30.2861, Review: Persian, Iranian; General Linguistics: Sedighi, Shabani-Jadidi (2018)
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Subject: 30.2861, Review: Persian, Iranian; General Linguistics: Sedighi, Shabani-Jadidi (2018)
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Date: Tue, 23 Jul 2019 11:25:50
From: Jens Fleischhauer [fleischhauer at phil.uni-duesseldorf.de]
Subject: The Oxford Handbook of Persian Linguistics
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EDITOR: Anousha Sedighi
EDITOR: Pouneh Shabani-Jadidi
TITLE: The Oxford Handbook of Persian Linguistics
SERIES TITLE: Oxford Handbooks
PUBLISHER: Oxford University Press
YEAR: 2018
REVIEWER: Jens Fleischhauer, Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf
Editors: Anousha Sedighi and Pouneh Shabani-Jadidi
TITLE: The Oxford Handbook of Persian Linguistics
SERIES TITLE: Oxford Handbooks in Linguistics
PUBLISHER: Oxford University Press
YEAR: 2018
SUMMARY
Persian is a cover term for three varieties, Farsi (spoken in Iran), Dari
(spoken in Afghanistan) and Tajiki (spoken in Tajikistan). Compared to other
Iranian languages, Persian has received a lot of attention within different
fields of linguistics. The current volume of the 'Oxford Handbook' series
covers various aspects of Persian linguistics ranging from different fields of
theoretical linguistics to various subfields of applied linguistics. The book
consists of six parts, each dedicated to one specific broad topic (e.g. sound
system, syntax, words and word structure).
The first part of the book is entitled 'Classification and History' and
consists of two chapters. The first one is Mauro Maggi and Paola Orsatti's
chapter on the historical development of Persian. The chapter's title is 'From
Old to New Persian' and it gives a brief overview of the different historical
stages of the language as well as of the major linguistic innovations.
Furthermore, the chapter presents an outline of the historical records and
presents a fairly good brief introduction to the language’s history. The
second chapter is from Mohammad Dabir-Moghaddam and is called 'Typological
approaches and dialects'. Dabir-Moghaddam discusses Persian with respect to a
number of word order parameters, word formation characteristics and its
agreement system. The chapter’s title is justified by the author’s aim of
discussing Persian with respect to a number of typological parameters (e.g.
order of noun and genitive, order of noun and adjective and so on) and by
identifying the general typology of ordering strategies. In the second part
of that chapter, the author discusses dialectal variance and presents
differences between Farsi, Dari and Tajiki. This is one of the rare occasions
in which differences between the three varieties are discussed explicitly.
The second part of the book – consisting of three chapters – is concerned with
the Persian sound system. Golnaz Modaressi Ghavami's chapter simply titled
'Phonetics' deals with different phonetic aspects of Persian. The chapter
presents an overview on the sound system of Standard Modern Persian and deals
briefly with stress and intonation. The two later issues are taken up in more
detail in Arsalan Kahnemuyipour's chapter titled 'Prosody'. The phonology of
Persian is the topic of Mahmood Bijankhan's chapter ('Phonology'). The first
six sections introduce different aspects of Persian phonology (e.g. phoneme
inventory, syllable structure, phonological rules). The last section presents
an optimality theoretic analysis of some of those aspects introduced earlier
in the chapter (e.g. syllable structure, deaspiration, devoicing).
Part 3 of the volume is entitled 'Syntax' and – again – consists of three
chapters. The first two chapters take a theoretical perspective; the last one
(by Pollet Samvelian) focuses on 'Specific features of Persian syntax' (which
is also its title). Samvelian's chapter outlines three central topics of
Persian syntax, which receive a lot of attention from researchers working in
different theories. These topics – which are also taken up in the other two
chapters – are the ezāfe-construction, complex predicates and differential
object marking. The chapter compares different analyses of these phenomena and
provides a solid background on three major aspects of Persian syntax. In his
chapter, Simin Karimi gives an overview on generative approaches to Persian
syntax, whereas Jila Ghomeshi presents 'other approaches' to Persian syntax.
The notion of 'other approaches' covers descriptive, theory-neutral ones,
Construction Grammar, Cognitivist and Functionalist approaches, corpus-based
approaches and – finally – a brief discussion of formal approaches. The titles
of the two chapters are 'Generative approaches to syntax' and 'Other
approaches to syntax' respectively. Ghomeshi aims at presenting variety of
work done within different approaches to syntax but does not aim at comparing
the different theories. Karimi's chapter addresses various aspects of Persian
syntax from the perspective of (mostly) Minimalist syntax. Among the issues
addressed by the author are Wh-constructions, complex predicates, the
ezāfe-construction, DP-structure and differential object marking.
'Language and words' is the title of the fourth section. The three chapters
deal with morphology (Behrooz Mahmoodi-Bakhtiari), lexicography (Seyed Mostafa
Assi) and the Academy of Persian Language and Literature (Mohammad
Dabir-Moghaddam). Mahmoodi-Bakhtiari's chapter starts with an overview of free
and bound functional morphemes and turns to a more detailed discussion of
nominal and verbal morphology after that. A third part of the chapter is
concerned with compounding and other word formation processes. The chapter
gives a brief and accessible descriptive introduction to Persian morphology.
Seyed Mostafa Assi starts his chapter with the title 'Lexicography' with an
overview of the traditional Persian perspective on lexicography and then goes
over to contemporary approaches. The author starts with dictionaries for
Middle Persian and then goes over to the discussion of dictionary writing for
the contemporary language. This covers the discussion of mono- and bilingual
dictionaries, encyclopedias, specialized dictionaries as well as recent
developments in connection with computational linguistics as well as corpus
linguistics. Connected to this is Dabir-Moghaddam's chapter titled 'Academy of
Persian Language and Literature', which deals with the highest authority on
the Persian language in Iran. As such, the academy is engaged in supporting
and contributing to the linguistic description and analysis of Persian (e.g.
the publication of dictionaries). Thus, the chapter on this institution is
thematically related to the preceding chapter on lexicography.
The four chapters of Part 5 are sociolinguistically-oriented. Yahya
Modarresi's chapter 'Sociolinguistics' covers topics such as multilingualism,
dialectal variation as well as social variation. The chapter’s focus is one
social variation in Persian, whereas the issue of multilingualism – only
briefly discussed - is taken up in more details in Shahrzad Mahootian's
chapter on 'Language contact and multilingualism in Iran'. The chapter
discusses contemporary Iran as a multilingual nation as well as language
contact in the history of the Persian language. Although the chapter addresses
the issue of multilingualism and language contact, it is mainly concerned with
the official status of the languages but not so much with grammatical aspect.
'Persian as a heritage language', by Anousha Sedighi, focusses on the Persian
language as spoken outside of Iran. The chapter starts with an overview of the
literature on that issue and – in the second part – presents a detailed study
on the characteristics of heritage Persian speakers. It presents differences
as well as similarities between heritage and non-heritage speakers with
respect to grammatical features as well as language style. The final chapter
of that part of the book deals with the issue of 'teaching Persian to speakers
of other languages' (which at the same time is the chapter's title). Pouneh
Shabani-Jadidi and Anousha Sedighi discusses various aspects of that topic,
e.g., the current status of teaching Persian to non-native speakers in
different parts of the world and second-language acquisition studies, but also
modern trends in pedagogy as well as instructional materials.
The final part of the book is concerned with 'language, mind, and technology'.
It consists of three chapters dealing with psycholinguistics (Pouneh
Shabani-Jadidi), neurolinguistics (Reza Nilipour) and computational
linguistics (Karine Megerdoomian). In her chapter 'Psycholinguistics',
Shabani-Jadidi reports on various psycholinguistic studies dealing with
Persian. This covers various topics related to language production, language
comprehension and language processing, as well as aphasic studies. A returning
topic in that chapter is complex predicates, which are – also outside of
Persian linguistics – addressed by psycholinguistic studies. The chapter on
neurolinguistics – simply titled 'Neurolinguistics' – focusses on clinical
studies and language impairment both in monolingual as well as bilingual
speakers. Thus, the two experimental chapters address somewhat complementary
issues. The final chapter 'Computational linguistics' reports both on the
state of the art as well as on issues in Persian natural language processing.
Complex predicates – discussed under the label of multiword expressions – are
a hot topic again. In the final part, the chapter reports on existing tools
and resources (corpora as well as language processing systems).
The book starts with an introduction by the editors, mainly a brief summary of
the different chapter's topics. The single parts of the book address different
aspects of theoretical and applied Persian linguistics. Some chapters present
a state-of-the-art summary (e.g. the one of Samvelian); others focus more on
novel research by the chapter's author than on presenting a state-of-the-art
overview (e.g. Dabir-Moghaddam's chapter on typological approaches and
dialects). Since the unifying topic – Persian – is addressed by all chapters,
it is necessarily a coherent volume.
EVALUATION
The number of articles, books and dissertations addressing different aspects
of Persian linguistics is increasing constantly. So far, there has been no
volume – at least one written in English – covering the different subfields of
Persian linguistics. The Oxford Handbook of Persian linguistics is intended to
provide a comprehensive overview of the different subfields of Persian
linguistics. The work reported within the current book comes both from
traditional grammar as well as from different strands of modern western
linguistics. It is a major achievement of this book that it provides the first
comprehensive overview on various topics related to theoretical as well as
applied Persian linguistics. The chapters' common aim is introducing different
aspects of Persian linguistics, which is easily achieved given that all
chapters deal with Persian language. Nevertheless, the chapters vary a lot.
Some provide a brief overview on a special topic (e.g. Mohammad
Dabir-Moghaddam's chapter on the Academy of Persian Language and Literature),
whereas others deal with much broader issues like the syntax or the phonology
of the language. Even these chapters vary a lot since some present more a
state-of-the-art overview (e.g., Mahmood Bijankhan's chapter on phonology),
whereas others come from a theory-specific perspective (e.g. Simin Karimi's
chapter on generative approaches to syntax). Thus, some chapters are
interesting for a broader audience; other chapters are – probably – directed
to a smaller audience. Nonetheless, Karimi's chapter fits very well into the
volume as it reflects the attention Persian achieved within generative syntax.
At a general level, the overall topic – Persian linguistics – makes the volume
coherent. Every chapter is dedicated to issues directly related to Persian
linguistics. It is not presupposed that the reader has some background
knowledge on Persian linguistics or even speaks the language. Thus, the book
is accessible to a larger linguistic audience.
I will evaluate the current book with respect to two criteria: (i) are the
different chapters well connected? and (ii) are the chapters integrated into
the larger discourse? With respect to the second question, I restrict myself
to those issues I am familiar with.
With respect to the first question, the different chapters seem to be well
connected as they provide cross-references to other chapters of the volume.
The reader comes across sentences such as 'topic xy is also discussed in
chapters …'. A closer look reveals that the chapters are only superficially
connected. For illustrational purposes, I pick out one example. In their
chapters, Karimi as well as Samvellian discuss the question whether the light
verb of a light verb construction determines whether or not the complex
predicates selects for an agentive subject argument or not. Karimi argues in
favor of that position, whereas Samvellian argues against it. Karimi and
Samvellian quote each other's papers but do not refer to the respective
chapters within the current volume. It seems as if there has been no attempt
to connect the different chapters in terms of content, although they
(partially) address the same linguistic phenomena. From the perspective of the
reader, the papers could have been much better connected.
Related to this are two further issues, albeit more marginal ones. First, some
of the abbreviations used in the volume are inconsistent. The list of
abbreviations contains the abbreviation IND twice, one time abbreviating
'indefinite', the other time being an abbreviation for 'indicative'.
Similarly, N stands both for 'noun' and 'neuter'. TP is used as an
abbreviation for 'tense phrase' as well as 'temporo-pariental'. There are
also cases in which two different abbreviations are used for the same: NEG and
NG are listed as abbreviations for 'negative/negation'. Although this does not
turn out to be problematic within a single chapter, the editors should have
been a bit more careful with respect to that issue.
Second, the transliteration of Persian examples is – in some cases – not
standardized. Karimi, for example, writes 'dâshtan' (p. 169), whereas the same
word is written 'dāshtan' by Samvellian (p. 263). A further example concerns
the writing of the first person singular personal pronoun: 'mæn'
(Dabir-Moghaddam, p. 62) vs. 'man' (e.g. Karimi, p. 162). I have not checked
systematically for spelling differences but – at least for me – the question
is whether there is an agreed upon standardization of Persian transliteration
or not. Do such spelling differences reflect dialectal variation (e.g.
phonological variation) or not? Unfortunately, the transliteration of Persian
is not an issue addressed in the current volume, although it is highly
relevant for a non-native speaker audience that language data are represented
in a standardized way. This is even more important since Persian is not
written in a modified version of the Arabic script.
Turning to the second question, I will concentrate on two issues. The volume’s
topic is Persian linguistics and the authors keep very strictly to the topic.
Mostly, the authors address Farsi and mention other varieties in passing (if
they mention them at all). In the chapters on sociolinguistics, the focus is
on Iran but not on other Persian speaking countries (Afghanistan and
Tajikistan). There is also no comparison of Persian with other members of the
Iranian language family. A comparison of Persian to other Iranian languages –
both from a diachronic as well as synchronic perspective – would have been
quite interesting. Unfortunately, even Mohammad Dabir-Moghaddam’s chapter on
‘Typological approaches and dialects’ does not provide a comparison of Persian
with other Iranian or non-Iranian languages. Although the author discusses
Persian with respect to various typological features, he does not relate his
results to the broader typological findings on that topic. The book misses a
cross-linguistic and/or typological perspective, which would allow identifying
the unique characters of the Persian language both from the perspective of the
Iranian languages as well as from the perspective of linguistic typology.
The second issue is concerned with the treatment of one salient linguistic
phenomenon of Persian. It is a well-known feature of Persian that it shows
animacy-- as well as definiteness-based differential object marking. Direct
object arguments, which are unmarked for case, usually are interpreted as
being number neutral, having narrow scope with respect to scope bearing
elements (e.g. negation or modals), do not easily introduce discourse
referents and are highly restricted with respect to modification (see, for
example, Modaressi 2014, 2015). The example in (1) illustrates that the bare
noun 'film' has narrow scope with respect to the negation operator. The only
interpretation of that sentence is 'Ali does not buy any movie' (narrow scope
reading of 'film') and not that there is one particular movie, which Ali did
not buy (wide scope reading of 'film').
(1) Ali film ne-mixârâd (Ali film NEG-buy.3SG)
'Ali does not buy any movie.' (Modaressi 2014: 30)
Persian bare direct object arguments show the characteristics of
pseudo-incorporated nouns (the term goes back to Massam 2001). Given these
characteristics, it is surprising that the notion of 'pseudo-incorporation' is
only discussed in passing. Karimi mentions it in two footnotes on page 184 and
Mahmoodi-Bakhtiari speaks quite generally of 'incorporating verbs' on page
295. This is even more surprising as complex predicate formation as well as
the pre- vs. absence of the object marker –rā is recurrently addressed in
different chapters of the volume. It seems that the volume fails to connect
the discussion of Persian bare noun object arguments to the highly relevant
and influential discussion of pseudo-incorporation.
As a final evaluation, one can sincerely say that the current volume is of
interest to anyone interested in Persian as a whole as well as to those only
interested in particular aspects. The book is worthwhile reading as its
different chapters introduce the various facets of Persian linguistics and
provide a good overview of the literature published on the different topics.
A future edition of the book should aim at improving consistency by better
connecting the different chapters as well as improving the standardization of
transliteration and glossing.
REFERENCES
Massam, Diane. 2001. Pseudo Noun Incorporation in Niuean. Natural Language and
Linguistic Theory 19: 153-197.
Modaressi. Fereshteh. 2014. Bare nouns in Persian: Interpretation, Grammar and
Prosody. Dissertation: University of Ottawa & Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin.
Modaressi, Fereshteh. 2015. Discourse Properties of Bare Noun Objects. In O.
Borik & B. Gehrke (eds.). The Syntax and Semantics of Pseudo-Incorporation,
189–221. Leiden/ Boston: Brill.
ABOUT THE REVIEWER
I am a linguist working at the Department of General Linguitics at
Heinrich-Heine University Düsseldorf. My research focusses currently on
complex predicates as well as modification in German as well as Persian.
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