This paper sketches an account of Persian clitics and their distributional idiosyncracies, and also subdivides them into two types. The first type, including genitive (ezafe) marker “=e”, pronominal enclitics (=am, =at, =aš, =emαn, =etαn&=ešαn), unspecified indefinite marker “=i”, specified indefinite marker “=i”& definite marker “=e”, is considered to be “second place” or “Wackernagel position” enclitics.  The second type, includes conjunction marker “=o”, definite object marker “=o”, additive subjunct “=am”, enclitic forms of verb “to be” (=am,=i, =e, =ast, =st, =as, =s, =im, =id &=and), & emphatic verbal particle “=hɑ”,) which are treated as phrasal affixes.  On my account, the order of Persian clitics is not independent of syntactic structures. The affix-like behavior of some enclitics provides evidence for inception of distributional changes.

The goal of this study is to compare word definition skills in Persian-Azeri bilinguals with specific language impairment and normal children. Six (7-8 year-old) children with specific language impairmentand 12 normal children were evaluated for their word definition skills. Impaired children were diagnosed as exhibiting a significant delay (more than one year) in language skills that could not be explained by intelligence deficits, hearing loss or visual impairment. We used narrative speech and specific language impairment test for diagnosis and Man Whitney and Wilcox tests for analyzing data. Bilingual children with SLI showed meaningful difference from the normal groups in structural aspect of word definition. In comparison between Persian and Azeri, the impaired children showed significant difference in structural aspect and normal children in content aspect.

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The present paper studies the acoustic-phonetic characteristics of liquids ([r] and [l]) in Standard Persian. The study used 19 male and female speakers, who articulated 204 samples of each consonant in various phonetic contexts in initial, medial and final positions. In different languages, the nature of the liquids and rhotics in particular, has a great amount of variability in different phonetic contexts and may easily be affected and changed by the surrounding sounds or due to various non-phonetic reasons. Persian phoneticians have always known [r] in this language to be an apical trill that has some allophones like the tap and voiceless [r] which occurs in some specific contexts. However, the results of this study showed that Persian [r] is not a trill, but on the contrary, this manner of articulation is limited to one specific context with a very low frequency. In fact the manner of articulation of this consonant in Persian language is approximant. The other liquid ([l]) was also studied in different phonetic contexts. Formants frequencies of these two liquid sounds were analyzed and measured in initial position only.

The present paper investigates the constituent structure rules of Old Persian in Behistun Inscription. Constituent structure rules have the advantage of determining head and its complement in syntactic phrases such as noun phrase, verb phrase, prepositional phrase and adverbial phrase. Data analysis was performed on the basis of examples and sentences which were derived from Old Persian in Behistun Inscription considered as an important and detailed text. The study of Old Persian data and syntactic constituent analysis revealed that in most syntactic phrases the head has tendency to final position. Therefore, on the basis of occurrence frequency, it is possible to classify Old Persian at unmarked structure, as a head-final language.

Generation change is one of the most important issues in cultural studies. Cultural differences among generations lead to changes in values or value gaps, as researchers interpret it. Language as a social phenomenon is in close relationship with the social structure and value ​​system of society. This paper investigates the reflection of the social and cultural differences between two generations (mothers and daughters) in the use of language. The paper used Lado’s model and applied the descriptive method. Forty subjects participated in the research: 20 middle-aged mothers, and 20 high school and college student girls. Then the value of several words, such as taboo words, religious words, address words, emotional words, slang and catchwords, were examined in both generations. According to the findings, not only the words used in both generations’ speech are different, and the contents and meanings of their messages are also different. Understanding these differences is subject to understand the cultural changes and intergeneration values.

The present paper is an attempt to describe and analyze compensatory lengthening in Kalhori Kurdish. For this purpose, compensatory lengthening was studied in contrast with processes such as deletion and insertion in this dialect. The paper also tries to show the criteria for choosing this process (compensatory lengthening) over the others (deletion and insertion) within the optimality theory framework. The results showed that optimality theory is unable to justify compensatory lengthening. However, it is capable of dealing with chain candidates, which is the topic of recent phonological theories.

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