This article investigates conceptual metaphors for Covid-19 in two languages, American English and Persian, using two approaches, namely Lakoff & Johnson’s conceptual metaphor theory and Kövecses’s...

Language is a live organism and as every other living being develops and is enriched with new words and terms, which enter the life of society together with the new tool, i.e. they enter in and mix with the order of Albanian words. Such a thing is inevitable and in some cases even useful, but every word that is lined up in the order of Albanian words must be well filtered. “The introduction of new words and exclusion of old (...) ones is a natural process, and it happens in any language. This is what happened with the Greek borrowings in Latin, with the Arabic borrowings in Greek, with the Latin borrowings in many European languages, with the Persian borrowings in Turkish, with the Turkish borrowings in Albanian, etc.” - Prof. Hajri Shehu emphasizes in a scientific interview. In recent decades, with the expansion of the Internet, many foreign words began to enter and be used in the Albanian language. English took up more space than expected; in addition to penetrating through various tool notions, it also replaced centuries-old native words of Albanian. The paper has been divided into three parts and in each part an issue has been dealt with: the first part talks about the use of foreign words and the existing words in Albanian; the second part deals with the use of emoticons used instead of words and the third part deals with writing errors in the Albanian language. These are some of the issues that have created a great concern for the Albanian language in this century and they certainly need to be addressed seriously to prevent the dangers that may threaten it. (shrink)

A large number of investigations have highlighted the importance of incorporating literary texts into English language teaching programs. Nevertheless, there are scarce studies on how short stories from L1 and L2 literature play a role in reconstructing learner identity in tertiary contexts. The present research study examines the identities of four non-native undergraduate students concerning aspirations for language investment or consumption. Data collection instruments were semi-structured interviews, open-ended questionnaires, and diary writings. The materials taught in the course (...) consisted of three translated Persian and four target fictions related to loyalty and justice. The researchers used qualitative content analysis to explore the language learners’ self-images of initial, story-based, and prospective learning stages. Nearly all the participants regarded language learning as language consumption for pleasure in different stages except for the future aspiration stage; they did not aspire for personal economic benefits. The findings may enlighten curriculum designers in EFL contexts to incorporate literary texts from the native and target cultures into language education materials to provide opportunities for learners to experience diverse identities and meet individual preferences. (shrink)

Vague language refers to expressions with unspecified meaning (for instance, 'I kind of want that job'), and is an important but often overlooked part of linguistic communication. This book is a comparative study of vague language based on naturally occurring data of a rare combination: L1 (American) and L2 (Chinese and Persian) speakers in academic settings. The findings indicate that L2 learners have diverse and culturally specific needs for vague language, and generally use vague words in (...) a more concentrated fashion compared with L1s. The book explores the interconnection and continuum between the linguistic realizations of a vague term and the functions it serves, and how 'elasticity' underpins the frequency and functions of vague language. The implication is that vague language may be integrated into the curriculum of English language teaching as part of L2 speakers' communicative competence. This book will be of great interest to researchers in the fields of intercultural education and applied linguistics. (shrink)

Language is a cognitive function that is asymmetrically distributed across both hemispheres, with left dominance for most linguistic operations. One key question of interest in cognitive neuroscience studies is related to the contribution of both hemispheres in bilingualism. Previous work shows a difference of both hemispheres for auditory processing of emotional and non-emotional words in bilinguals and monolinguals. In this study, we examined the differences between both hemispheres in the processing of emotional and non-emotional words of mother tongue (...) class='Hi'>language and foreign language. Sixty university students with Persian mother tongue and English as their second language were included. Differences between hemispheres were compared using the dichotic listening test. We tested the effect of hemisphere, language and emotion and their interaction. The right ear showed an advantage for the processing of all words in the first language, and positive words in the second language. Overall, our findings support previous studies reporting left-hemispheric dominance in late bilinguals for processing auditory stimuli. (shrink)

This article is about a well-known anonymous folk story in the Malay-Indonesian world, called Hikayat Nabi Bercukur, found in various different languages across the region. The only scholarly conjecture about its origin is based on the copy of a Malay manuscript held in Leiden which has been deliberately blackened and struck through by a reader who stated in the margin that the story is written by a Rāfiḍī and should not be believed. Although earlier scholars mentioned the title or the (...) synopsis of this story in their works and bibliographical catalogues, the question “what is the origin of this story?” remained unanswered. In order to follow up on previous studies and to find an answer, this essay examines numerous original manuscripts and texts in various languages and provides a comparison between the Malay versions and their prototype. Also, to the best of my knowledge, the first edition and English translation of the prototype are presented. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Chinese Gleams of Sufī Light: Wang Tai-yü's Great Learning of the Pure and Real and Liu Chih's Displaying the Concealment of the Real Realm, with a New Translation of Jāmī's Lawā'iḥ from the Persian by William C. ChittickE. N. AndersonChinese Gleams of Sufī Light: Wang Tai-yü's Great Learning of the Pure and Real and Liu Chih's Displaying the Concealment of the Real Realm, with a New Translation (...) of Jāmī's Lawā'iḥ from the Persian by William C. Chittick. By Sachiko Murata, with a foreword by Tu Weiming. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2000. Pp. xiv + 264.Contacts between China and the Near East are at least as old as civilization but have been relatively little studied. This has led to a lack of attention to Chinese Islam. Yet, Islam has been a profoundly influential force in China for centuries. In Chinese Gleams of Sufī Light, Sachiko Murata has stepped forward to bring a wider awareness to the interactions between Chinese Islam and native Chinese philosophic traditions. (Murata is also the author of The Tao of Islam [1992] and, with Islamicist William Chittick, The Vision of Islam [1994]). [End Page 257]The present book adds greatly to our understanding. It includes a translation of The Great Learning of the Pure and Real, by Wang Tai-yü (ca. 1590-ca. 1658) and facing-page versions of William Chittick's English translation of the fifteenth-century Gleams (Lawā'iḥ) by 'Abd al-Rahman Jāmī and Murata's English translation of Liu Chih's (ca. 1662-ca. 1730) Chinese version of the same work. (Here, incidentally, I follow the book in using the Wade-Giles system.) One can see, comparing the translations, howLiu recast Jāmī's work in Chinese philosophic language, paraphrased some difficult passages, summarized others, and added his own commentaries.Interestingly, Liu eliminated Jāmī's Persian poetry. Murata thinks this is because Liu wanted to focus on the hard ideas; I suspect that it was because Liu realized that Persian prosody and imagery were too far from Chinese poetry to please his audience.Both Wang and Liu belonged to what must have been a rather loose but some-how connected circle of Chinese Islamic scholars. Both, also, almost necessarily used language fairly widespread in Chinese philosophy. Terms such as "emptiness" and "transformation" had many Chinese resonances, some most un-Islamic (Neo Confucian and Buddhist, for instance).Neither Chittick nor Murata give any glosses for key philosophical terms in either source language. Their philosophical and religious provenance, Chinese or Muslim, is correspondingly unclear.What is clear is that Neo-Confucianism had a strong influence on these scholars. Haqiqa "reality" is often translated as li "principle." Pen-jan "root nature" is used for the Arabic compound "essence and attributes." These examples are discussed in the introduction (p. 19). "Annihilation" becomes "conquering" (pp. 148-149). This is strange, because "Annihilation" (fana') is a technical term in Sufism for the disappearance of the self in God; it is an Arabic term, and literally means something like. "passing away." It signifies the forgetting or loss of self, such that only contemplation of the Divine remains. It is as close to the Divine as humans can get since, in Islam, humans cannot be absorbed into Allah (as, in Buddhism, they can be absorbed into Nirvāṇa or the Buddha-nature). "Conquering" seems a rather strange way to express this in Chinese. Perhaps Chinese Muslim readers of the time had developed this specialized sense for it.There are, of course, debatable translations here to contend with (both from Persian and Arabic to Chinese and from Persian and Chinese into English), but it appears that real incommensurability is involved. It was very difficult to use the language of Chinese philosophy in the seventeenth century, influenced as it was by centuries of Neo-Confucian thought, to talk about a radically different religion characterized by an infinitely powerful and wise God, aware of all futures, close to the believer and yet cut off.The inevitable result is to wedge the Arabic and Persian philosophy, so heavily informed by Neoplatonic essentialism and other... (shrink)

The primary purpose of this study was to examine the association of foreign language use and religiosity to moral decision-making in the context of a realistic set of scenarios about the COVID-19 pandemic. We used the CNI model in which four variants of a single dilemma manipulated norms and consequences, which are the defining characteristics of deontology and utilitarianism, respectively. A secondary purpose of the study was to investigate the role of in-group versus out-group membership in shaping moral judgment. (...) 461 participants responded to COVID-19 scenarios either in their native language (Persian) or foreign language (English). Contrary to findings of prior research on moral judgment, the results of the current study indicated that those using their native language showed more sensitivity to consequences compared to those using a foreign language and that less religious individuals were more likely to endorse norms compared to more religious participants. These unexpected findings may be attributed either to the use of more realistic scenarios or to some problems associated with the use of the CNI model. Further, participants’ responses did not significantly differ as a result of group membership, but in line with prior research, exploratory analyses revealed that men showed greater sensitivity to consequences. (shrink)

The structure of the so-called passive in Persian is examined and it is suggested that there is no passive construction in Modern Persian. The arguments lead to the structure of the inchoative with a higher sentence and an abstract underlying structure. This structure is compared with that of the pseudocompounds in Persian and the passive in English.

Just east of the Pamir mountains, and to the north of the great plateau of Tibet, lies the little-explored country of Chinese or Eastern Turkestan. In that country, towards the end of the last century, two hitherto unknown languages were discovered by European explorers and translated by European scholars. Several nations took part in the investigation, and the material discovered was amicably distributed among English, French, German, and Russian philologists. The material to which I refer, the precious sources from (...) which our knowledge of these languages is obtained, consists partly of engraved wooden tablets, but chiefly of documents written on a kind of paper which has been miraculously preserved in the extreme dryness of the sand for some 1,300 years—just like the eggs of the dinosaur recently discovered not so very far from this region, and which, we are told, have been there for ten million years. No such antiquity can be claimed for our documents, which are, in fact, distressingly late. Historical references contained in them seem to show that both languages existed at least as late as the seventh century A.D., when they disappeared. The most striking fact about these languages is that, though very different the one from the other, they both clearly belong to that great Indo-European family to which Greek, Latin, English, Sanskrit, Persian, and so many of the languages of Europe belong. (shrink)

This volume addresses the intriguing issue of indirect reports from an interdisciplinary perspective. The contributors include philosophers, theoretical linguists, socio-pragmaticians, and cognitive scientists. The book is divided into four sections following the provenance of the authors. Combining the voices from leading and emerging authors in the field, it offers a detailed picture of indirect reports in the world’s languages and their significance for theoretical linguistics. Building on the previous book on indirect reports in this series, this volume adds an empirical (...) and cross-linguistic approach that covers an impressive range of languages, such as Cantonese, Japanese, Hebrew, Persian, Dutch, Spanish, Catalan, Armenian, Italian, English, Hungarian, German, Rumanian, and Basque. (shrink)

This volume addresses the intriguing issue of indirect reports from an interdisciplinary perspective. The contributors include philosophers, theoretical linguists, socio-pragmaticians, and cognitive scientists. The book is divided into four sections following the provenance of the authors. Combining the voices from leading and emerging authors in the field, it offers a detailed picture of indirect reports in the world’s languages and their significance for theoretical linguistics. Building on the previous book on indirect reports in this series, this volume adds an empirical (...) and cross-linguistic approach that covers an impressive range of languages, such as Cantonese, Japanese, Hebrew, Persian, Dutch, Spanish, Catalan, Armenian, Italian, English, Hungarian, German, Rumanian, and Basque. (shrink)

Islamic Thought and the Art of Translation honors two of the most beloved and productive scholars in the field of Islamic Studies, Professors William Chittick and Sachiko Murata. For the past five decades, and in over 40 books (monographs, editions, translations, edited volumes) and more than 300 articles, Professors Chittick and Murata have presented us with philologically astute and analytically sound expositions of the pre-modern Islamic intellectual tradition, particularly in the areas of Sufism and philosophy. They have done so primarily (...) by zeroing in on the technical vocabularies of these disciplines (in Arabic, Persian, and Chinese), demonstrating just how important the functions of philology and cross-cultural translation are when studying pre-modern cultures and civilizations. (shrink)

Researchers should strictly consider the participants’ rights. They are required to document such protections as an ethical approval of the study proposal, the obtaining “informed consent”, the authors’ “conflict of interests”, and the source of “financial support” in the published articles. The purpose of this study was to assess the frequency of reporting ethical issues in human subject articles published in Iranian medical journals during 2009–2013. In this cross-sectional study, we randomly reviewed 1460 human subject articles published in Iranian medical (...) journals during 2009–2013 in two Persian and English language groups. Data collection was carried out by assessing articles, focusing on the documentation “ethics committee approval”, patients’ “informed consent”, “financial support”, “confidentiality”, and “conflict of interest”. Of 1460 evaluated articles, 443 reported “ethics committee approval”, 686 reported “informed consent”, 594 reported “financial support”, and 341 reported “conflict of interest”. 13% of the articles referred to patients’ confidentiality in their text. There was a significant association between these ethical documentations and the year of publication. Articles published in English language journals reported “ethics committee approval”, “financial support”, and “conflict of interest” significantly more than Persian language journals, but the frequency of “informed consent” was similar. Ethical documentation rate in Iranian medical journals is not up to the expected standards of reputable journals which might be related to a lack of awareness and the education of the authors and the journal’s editors. Precise reporting of ethical considerations in medical articles by authors are recommended. It is suggested journals and policymakers pay more attention to reporting this issue while providing standard guidelines in this regard. (shrink)

This study was an attempt to investigate the nature of metaphor by doing a cross-cultural comparison of metaphor in 2 typologically different languages-English and Persian. For this purpose, animal metaphors were taken for comparison. The "GREAT CHAIN OF BEING" metaphor (Lakoff & Turner, 1989), along with the principle of metaphorical highlighting (Kovecses, 2002), were used as a framework in comparing different aspects of animal metaphors as interpreted by native speakers of the 2 languages. The results showed that although (...) animal metaphors in English and Persian are similar to a certain extent, many aspects of them are culture-specific. The similarities and differences among 44 animal metaphors in these 2 languages are shown and some possible explanations are put forward. (shrink)

In What We Say, Who We Are, Parker English explores the commonality between Leopold Senghor's concept of "negritude" and Zora Neale Hurston's view of "Negro expression." For English, these two concepts emphasize that a person's view of herself is above all dictated by the way in which she talks about herself. Focusing on "performism," English discusses the presentational/representational and externalistic/internalistic facets of this concept and how they relate to the ideas of Senghor and Hurston.

This study is designed to delve into the issue of culture from the lens of pragmatics as far as the translation of Persian expressions is concerned. To this end, the researchers explored two problematic areas in translation: the first one is a universally challenging element of language, i.e. metaphor, while the other one is an Iranian culture-specific element of language, i.e. Taarof. To uncover the reason behind such difficulty and various techniques to handle such culturally dependent concepts (...) in the act of translation, the researchers sampled a few English subtitles of Iranian films and examined them both qualitatively and quantitatively drawing on the Gricean maxims. The results revealed a high number of infringements both in the translated instances of metaphor and Taarof as far as the maxim of manner, i.e. being perspicuous, is concerned. This highly-frequent flaw in the openness in translation could be mainly attributed to a vast cultural chasm between the source and target language, which makes such culturally-oriented translations a tall order even on the part of the most accomplished translators. (shrink)

Between 1934 and 1937 Maurice Blondel, the French Roman Catholic philosopher best known for his 1893 work, Action, published a trilogy of writings. Out of these writings came a theological ontology of tremendous force, creativity, and coherence. The purpose of the present dissertation is to reassess the viability of Blondel's ontology for contemporary theology. The retrieval begins with John Milbank's 1990 investigation of Blondel's early philosophy. While Milbank focuses on the strengths of Blondel, he also highlights some critical weaknesses. The (...) dissertation argues that Blondel later came to recognize and correct these weaknesses in his trilogy. ;La pensee, the first volume of the trilogy, discusses the nature and development of thought. Recognizing the ontological structure of thought leads Blondel to present his doctrine of the transnatural elan for assimilation to God. The transnatural desire for God is compared with Henri de Lubac's notion of naturae desiderium and then applied to the modern problem of the relationship between nature and supernature. ;The second installment of the trilogy, L'etre et les etres , explores the mysterious relation of Being and beings. Blondel situates the discussion within the language of creation, identifying Being as Creator and beings as creatures. The analogy of creation allows him to forge the proper relationship between Being and beings. After Blondel's death, two different schools of thought emerged on the mystery of being: Karl Rahner's Thomism and Jean-Luc Marion's new phenomenology. Each school is reviewed and critiqued from a Blondelian perspective. ;The trilogy concludes with a long-awaited revision of L'action . It begins by distinguishing the idea of action from action itself and establishing the ontological difference of action. Action is presented ontologically as enacted power, which is investigated in its individual, social, and metaphysical forms. Individual action is identified as making, practicing, and contemplating. Social action is studied next, with the conclusion that the social being of enacted power is determined by either a philosophy of peace or violence. Finally, divine action is evaluated with regards to the language of causality and absolute power. Blondel proposes instead to describe God's activity in terms of pure action. (shrink)

Sign language interpreting is a cognitively challenging task performed mostly by second language learners. SLI students must first gain language fluency in a new visuospatial modality and then move between spoken and signed modalities as they interpret. As a result, many students plateau before reaching working fluency, and SLI training program drop-out rates are high. However, we know little about the requisite skills to become a successful interpreter: the few existing studies investigating SLI aptitude in terms of (...) linguistic and cognitive skills lack baseline measures. Here we report a 3-year exploratory longitudinal skills assessments study with British Sign Language -English SLI students at two universities. Our aims were two-fold: first, to better understand the prerequisite skills that lead to successful SLI outcomes; second, to better understand how signing and interpreting skills impact other aspects of cognition. A battery of tasks was completed at four time points to assess skills, including but not limited to: multimodal and unimodal working memory, 2-dimensional and 3-dimensional mental rotation, and English comprehension. Dependent measures were BSL and SLI course grades, BSL reproduction tests, and consecutive SLI tasks. Results reveal that initial BSL proficiency and 2D-MR were associated with selection for the degree program, while visuospatial working memory was linked to continuing with the program. 3D-MR improved throughout the degree, alongside some limited gains in auditory, visuospatial, and multimodal working memory tasks. Visuospatial working memory and MR were the skills closest associated with BSL and SLI outcomes, particularly those tasks involving sign language production, thus, highlighting the importance of cognition related to the visuospatial modality. These preliminary data will inform SLI training programs, from applicant selection to curriculum design. (shrink)

Moral dilemmas are a useful tool to investigate empirically, which parameters of a given situation modulate participants’ moral judgment, and in what way. In an effort to provide moral judgment data from a non-WEIRD culture, we provide the translation and validation of 48 classical moral dilemmas in Persian language. The translated dilemma set was submitted to a validation experiment with N = 82 Iranian participants. The four-factor structure of this dilemma set was confirmed; including Personal Force, Benefit Recipient, (...) Evitability, and Intentionality. When comparing moral judgments of Iranian participants to those of Spanish and Italian participants’ from previous research with the same dilemma set, differences emerged. Iranian participants’ moral judgments were more deontological, than Spanish and Italian participants. Religiosity made participants’ moral judgments more deontological, and also dysphoric mood resulted in a more deontological response style. (shrink)

This study was a Persian-English comparative translation investigation on the selected poems of Forough- Farrokhzad, an influential contemporary Iranian poet. Two English translations were analyzed: one by a native Persian speaker, Sholeh Wolpé, an Iranian poet and translator, and the other by a non-native Persian speaker, Jascha Kessler, an American poet, writer and translator. The translations were reviewed according to Vinay and Darbelnet’s(1995) model which identifies two general translation strategies: direct and oblique, resembling literal versus (...) free classifications, respectively, along with their supplementary proce- dures in order to investigate the frequency of the application of each procedure by the two translators. After situating every line of the poems in the related categories, the number of times each procedure was em- ployed was examined. The findings indicated that both translators used the oblique strategy more than the direct one. The non-native translator, however, used the oblique strategy considerably more frequently com- pared to the native translator. Finally, new procedures called complementary procedures were proposed by the researchers to be added to Vinay and Darbelnet’s (1995) model in order to fill the gaps in the application of strategies and procedures to the poems of Forough Farrokhzad and probably other poems. (shrink)

ABSTRACTEven though many sport philosophers have worked to delineate clear definitions of play and games, typical language usage often conflates the two phenomena and even provides an undue normati...

James Robert Ballantyne taught oriental languages in India for sixteen years, compiling grammars of Hindi, Sanskrit and Persian, along with translations of Hindu philosophy. In 1859, for the use of Christian missionaries, he prepared a guide to Hinduism, in English and Sanskrit. Published in two volumes in 1852, Synopsis of Science was intended to introduce his Indian pupils to Western science by using the framework of Hindu Nyaya philosophy, which was familiar to them and which Ballantyne greatly respected. (...) This second volume proceeds in similar style to the first: through a series of short paragraphs, Ballantyne introduces arithmetic, algebra, calculus, chemistry, botany, zoology, anatomy, physiology, mineralogy and geology. The second part of the volume is a Sanskrit translation. Overall, the work serves as an excellent primary source on the educational aspects of British imperialism. (shrink)

In accordance with the purpose of the series Traditio Praesocratica, the present volume, the first in the series, contains the most complete collection ever assembled of the documentary evidence on Thales of Miletus. Approximately 600 texts, dating from the sixth century BCE to the fourteenth century CE, are presented in chronological order, both in the original language (Greek, Latin, Arabic and Persian) and in a facing English translation. The original-language texts are reprinted (with corrections) from Georg (...) W hrle's edition (2009). Several texts discovered since the publication of the 2009 edition are included. The English translations were made by Richard McKirahan from the original texts. Differences between the German and the English translations are noted. An index of names and extensive glossaries and word indexes of the texts and translations are provided. (shrink)

The Silk Road originated in China in the 1st century B.C.E. The purpose of the route was to expand silk trade which initially was elaborated exclusively by the Chinese. European aristocrats showed great devotion for this textile, which was carried mainly by Persian merchants. Seveal commercial silk routes were created to connect China with Mongolia, Korea, India, Persia, Arabia, Syria, Turkey, and Europe. Due to its geographic position, Korea served as the last Silk Route destiny for the Arab merchants (...) in the Asian Continent. As early as the Three Kingdoms period in Korea, Muslim traders travelled from the Caliphate of Turkey to Tang China and established contact with Shilla. Trade and cultural exchange were developed significantly and foreign influence reached Korea through the Silk Road. Arab merchants who arrived during the Koyeo Dynasty period were in fact the first to coin the English name “Korea”. In modern period, Korea maintained an important role in the New Silk Road, participating actively during the splendid periods of Unified Shilla and the Koryeo Dynasty. (shrink)

This article examines two mechanisms in treating Persian names in English-speaking contexts: name projection and name adoption. The article adopts Edward Said's Orientalism, noting Western-centric naming and colonial division with Western superiority. The treatment of the Oriental name will be discussed within the frame of linguistic Orientalism which refers to the portrayal or study of Eastern languages and cultures through the lens of Western superiority or exoticisation. Previously, this mindset projected the coloniser's preferred names onto the territory and (...) individuals of the Other. Today, the name of the Other is governed as the subjects from different backgrounds are propelled to conform to the coloniser's preferences in choosing Anglo-sounding names. I will conclude that the shift from the authoritative name projection to the disciplinary name adoption manifests a Foucauldian trajectory from ‘sovereign power’ to modern ‘disciplinary power’ in taming the name of the Other. (shrink)

Purpose: Despite various comparative studies in the field of cultural heritage protection in the world, there is still a significant lack of comparative research on policies related to the legal system of countries' governance. The purpose of this study is to address the comparative policies in Iran and Italy, with a particular focus on the results of the executive experiences of two different types of policies in the cities of Oroumieh (North-West of Iran) and Turin (in North-West of Italy). Design/methodology/approach: (...) Utilising the comparative, analytical, bibliographic and descriptive historical research methodology, which is based on the study of the local, national and international comprehensive review of regulations and policy-making of cultural heritage preservation policies in Iran and Italy. In this research, the related documents in three languages (Persian, Italian and English) have been examined to compare profoundly and comprehensively the policies and regulations adopted in these two countries to be able to analyze the national and transnational regulations and local policies in the cultural heritage sector. Findings: In addition to many cultural similarities and numerous commonalities, especially in the multiplicity of urban cultural heritage in historical centers, the results suggest that the legislation structure in Iran is much more centralized than in Italy. Also, the findings suggest that Italy focuses on aligning its previously centralized national legislative system in line with contemporary European heritage and preservation policies. Originality/value: The paper outlines how to use historical and cultural similarities through comparative study to benefit the experiences of two historical countries in urban heritage conservation and policy-making part despite their differences. (shrink)

Ottoman Turkish or Ottoman –as a mumpsimus – is basically Turkish language, over time it has been substantially influenced by Arabic and Persian. Its alphabet is based on Arabic letters. It has borrowed letters from Persian as well. Its vocabulary is essentially Turkish; however, it has borrowed words from Arabic and Persian at a substantial level. Arabic language attracted attention in mosques because it was the language of the religion, and in madrasahs because it (...) was the language of science. As for Persian, it spread in Turkish states as the literary language and this lifted its effectiveness especially in Seljukian palaces. Arabic writing, which is the common writing form for both languages, became the writing form for virtually the entire Islamic world, and thus, Turks employed Arabic writing form to be able to write in their own languages. According to resources, the first written Turkish language grammar book is Muyassiratu’l-ulum by Bergamalı Kadri. Apart from this book, the earliest sources on Ottoman Turkish grammar and principles were started to be written after 1840. While writing activities about Ottoman Turkish grammar increased in late 19th and early 20th centuries, they have gained further acceleration nowadays. In fact, the statement about a generation who cannot read the grave stones of their ancestors has been influential. After providing education on Ottoman Turkish as a compulsory or elective course as part of high school syllabus by the Ministry of National Education, and due to the natural increase in the numbers of students in Theology and Literature Faculties of universities which are, nowadays, almost in every city, writing activities about Ottoman Turkish have become desirable and a sector has been formed in this field. Many researchers who teach this course started to write an Ottoman Turkish grammar book to use in their own lessons, and this caused the number of Ottoman Turkish publications to increase in the market. According to our findings, grammar books of Turkey Turkish were also written in foreign languages, in late 19th and early 20th centuries. Through writing Turkey Turkish grammar work in German, French, English, Italian, Latin, Hungarian, Russian and Greek, foreign authors aimed to teach Turkish to their own nations. Although all of these works were produced in order to contribute teaching of Ottoman Turkish, efforts to generate solutions for certain problematic issues became a lot more complicated. To illustrate, when case about kaaf (ك) letter, which is the subject of this study, is examined either in grammar books written after 1840s, or in the books written by contemporary researchers, two aspects are noteworthy. One of these is the change in the number of letters forming the alphabet, the other one is the classification and nomenclature regarding kaaf (ك) letter, which effects this number. That Ottoman Turkish consists of three languages and uses Arabic alphabet and vocabulary from three different languages resulted in problems like difference in the number of letters in the alphabet and problems in the articulation of certain letters. It has been determined that one of the reasons why the number of letters in the alphabet is different is directly letter kaaf and that there are problems in both articulation and classification of the letter kaaf used in Arabic, Persian and Turkish words. When the books written on Ottoman Turkish grammar starting from the 19th century until today are analysed, no studies have ever been done either about the changes in the numbers forming the alphabet, or about the classification and articulation problems of letter kaaf (ك) and about the solution offersed to these. In this article, by attracting attention to both the number of letters in the alphabet, and to the classification and articulation problems of letter kaaf (ك), findings regarding the solutions of these problems are presented. The study consists of three main chapters. In the first chapter, the function of various letters is presented and especially the effect of kaaf on the number of letters in Ottoman Turkish alphabet is elaborated and after the analyses, the number of letters is determined. In the second chapter, triplet, quartet and quintet classifications of letter kaaf are examined and its nomenclature and articulations are analysed. In the last chapter, problems about classification and articulation of kaaf are evaluated and a new classification is suggested. Yet, it is obvious that either this classification or the previous ones do not contribute to the question of which sound to use while pronouncing kaaf. Therefore, at the end of the study, some determinations have been made for solving the problem of kaaf’s articulation. (shrink)

The ethical dative or dativus ethicus is a feature used with certain verbs in Biblical Hebrew, which, however, has continued to pose difficulties to grammarians as to its syntactic and semantic references. The feature is also present in other Semitic languages, namely, Syriac and other Aramaic dialects including Persian. Although quite a common feature, the ethical dative is seemingly difficult to translate into English, while its identification as an ethical dative is a widely accepted misnomer. This study attempts (...) to resolve the identification of the feature's grammatical role by seeking to relate it with a similar grammatical feature from Shona, a language from the Central and Southern African group of languages. Although there are some differences between the compared features, the similarities will go a long way to clarify the nature of the Semitic enigma that is currently known as the ethical dative in Hebrew and in other related Semitic languages. (shrink)

A collection of documents from antiquity to the 16th century in the historical West (Bactria to the Atlantic), in the original languages with an English translation and introductory essays, about the motivations and purposes of translation from and into Greek, Syriac, Middle Persian, Arabic, Hebrew, and Latin, as given in the personal statements by the translators, scholars, and historians of each society.

Informed by theories of embodied cognition, in the present study, we designed a novel priming technique to investigate the impact of spatial diversity and script direction on searching through concepts in both English and Persian (i.e., two languages with opposite script directions). First, participants connected a target dot either to one other dot (linear condition) or to multiple other dots (diverse condition) and either from left to right (rightward condition) or from right to left (leftward condition) on a (...) computer touchscreen using their dominant hand's forefinger. Following the spatial prime, they were asked to generate as many words as possible using two‐letter cues (e.g., “lo” → “love,” “lobster”) in 20 s. We hypothesized that greater spatial diversity, and consistency with script direction, should facilitate conceptual search and result in a higher number of word productions. In both languages, word production performance was superior for the diverse prime relative to the linear prime, suggesting that searching through lexical memory is facilitated by spatial diversity. Although some effects were observed for the directionality of the spatial prime, they were not consistent across experiments and did not correlate with script direction. This pattern of results suggests that a spatial prime that promotes diverse paths can improve word retrieval from lexical memory and lends empirical support to the embodied cognition framework, in which spatial relations play a crucial role in the conceptual system. (shrink)