tense ones; (b) the Persian constraint of hiatus existing in English; (c) the change of English off-glide diphthongs /aI/ or /eI/ into a vowel and a glide sequences in Persian; (d) the change of English diphthongs /AU/, /@U/ into Persian simple vowels [A] or [o] respectively; (e) the change of English syllabic consonants [n=, m=, l====] into the Persian non-syllabic ones through vowel insertion. Concerning the above mentioned points, a number of English loanwords have been selected through Persian dictionaries. The used approach in the article is Optimality Theory (OT). Keywords: Loanword, adaptation, phonological constraint, English, Persian, vowel

Modality Metaphors in TOEFL Language Education with emphasis on Listening Skill: A Functional Linguistic Approach

The present research describes and analyzes the Grammatical Metaphors of modality in the listening module of the TOEFL official books. The present descriptive study used a qualitative content analysis approach, and data were collected via documentary method. In this regard, three official TOEFL iBT books, printed and endorsed by ETS, including a total of fourteen tests were selected: The official guide to the TOEFL test (2017), and Official TOEFL iBT (Vol.1, and Vol.2). In the listening module of each test, there are six texts in the form of conversation and lecture. First, each clause of the texts was separately examined. Then, modality metaphors were compared and analyzed in terms of type and frequency. In total, 31 conversation texts and 53 lecture texts were analyzed. Finally, a total number of 264 modality grammatical metaphors were identified. The results indicated that: 1- Modality metaphors entail a higher frequency in lecture texts than the texts of conversations, 2- The frequency of explicit subjective metaphors has a higher frequency than explicit objective metaphors. Therefore, all types of modality grammatical metaphor were found in the TOEFL texts. Considering this concept and teaching it to language learners can help them have a better comprehension and production of scientific texts.

The Role of Gender and Personality Traits in Using Lexical Cohesion Devices in Oral Interactions

In this paper, we studied lexical cohesion devices to define the role of gender and personality traits on using them in the speeches of the second grade students in elementary school. We have used survey method in questionnaire part and descriptive analysis in analyzing the obtained data. The number of students in our statical sample was 100, which was divided into 4 groups (each group was 25 students) according to gender and personality variables. The sample was chosen by cluster random sampling method. The students were divided into introverted and extroverted groups by the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire (EPQ). In order to collect data, the researches took part in classrooms during the school year, and recorded the students’ voices.  Then their voices were transcribed to extract the used lexical cohesion. In data analysis, we used Wilcoxon math-pairs and Man Whitney U test according to the type of samples. The main purpose of this paper was to come to this conclusion that a general and bipolar judgment about the role of gender and personality traits in the studies of speech, especially in the study of using cohesion devices in discourses, is not true. So, this study, hesitated the general outcomes of some researches such as Hall who believed introverted students have more progress than extroverted in school, and Premuzic& Furham who believed extroverted students are more successful than introverted in class activities. Keywords: gender, introversion, extroversion, cohesion devices, interactio

Distribution of Nasals in Consonant Clusters; and the Distributional-phonological Characteristics of Loanwords in Persian

In the first part of the article, we looked at the distribution of nasals in Persian (: m & n) to determine how they are distributed in consonant clusters. The results suggest that there is a strong tendency among nasals to be complementarily distributed in the consonant clusters of etymologically Persian words. In the second part of the article, we asked, what are the distributional-phonological characteristics of loanwords in Persian? The results suggest that the distribution of phonological features of loanwords tends to be more dispersed and more balanced than the corresponding features in etymologically Persian words. However, if in the process of borrowing new words, a specific morphological structure of the donor language has been extensively borrowed by the recipient language, such distinctions have been weakening. Furthermore, we suggested that multiple donor languages and the randomness of the borrowing process are two reasons why phonological features of loanwords are more dispersed and more balanced. We also explained why the nC cluster is the most frequent nasal cluster in Persian. We suggested that the reason lies in the fact that n has an oral stop stricture, a property that has been ignored in the description of nasals, which makes it a proper candidate to co-occur with 16 obstruent consonants of Persian. Our data came from a lemmatized corpus-driven list of words, which contains 55000 words

Finding Natural Classes of Consonants and Vowels in Qur"an Rhyme

The present study is aimed to find the natural classes in final rhyme of some verses in the Holy Qur"an. Many verses in the Qur"an have the final rhymes ending in the same consonants and vowels; some others don"t have similar consonants or vowels in the final rhyme; however, they have audible beauty. The reason is that there are some phonological relations between final consonants and vowels of one verse to another. This relation can be construed as natural classes of sounds. The text corpus of the present study is comprised of all of the verses of the Holy Qur"an. Some of the key findings of the study are as follows: (1) Although the final consonants and vowels of some sequential verses were different, they can be classified as natural classes; (2) In some chapters, some verses ended in /m/ and some others ended in /n/. These two sounds are classified as natural class of nasals; (3) Natural class of sonorants comprises the most frequent consonants in Qur"an