A corpus-based description of cleft constructions in Persian

Palancar, Enrique & Martine Vanhove (eds.)International audienceThis paper presents a corpus-based description of cleft constructions in Persian showing that they display more diversity and complexity than currently described in the literature. Previous studies have only focused on constructions that echo one of the three main classes of clefts (IT-clefts, pseudoclefts and reversed pseudoclefts), and generally use Persian data in parallel to their English counterparts in order to contribute to the ongoing theoretical debates on the analysis of clefts. In order to achieve a more accurate picture of Persian clefts, we annotated and studied cleft and cleft-like sentences in a sample of about 550 relative clauses extracted from a journalistic corpus. Our study revealed new categories of cleft constructions that have not been reported previously; in particular, the lexically headed pseudoclefts whose usage is straightforwardly linked to the abundance of noun-verb light verb constructions in Persian. Moreover, we take issue with some claims made in prior work on the nature of the demonstrative in in Persian IT-clefts based on empirical arguments

A comparison of the Giardia lamblia trophozoite and cyst transcriptome using microarrays

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Compared with many protists, <it>Giardia lamblia </it>has a simple life cycle alternating between cyst and trophozoite. Most research on the molecular biology of <it>Giardia </it>parasites has focused on trophozoites and the processes of excystation and encystation, whereas cysts have attracted less interest. The striking morphological differences between the dormant cyst and the rapidly dividing and motile trophozoite implies profound changes in the metabolism as the parasite encysts in the host's intestine and excysts upon ingestion by a new host.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>To investigate the magnitude of the transcriptional changes occurring during the <it>G. lamblia </it>life cycle we compared the transcriptome of <it>G. lamblia </it>trophozoites and cysts using single-color oligonucleotide microarrays. Cysts were found to possess a much smaller transcriptome, both in terms of mRNA diversity and abundance. Genes encoding proteins related to ribosomal functions are highly over-represented. The comparison of the transcriptome of cysts generated in culture or extracted from feces revealed little overlap, raising the possibility of significant biological differences between the two types of cysts.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>The comparison of the <it>G. lamblia </it>cyst and trophozoite transcriptome showed that transcripts of most genes are present at a lower level in cysts. This global view of the cyst and trophozoite transcriptome complements studies focused on the expression of selected genes during trophozoite multiplication, encystation and excystation.</p

Introducing PersPred, a syntactic and semantic database for Persian Complex Predicates

International audienceThis paper introduces PersPred, the first manually elaborated syntactic and semantic database for Persian Complex Predicates (CPs). Beside their theoretical interest, Persian CPs constitute an important challenge in Persian lexicography and for NLP. The first delivery, PersPred 1, contains 700 CPs, for which 22 fields of lexical, syntactic and semantic information are encoded. The semantic classification PersPred provides allows to account for the productivity of these combinations in a way which does justice to their compositionality without overlooking their idiomaticity

A STUDY OF HYDATID CYST CASES IN IRAN, A SYSTEMATIC REVIEW

Hydatid cyst is an infectious disease common between humans and animals which is spread worldwide and has been known to humans since old times. Different accounts have been presented on the individual characteristics of people suffering from hydatid cyst, clinical course, different treatment and diagnosis methods, and its recurrence. The hydatid cyst infection exits in various parts of the world, and Iran is on the endemic belt of the disease, in a way that different rates have been reported in different studies. Depending on climate conditions, social customs, nutritional status, and the amount of contact with canidae animals, incidence rates of up to 10 have been reported in human populations for these diseases. The present research is a systematic review study. In order to find the studies conducted in Iran, the articles in national and international journals and dissertations available on Magiran, Iranmedex, SID, Google-scholar, and PubMed databases were used, and more than 100 articles were found, among which 14 articles related to the topic that met the criteria for entering the study were investigated. The data collected were analyzed by SPSS version 18 through using descriptive-analytical statistics and chi-squared statistical test (X-2 test). The results of the study showed that infection rate in the liver of cows to hydatid cyst is 62, while lung infection in native and hybrid breeds in the city of Baneh is 7.75. In rural area of Tehran, 437 person, 276 women and 161 men, in the age range of 4-76 years of age were studied, and one person was positive and seven persons were suspected to the disease. The results of the present study showed that, although the infection rate of hydatid cyst in urban and developed parts of Iran is at an acceptable and satisfactory level, the statistics in lesser-developed areas is endemic and alarming and deserves paying more attention and developing organized plans to control the disease

La morphologie du pluriel nominal du persan d’après la théorie Whole Word Morphology

Ce mémoire présente une étude de la morphologie de ce qui est généralement appelé le pluriel nominal du persan (parler de Téhéran) dans le cadre d’une théorie de la morphologie basée sur le mot : Whole Word Morphology, développée par Ford et Singh (1991). Ce modèle lexicaliste adopte une position plus forte que les modèles proposés par Aronoff (1976) et Anderson (1992) en n’admettant aucune opération morphologique sur des unités plus petites que le mot. Selon cette théorie, une description morphologique consiste en l’énumération des Stratégies de Formation de Mots (SFM), licencées chacunes par au moins deux paires de mots ayant la même covariation formelle et sémantique. Tous les SFM suit le même schéma. Nous avons répertorié 49 SFM regroupant les pluriels et les collectifs. Nous constatons qu’il est difficile de saisir le pluriel nominal du persan en tant que catégorie syntaxique et que les différentes « marques du pluriel » présentées dans la littérature ne constituent pas un ensemble homogène : elles partagent toutes un sens de pluralité qui cependant varie d’une interprétation référentielle à une interprétation collective non-référentielle. Cette étude vise la déscription de la compétence morphologique, ce qui ne dépend d’aucune considération extralinguistique. Nous argumentons notamment contre la dichotomie arabe/persan généralement admise dans la littérature. Nous avons également fourni des explications quant à la production des pluriels doubles et avons discuté de la variation supposée du fait d’un choix multiple de « marques du pluriel ».This thesis presents a word-based study of what is generally called the nominal plural morphology of Persian (Tehrani dialect) within the framework of the Whole Word Morphology developed by Ford & Singh (1991). This lexicaliste model takes up a stronger position than that proposed by Aronoff (1976) and Anderson (1992), by not allowing any morphological operation on units smaller than the word. According to this theory a morphological description consist of the listing of the Word Formation Strategies (WFS), each licensed by at least two pairs of words having the same formal and semantic covariation. All WFS’s follow the same schema. We have listed 49 WFS’s of plurals and collectives. We note that it is difficult to understand the import of the plural nominal as a syntactic category in Persian and that different “marks of plural” presented in the literature do not make a homogeneous unity: they all share a plurality meaning but it varies from referential interpretation to collective and non-referential interpretation. This study’s aim is to describe the morphological competence, which does not depend on any extra-linguistic criteria. In particular, we argue against the generally admitted Arabic/Persian dichotomy. We also provide explanation with regards to the utterance of double plurals and to the variation assumed since more than one choice of “plural marks” are available