Of University of Ljubljana FACULTYofARTS Acta Lingüistica Asiatica Volume 3, Number 2, October 2013 Acta Linguistica Asiatica Volume 3, Number 2, October 2013 Editors: Andrej Bekeš, Mateja Petrovčič Editorial Board: Bi Yanli (China), Cao Hongquan (China), Luka Culiberg (Slovenia), Tamara Ditrich (Slovenia), Nina Golob (Slovenia), Kristina Hmeljak Sangawa (Slovenia), Ichimiya Yufuko (Japan), Terry Andrew Joyce (Japan), Jens Karlsson (Sweden), Lee Yong (Korea), Lin Ming-chang (Taiwan), Arun Prakash Mishra (India), Nagisa Moritoki Škof (Slovenia), Nishina Kikuko (Japan), Sawada Hiroko (Japan), Chikako Shigemori Bučar (Slovenia), Irena Srdanovic (Japan). © University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Arts, 2013 All rights reserved. Published by: Znanstvena založba Filozofske fakultete Univerze v Ljubljani (Ljubljana University Press, Faculty of Arts) Issued by: Department of Asian and African Studies For the publisher: Branka Kalenic Ramšak, the Dean of the Faculty of Arts The journal is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported (CC BY 3.0). Journal's web page: http://revije.ff.uni-lj.si/ala/ The journal is published in the scope of Open Journal Systems ISSN: 2232-3317 Abstracting and Indexing Services: COBISS, dLib, Directory of Open Access Journals, MLA International Bibliography, Open J-Gate and Google Scholar. Publication is free of charge. Address: University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Arts Department of Asian and African Studies Aškerčeva 2, SI-1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia E-mail: matej a.petrovcic@ff.uni-lj. si Table of Contents Foreword............................. RESEARCH ARTICLES Irena SRDANOVIC, Kumiko SAKODA Analysis of Learner's Production of Adjectives Using the Japanese Language Learner's Corpus C-JAS: The Case of takai.............................................................9-24 LI Wenchao On the Formation of Verb Compounds in Early Middle Japanese..........................25-40 Barirah NAZIR, Umair AFTAB, Ammara SAEED Language Shift - The Case of Punjabi in Sargodha Region of Pakistan.................41-60 Mahla SAEDI, Fateme ALAVI, Akram SHEKARIAN BEHZADI A Study of Rate of Speech and Intelligibility of Speech in Hearing impaired Pupils of Baghcheban School of Zahedan, Iran......................................................................61-70 TECHNICAL NOTES Azadeh Sharifi MOGHADDAM, Farimah Farrahi MOGHADDAM A Semantic Change Model for French Loanwords in Persian................................73-88 Foreword I am glad to observe that in line with the original concept of ALA, papers chosen for publication in this issue are addressing a variety of problems pertinent to a multifaceted phenomenon such as language. There are five papers, two dealing with Japanese, one with Punjabi and two with Persian, employing multiple perspectives and methodologies. The first paper, by Irena SRDANOVlC and Kumiko SAKODA, is concerned with Japanese as a second language. In it the authors present a learner's corpus (C-JAS) based analysis of learner's production of adjectives. They illustrate the general trend in adjective acquisition on the example of the adjective takai (high), examining the correlation of learners' ability with semantic domains covered in their use of adjectives. Paper also proposes new methodology to be further tested on a new larger learner's corpus now being developed at the National Institute for Japanese Language and Linguistics. The second paper, by LI Wenchao, is looking at Japanese from the historical perspective, focusing on verb compounds in Early Middle Japanese (ENJ). The author argues that verb compounds actually developed in EMJ, from a looser association of verbs in earlier stagers of Japanese. Through weakening, compounds develop in two directions, one where the first verb morphs into a prefix, and the other where the second verb is transmuting into a directional/resultative complement, a result in accordance with grammaticalization theory. In the third paper, the authors, Barirah NAZIR, Umair AFTAB, and Ammara SAEED, are dealing passionately with the language shift away from Punjabi. The situation of Punjabi is very complex, being the second major language in Pakistan and also one of the major languages India. The authors are focusing their research on Sargodha region of Pakistan, arguing, based on analysis of questionnaires and interviews, that Punjabi indeed is experiencing language shift, due to the shifting perception of the social role of rival languages, Urdu, the national language, and English, the official language of Pakistan. This result is surprising, since Punjabi in India does not seem to be experiencing a similar shift towards Hindi and/or English. The fourth paper, by the authors Mahla SAEDI, Fateme ALAVI, and Akram SHEKARIAN BEHZADI, is a psycholinguistic study of the rate and intelligibility of speech in hearing impaired Persian speaking pupils. Their findings confirm the expected lower performance of hearing impaired pupils as compared to normally hearing ones. The findings also show statistically significant difference between hearing impaired boys and girls, boys performing better in both speed and intelligibility. On the other hand, in the group of normal pupils, it is the girls that perform better than boys. It would be interesting to know what factors, most probably social, are responsible for such a difference. The last paper, by Azadeh Sharifi MOGHADDAM and Farimah Farrahi MOGHADDAM also deals with Persian. While pointing out the lively cultural contacts between Iran and France since the 17 c. the authors are examining the semantic change undergone by French loanwords in Persian during the last 150 or so years. To explain and categorize the changes the authors propose an elaborate synchronic model of semantic change, able to encompass all of the observed changes. Andrej Bekeš RESEARCH ARTICLES Analysis of Learner's Production of Adjectives Using THE JAPANESE LANGUAGE LEARNER'S CORPUS C-JAS: The Case of takai Irena SRDANOVIC University of Ljubljana irena. srdanovic@gmail. com Kumiko SAKODA National Institute for Japanese Language and Linguistics sakodak@ninj al.ac j p Abstract In this paper, we explore learner production of adjectives using the Japanese language learner's corpus C-JAS (Corpus of Japanese As a Second language). Firstly, we describe the overall usage of adjectives in the corpus and discuss the distribution of the adjectives among learners including their correct and incorrect usages. Then, we take the frequently used adjective takai "high/tall/expensive" as an example and show how the learners' production of adjectives develops in terms of form, correct/incorrect usages, and lexico-semantic coverage. Keywords: Japanese language adjectives; C-JAS corpus; second-language acquisition; language production; learner's errors Izvleček V tem članku raziskujemo, kako učenci japonskega jezika uporabljajo pridevnike v korpusnem gradivu C-JAS (Corpus of Japanese As a Second language, korpus japonščine kot tujega jezika). Najprej predstavimo celotno rabo pridevnikov v korpusu in opišemo distribucijo pridevnikov pri učencih posamezno vključno s pravilno in nepravilno rabo pridevnikov. Potem se osredotočimo na pogost pridevnik takai "visok/drag" in pokažemo, kako se raba pridevnikov razvija glede na obliko, pravilno in nepravilno rabo, ter leksikalno-semantično pokritost. Ključne besede: pridevniki v japonskem jeziku; korpus C-JAS; učenje tujega jezika; jezikovna raba; napake učencev Acta Linguistica Asiatica, 3(2), 2013. ISSN: 2232-3317, http://revije.ff.uni-lj.si/ala/ DOI: 10.4312/ala.3.2.9-24 1. Introduction The development and analysis of second language learner's corpora is of an essential importance since it can show us the way language learners' use and understand the target language, as well as point out their language learning progress and potential obstacles during the learning process. Correct usages and mistakes, as well as the gaps between covered and not covered language usages can also provide valuable information for understanding second language learning acquisition. The objective of this paper is to explore learner's production of adjectives using the Japanese language learner's corpus C-JAS (Corpus of Japanese As a Second language). Dixon (2004, p.12) states that an adjective class can be recognized for every language, but the criteria for distinguishing adjectives from nouns or verbs are subtle in some cases. There are numerous researches that state that there are no adjectives in some languages. Some approaches still treat adjectives as a sub-type of verbs. Here we take the view that the differences between the function and the structural properties of adjectives in different languages can indicate some possible learning burdens for second language learners. It is therefore important to explore language learners' usage of adjectives in greater detail. This paper, first, describes the overall usage of adjectives in the corpus and offers discussion on the distribution of the adjectives among learners, with a particular focus on comparing their correct and incorrect usages. Then, we take the frequently used adjective takai "high/tall/expensive" as an example and show how learners' production of adjectives develops in terms of form, correct and incorrect usages, and lexico-semantic coverage. 2. C-JAS corpora and its characteristics C-JAS stands for the Corpus of Japanese As a Second language. It is a learner corpus consisting of natural conversations of Japanese learners that has been collected as part of a longitudinal study for three years. The target students are three Korean native speakers, two males and one female (K1 ~ K3), and three Chinese native speakers, females (C1 ~ C3), who were attending the same Japanese school in Japan during their first year of Japanese language studies. The interactions between each of the students with the native Japanese speaker was recorded on tape once every 3-4 months, with each session consisting of 60- or 30-minute conversations recorded at 8 different periods. The total recorded time is 46 hours, which corresponds to script data of about 87 million words. The corpus is tagged for morphological information and for learners' errors and it is possible to search through the corpus systematically using the web page available at https://ninj al-sakoda. sakura.ne.jp/c-j as/web/. In general, the following topics are covered during the different periods: Period 1: Memories of my primary or secondary school teacher; Period 2: Looking back at the first year of study abroad; Period 3: My Japanese friend; Period 4: My student life; Period 5: About Japanese people: Period 6: How I spend holidays; Period 7: Food, clothing and housing in Japan; Period 8: Looking back at the last 3 years in Japan. Although the topics set in the spoken corpus were the same for all the students, the discussion developed differently with each student and covered various related subtopics. The C-JAS corpus is an essential contribution to the study of second language acquisition of Japanese language and is especially useful in observing language learning through the viewpoint of its development. 3. Analysis of learners' production of adjectives in C-JAS This section analyzes learner production of adjectives in C-JAS, shows the developmental sequence of used adjectives, and classifies learner mistakes into different types. 3.1 Overall production of adjectives The number of adjectives that appear in the corpus is 8459, out of which on average approximately 85% (7204) are produced correctly and 15% (1255) are produced as an error. Table 1 shows the usage of adjectives by six learners (Korean K1-3 and Chinese C1-3) within eight different periods - a) shows the overall correct and incorrect usage of adjectives, b) covers only incorrect usages, and c) shows only correct usage of adjectives. As can been expected, there are obviously differences among students in their production of adjectives, but above the mere observation of differences, there are some tendencies in the adjective usage that can be noticed. Chinese student C2 produces the most adjectives and he/she is followed by Korean students K3 and K2 and Chinese student C1 who produce adjectives at an average or above average rate (where an average is calculated based on the overall usage of the target students). This group also shows a relatively correct usage of adjectives, where Korean student K2 displays above average performance. On the other hand, the Chinese student C3 is characteristic due to the below average usage of adjectives, but with a high percentage of correct usage, while the Korean student K1 has by far the lowest usage of adjectives with the highest production of mistakes, which might be an indicator of the lowest level of Japanese language proficiency among the target students. Further on, Figure 1 summarizes wrong usages of adjectives and shows how the error production is at the highest level in the learning phases at the beginning, then lowers down, being especially low in the periods 3 and 4 or 4 and 5, and then goes up again. Only C3 shows a slightly different tendency with less mistakes in the beginning than later on and with a number of ups and downs during the learning curve. Table 1: Adjectives -i in the C-JAS corpus per speaker and language learning period a) Overall usage (correct and incorrect) S P1 P2 P3 P4 P5 P6 P7 P8 TOTAL K1 10 36 134 121 101 126 112 113 753 K2 230 181 188 199 191 171 181 168 1509 K3 123 202 212 203 262 260 249 281 1792 C1 69 / 158 298 183 226 215 249 1398 C2 249 221 210 220 237 235 253 226 1851 C3 137 190 131 147 103 133 164 151 1156 8459 b) Only wrong usage S P1 P2 P3 P4 P5 P6 P7 P8 TOTAL K1 3 11 47 25 15 25 20 25 171 K2 61 29 15 7 8 14 18 14 166 K3 29 54 35 30 42 21 31 27 269 C1 12 / 23 41 32 40 27 36 211 C2 87 40 22 26 35 18 19 26 273 C3 13 35 22 19 14 25 15 22 165 1255 c) Only correct usage S P1 P2 P3 P4 P5 P6 P7 P8 TOTAL K1 7 25 87 96 86 101 92 88 582 K2 169 152 173 192 183 157 163 154 1343 K3 94 148 177 173 220 239 218 254 1523 C1 57 / 135 257 151 186 188 213 1187 C2 162 181 188 194 202 217 234 200 1578 C3 124 155 109 128 89 108 149 129 991 7204 Figure 1: Only wrong usage of adjectives (%) 3.2 Production and analysis of mistakes This section describes the types of mistakes that appear in the production of adjectives and provides a few examples of incorrect production and possible explanations in the case of the adjective takai. 3.2.1 Overall production Table 2 shows a) the overall usage of correct and incorrect forms and b) incorrect usage of the adjective takai by six learners within different periods. Similar to the overall usage of adjectives described above in section 3.1, the differences in performance can be observed and summarized as: • rare usage of the adjective takai and no mistakes (K1), • quite a productive usage of the adjective takai and almost no error (actually, one mistake out of 39 usages of the adjective) (K2), • frequent usage of the adjective takai and a high rate of produced mistakes (K3), • relatively frequent usage of the adjective takai and a few errors produced (C1,2,3). Korean student 1 performs with the lowest usage of the adjective takai, which is in line with his overall adjective usage. Korean student K2 displays above average performance with a largely productive usage of the adjective takai and almost no errors, which is the case for his overall adjective usage as well. Looking into the percentage of errors out of the overall takai usage per period reveals that the number of errors is higher in the beginning and lowers down later on, but there is a tendency to produce a high number of errors in the middle periods 4 and 5. The number of errors lowers down with period 6 and stays low until the last periods covered by the data. Table 2: Language learners' usage of takai a) Overall usage (correct and incorrect) S P1 P2 P3 P4 P5 P6 P7 P8 Total K1 0 0 1 0 1 2 0 2 6 K2 8 17 2 1 5 1 2 3 39 K3 4 4 1 2 12 0 5 2 30 C1 1 0 3 1 0 3 11 6 25 C2 4 3 0 0 3 5 6 4 25 C3 4 0 2 4 4 2 8 3 27 Total 21 24 9 8 25 13 32 20 152 b) Only wrong usage S P1 P2 P3 P4 P5 P6 P7 P8 Total %of mistakes K1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 K2 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 2.6 K3 0 3 0 2 3 0 0 0 8 26.7 C1 0 0 0 0 0 0 2 1 3 12.0 C2 2 1 0 0 1 0 0 0 4 16.0 C3 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 0 3 11.1 Total 3 4 1 2 5 1 2 1 19 12.5 % of mistakes 14.3 16.7 11.1 25.0 20.0 7.7 6.3 5.0 12.5 Table 3 shows the types of mistakes per period and student in the production of the adjective takai. Mistakes related to lexical selection, either missing a collocate or choosing a wrong one, are quite often in the case of takai. Grammar mistakes are the next type of mistake that often appears. The number of mistakes is still relatively small to be able to draw conclusions about tendencies per separate periods or between different students. With some caution it can be noticed that grammar mistakes are spread all over the periods while lexical mistakes tend to appear more in earlier phases, though they are present later on as well. However, this needs to be clarified using larger data and expanded to cover a greater variety of adjectives. Some students are prone to make some type of mistakes more than others; in the case of adjectives, for example, the Chinese student C2 does not display grammar mistakes, while making mostly lexical ones with some pronunciation mistakes as well, when producing the adjective takai. Table 3: Types of language learners' mistakes per period and per student (the case of takai) Mistakes per period Lexical (missing collocate) Grammar Pronunciation Lexical (wrong collocation) Discourse General knowledge Total 1 2 1 3 2 1 1 1 2 5 3 1 1 2 4 1 1 2 5 2 1 3 6 6 1 1 7 1 1 1 3 8 1 1 Total 6 6 4 4 2 1 23 Mistakes per student Lexical (missing collocate) Grammar Pronunciation Lexical (wrong collocation) Discourse General knowledge Total K3 2 3 1 1 2 9 C2 3 2 1 6 C1 1 1 1 1 4 C3 2 2 C3 1 K2 1 1 1 Total 6 6 4 4 2 1 23 3.2.2 Usage examples Example 1 is produced by the Chinese learner C2 in period 2: When asked to describe a person, the learner uses adjectives takai and ookii "big", both in the correct conjunctive form (renyou-kei). The grammar is correct but the lexical mistake (missing collocate) can be noticed in line 87L (L stands for learner, and N for native): in Japanese W se "back" needs to be used to specify the attribute (se ga takai hito "a tall person"). The following native speaker's question in the conversation nani ga (line 88N) 'What is?" also indicates the lack of that part of the collocate. The next line (line 89L) shows a lexical mistake (wrong collocate) where kao "face" is produced instead of se. The reason for this mistake needs to be further explored, but one possible interpretation is that the newly learnt words kao and se were mixed up. Here, the native speaker jumps in and suggests se ga "the back is" (in the corpus indicated with brackets), which helps the learner to produce the intended correct expression. Example 1: Chinese learner C2, period 2, lexical mistake (missing collocate, wrong collocate) for sei ga takai 86 N ¿X^Afcofc? Fuun, donna hito datta? "What kind of person he was?" 87 L Uun, takakute, ookikute "Well, a high, big" 88 N W Nani ga "What was high, big?" Kao ga sei, sei ga taka, takai, ato wa, yasashii no kao shite ru kedo ne "The face the back, the back is high (meaning "he is tall"), and, he has a very friendly face" [Note by translator: The learner makes a mistake and does not specify "what is high", which is actually required in Japanese for the adjective takai "tall/ high/expensive" where "a tall person" is literary formed as "the back is high + person".] 90 N m^t Honto "Really" 91 L 5^ Un "Yea" While in English and some other languages the expression a tall person is formed by combining an adjective and a noun, in the case of Japanese, W se "back" is used to specify the attribute (se ga takai hito). The need to specify the attribute comes from the semantic range of the adjective takai (see also Section 3.4) covering not only high and tall things but also those expensive and high in quantity or quality. Since takai hito can also be referred to, for example, using the expressions kyuuryou ga takai hito "a person with a high salary", komyunikeeshon nouryoku ga takai hito "a person with a high level of communication ability" the attributive role of takai. As discussed in detail within Srdanovic (2013), the form of this combination is unpredictable1 by Japanese language learners who are native speakers of English, but not exclusively, and as such directly related to language burden and learner's possible mistakes. Therefore, such kinds of unpredictable combinations need to be paid special attention to in the teaching/learning 1 The phenomenon of predictability and unpredictability of collocations is introduced in Nation 2001. process. This is also confirmed by the error analysis. Such kind of mistakes tends to appear with some learners. In C-JAS data and in the case of takai, this kind of mistake reappeared a number of times especially in the case of the Chinese learner C2. Example 2 is an obvious example of wrong usage of the adjective takai in connection with one's age. Although in Japanese it is possible to say koureisha "an old person" using the character SV takai/kou, takai is not used as a predicate or noun attribute to refer to the noun a toshi "year(s)" Similarly the noun is not used in combination with the adjective ooi "a lot of'. The reason that these two language mistakes happened can be found in the influence of the native language of the speaker, Korean, where adjectives with the meaning ooi and takai appear as predicates of the noun denoting someone's age. Example 2: Korean student K2, period 1, lexical mistake (wrong collocate) 226 L fiv\ £#pwa a—cot^f [mfi], fcW-, [*¥] [^Lfcb] Lofcb, tb5 <5A5A5A>4 ^P^Tofc-, Hai koukou dake de waa, senmontekina, nn tattoeba [tatoeba], koukou sochugyo [sotsugyou] shitara, morau kyuuryo [kyuuryou] wa sukunai n dakedoo, taigaku [daigaku] sochugyo [sotsugyou shitara] shittara, morau kyuuryou wa, motto takai da karaa, yon nenkan okonattaa, kekkaa ga aru n janai kanaa to omoimasu. "Yes, only with a high school, a specialized one, for example when one graduates from a high school, the salary he gets is lower, and when one graduates from a university, the salary he gets is higher, so I think there is a merit in studying four years" [Note by translator: the learner makes some mistakes in pronunciation of tattoeba instead of tatoeba, sochugyo instead of sotsugyou, shittara instead of shitara etc. The teacher often confirms that she follows the conversation by backchannel markers hai and un] 111 N Aa naru hodo ne "Oh, I see" 3.3 Developmental sequence of adjectives In this section we explore the developmental sequence of adjectives through the case of the frequent adjective takai "high, tall, expensive". We take the Chinese student C2, who showed an average performance on adjective usage and production of takai, as an illustrative example. Sakoda et al. (2012) explores the developmental sequence of verbs by making a C-JAS survey of the verbs omou "think" and taberu "eat". The study revealed that there are phenomena both similar to and different from the patterns of first language acquisition. Deriving a new correct form (e.g. omou kara "because (I) think" based on the plain form acquired before (e.g. omou "think") is common to both first and second language acquisition, whereas plain verb forms characterize Japanese children's verbs in their first appearances which is in contrast to the polite forms seen in learners' verbs. Additionally, in the development of verb acquisition, a unique learners' interlanguage form "plain verb + desri" (e.g. omotta desu "thought COP (POLITE)") appears, which seems to be a transitional form. Table 4 shows the development sequence of the adjective takai in the case of the Chinese student C2. In the first period, simple plain forms of the adjective in its predicative role can be observed. It can be noticed that the learner is already in the beginner phase and fluent in colloquial forms un, desho "yes, probably", and particle mo "also". The following period shows that takai is appropriately produced in its continuous form (renyou-kei). From the later periods, 5-8, we can notice a slight transition from the usage of takai in plain forms and short simple sentences into usage of takai inside more complex sentence structure and various combinations of takai with other elements in a sentence and with various functions. In period 5, the attributive role (rentai-kei) and the adverbial role (renyou-kei) appear: takai gakureki "a high educational history", takaku mottara ikenai "it shouldn't get that high". The complex sentence structure N1 wa N2 ga takai "N1 has a high N2" and the conditional form with -tara "if/when" also appears in this period and is repeated later on. The following period brings conjunctional usages with -kara "because/from", -shi "and/as well as", while the final periods 7 and 8 show clause-final modality forms such as no do* ka (no ..to ka) "[marks the preceding utterance as a reason/explanation and hints at additional reasons]", naa to omotta "I thought that", and n de "[marks the preceding utterance as a reason/explanation]". Table 4: Development sequence of takai in the case of the Chinese student C2 Per. Explan. Examples Form Un, takai takai N mo takai (Wider) context (sotsugyou shitara, kyuuryou ga) senmon gakkou mo takai (sotsugyou shitara, kyuuryou ga) 1 Form *N, takai desho * takai (Wider) context otousan, oniisan, minna, takai desho Hontou ni takai (otousan, oniisan, minna) Correction ^ otousan, oniisan, minna, se ga takai desho ^ Hontou ni se ga takai (otousan, oniisan, minna) Form *Un, takakute, *kao ga se ga taka, takai (Wider) context *Un, takakute, ookikute (hito) (hito) 2 Correction ^ Un, se ga takakute, karada ga ookikute Form N takai desho (Wider) context *seikatsudai takai desho Correction ^ seikatsuhi takai desho Per. Explan. Examples Form *Ano, N wa, ne, takkai N motte tara, yoku nai *N takkaku mottara ikenai (Wider) context *Ano, josei wa, ne, takkai gakureki motte tara, yoku nai *Gakureki takkaku mottara ikenai 5 Correction ^ Ano, josei wa, ne, takai gakureki motte tara, yoku nai ^ Gakureki takaku mottara ikenai/Gakureki takakattara ikenai Form * Takkai N wa... Se ga takakute, (Wider) context * Takkai hito wa ... Correction ^ Takai hito wa ••• Form Se ga takaî? (Wider) context (repeating native speaker's expression) (repeating native speaker's expression) 6 Form Ato, N wa, N ga takai desho, , N mo takai shi, (Wider) context Ato, Nihon wa, seikatsuhi ga takai desho, , hikoukidai mo takai shi, Form , nandemo takai kara, Form *N mo ... konna ni takai no do ka Takai (3x) (Wider) context *Heya mo konna ni semai de, konna ni takai no do ka (ie, an answer to a question by native speaker; nikuman 2x) 7 Correction ^ Heya mo konna ni semakute, konna ni takai no to ka Form *Shikamo takai da shi Dakara, N nandemo takai naa to omotta (Wider) context (oniku) Dakara, Nihon nandemo takai naa to omotta Correction ^ Shikamo takai shi Form Ano, takai N wo V_past n de, ... nanka takai N (Wider) context Ano, takai kutsu wo *haita n de, Ano, kutsu no ichiban, ushiro no hou, nanka takai bubun 8 Correction ^ Ano, takai kutsu wo haite ta n de, Form *Ano, ushiro takai N ... kara, V no N ga N ga takai (Wider) context *Ano, ushiro takai bubun ga ochite shimatte ... kara, deru *no hou ga kyuuryou ga takai Correction ^ Ano, ushiro no takai bubun ga totte shimatte ^ ... kara, deru hou ga kyuuryou ga takai It is interesting to observe that although some grammar items are used correctly and seem to be already acquired, after some time they are reused as a transitional learner's interlanguage form. For example, although takai shi "as well as high/tall/expensive" is correctly used in period 6, the transitional interlanguage form is created in period 7 takai *da shi "as well as high/tall/expensive [with an unnecessary copula da]", where the usage of da seems to be influenced by noun and adjective -na forms. In addition, the lexical mistake mentioned in section 3.2.2 seems to re-appear and it is interesting to bring its progress to attention. The omission of se in se ga takai already appears in period 1, and then repeats in the following period. During the conversation in period 6, the native speaker uses the expression se ga takai, and then the learner repeats it twice, which can also be noted as a good practice for overcoming learner's errors. Finally, it is interesting to notice the practical role of the adjective takai. As a basic adjective it is used by learners to descriptively denote some notions for which lexical representations are unfamiliar to them. For example, in period 8, takai is used to denote high heels: Ano, kutsu no ichiban, ushiro no hou, nanka takai bubun "the high part that is the most behind on a shoe". 3.4 Lexical domains used by language learners This section describes the lexical domains of the adjective takai that are covered by language learners. Nouns that are modified by the adjective are grouped based on their meaning and are observed in comparison to the lexical domains of the same adjective used by native speakers. As described in Srdanovic (2013), the adjective takai in combination with the modified nouns covers three large lexical domains: positional relations (takai yama "a high mountain", takai tokoro "a high place", takai kabe "a high wall/a high barrier"), quantitative relations (takai kakuritsu "a high probability", takai wariai "a high percentage") and superior/inferior relations (takai hyouka "high evaluation", takai nouryoku "a high ability"). Each of the domains is further divided into subgroups of meanings and sorted from more concrete to more abstract, from more natural to more artificial, from ordinary to metaphorical meanings. Figure 2 shows a lexical map of the most frequent domains used with the adjective takai. For example, the positional relations domain starts with the concrete nouns observable in nature (yama "mountain", ki "tree"), further covers those created by humans (biru "building", kabe "wall") and finally introduces metaphorical meanings (kabe "barrier", haadoru "barrier") egssis Figure 2: Lexical map of the adjective takai and the modified nouns, Japanese and English version (Figure reproduced from Srdanovic,2013) Analysis of learners' production of the adjective takai shows that learners overwhelmingly use the first two semantic domains: positional and quantitative, but do not use the more abstract superior/inferior relation. Only one Korean learner (K2) out of 6 uses the third superior/inferior domain. The same learner is described as "being above average in his performance" based on the quantitative and qualitative analysis of the overall correct and incorrect adjective production (see Section 3.1). Observed wider usage of lexical domains might be related to the learner's richer vocabulary. 4. Conclusion In this paper we present learners' production of Japanese language i-adjectives using the Japanese language learner's corpus C-JAS. First we showed how adjectives are produced by learners and pointed out differences in learners' language performances. Analysis of errors showed that error production is at the highest level in the learning phases in the beginning, then lowers down, is especially low in the middle periods, and then again grows a bit. Interestingly, the overall usage of adjectives reveals a big similarity with the differences in learners' performances observed for the adjective takai. The analysis of the production of takai and overall adjectives provide good indications about each learner's language competence. Analysis of error types in the case of takai showed that lexical errors (omitting and wrong usage of a collocate) appear often, followed by errors in grammar. Analysis of the developmental sequence of adjectives showed the development from plain simple forms of takai to usage of takai in more complex sentence structures with various roles. The transitional learner's interlanguage form is also observed (takai da* shi— takai shi "as well as high [ *with and without the copula da]"). Analysis of the lexical domains of the adjective takai used by the language learners revealed that the majority of target learners use only two domains relating to positional and quantity relations, while the third more abstract lexical domain referring to quality relations (superior) is widely used only by one learner, who seems to be the most proficient and with the richest vocabulary. This study explained the overall usage of adjectives in C-JAS corpus and analyzed in detail the usage of the adjective takai. In the future, there is a need to do the analysis for other frequent adjectives, as well as expand the analysis to encompass various Japanese language learners' corpora. The development of a large-scale Japanese language learner corpus of written and speech data for learners who are native speakers of twelve different languages is currently in progress at the National Institute for Japanese Language and Linguistics (Sakoda 2013) and will surely contribute to the empirical study of Japanese learners' data as introduced in this research. References Dixon, R.M.W. (1982). Where Have all the Adjectives Gone? and other Essays in Semantics and Syntax. The Hague: Mouton. Nation, P. (2001) Learning vocabulary in another language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Srdanovic, I. (2013, forthcoming) Daikibo koopasu wo mochiita keiyoushi to meishi no korokeishon no kijutsuteki kenkyuu: Nihongo kyouiku no jisho sakusei ni mukete (Description of Adjective and Noun Collocations Based on Large-Scale Corpora: Towards Dictionary for Japanese Language Learners). Kokurltsu kokugo kenkyuujo ronshuu (NINJAL Research Papers) 6. Sakoda, K., Kinoshita, A., Konishi, M., Lee, J. (2012) Nihongo gakushuusha no juudanteki kaiwa koopasu no kouchiku to shuutoku kenkyuu: 3 nennkan no deeta kara bunpou shuutoku no katei wo saguru (The development of the Japanese learners' conversational longitudinal corpus and the language acquisition research: observing the process of grammar acquisition from the three-year data). 2012 nendo nlhongo kyoulku kokusal kenkyuu talkal yokoushuu (The proceeding of the International research conference on Japanese language dldactlcs for year 2012) Sakoda, K. (2013) Nihongo gakushuusha no hatsuwa koopasu to doushi no hattatsu. (Learners' Spoken Corpus of Japanese and Developmental Sequence of Verbs) Kokugoken purojekuto rebyuu (NINJAL ProjectRevlew), 107-116. Kokuritsu kokugo kenkyuujo (National Institute for the Japanese Language and Linguistics) Sakoda, K. (2012) Hibogowasha no komyunikeishon kufuu (Ingenuity of communication for non-native speakers). Nlhongo kyoulku no tame no komyunlkelshon kenkyuu (Studles ln communlcatlon for Japanese language dldactlcs), 105-124. Tokyo: Kuroshio shuppan On the Formation of Verb Compounds in Early Middle Japanese LI Wenchao Zhejiang University, China wideliau@gmail.com Abstract This paper is dedicated to the formation of verb compounds in Early Middle Japanese, a stage of the Japanese language used in the Heian Period (794-1185). The findings reveal that current verb compounds have come a long way from Old Japanese. Multiple verbs in Old Japanese are assigned to an associate type, rather than a compounding type of relation. Thus, the serial constituents receive equal syntactic weight, giving rise to the extensive use of the coordinate type and succession type of multi-verbs. In Early Middle Japanese, the combinations of the two constituents seem much tighter, giving rise the frequent use of the modifier-predicate V-V. The conclusion emerging from this study is that it was not until Early Middle Japanese that verb compounds in the strict sense appeared. Moreover, two types of verb weakening are observed in Early Middle Japanese: (a) transformation of the first verb into a prefix, (b) grammaticalization of the second verb into a directional/resultative complement. Keywords: Old Japanese; Early Middle Japanese; verb compounds; argument structure; grammaticalization Izvleček Članek se posveča formaciji sestavljenih glagolov v zgodnje-srednji japonščini (obdobje Heian, 794-1185). Rezultati raziskave kažejo, da so današnje oblike sestavljenih glagolov precej drugačne od tistih v stari japonščini. V večbesednih glagolih v stari japonščini so bili odnosi med posameznimi deli na ravni navezovanja, medtem ko današnji pripisani povezovanju. V stari japonščini je imel vsak posamičen del sestavljenega glagola dodeljeno enakovredno sintaktično vlogo, kar je privedlo do razširjene uporabe priredno sestavljenih in zaporedno sestavljenih večbesednih glagolov. V zgodnje-srednji japonščini je vez med členi takšnega glagola postala tesnejša, kar je spodbudilo odnos določilo-povedkovnik. Iz tega lahko zaključimo, da sestavljeni glagoli izvirajo iz zgodnje-srednje japonščine. Poleg tega smo ugotovili, da sta v zgodnje-srednji japonščini obstajala dva tipa glagoskega šibljenja, to sta a) dodajanje predpon glagolom in (b) gramatikalizacija glagolov, pri kateri nastanejo smerno-rezultatska dopolnila. Ključne besede: stara japonščina; zgodnje-srednja japonščina; sestavljeni glagoli; struktura argumenta; gramatikalizacija This work was supported by a grant from the Division of Humanities, Zhejiang University, China (2013-2014). Acta Linguistica Asiatica, 3(2), 2013. ISSN: 2232-3317, http://revije.ff.uni-lj.si/ala/ DOI: 10.4312/ala.3.2.25-40 5. Introduction Early Middle Japanese is a stage of the Japanese language that was used in the Heian Period (794-1185). Compared with Old Japanese, there is a range of phonological changes. Firstly, the sound characteristics, reflected in Jodai Tokushu Kanazukai are completely lost. From the 10th to the 11th century, /e/ and /je/ merge into /e/; /o/ and /wo/ merge into /o/. Second, prenasalised consonants shift to voiced consonants. The change further accompanies the development of the writing system. Early Middle Japanese shifted from man'yogana to the purely phonetic script hiragana. Three forms of writing existed: (a) a mixture of hentaikanbun and man 'yogana, mostly used in documentary; (b) hiragana kanji majiri bun, "a mixture of Chinese characters and Japanese hiragana syllabary characters", mostly used in poems or tales; (c) kanji katakana majiri bun, "a mixture of Chinese characters and katakana syllabary characters", extensively used in the Late Heian Period. This brings us to the issue of whether verb compounding might differ accompanying the shift of writing systems in Early Middle Japanese. This paper takes the multi-verbs1 in Old Japanese as a point of departure and moves towards a more unified account of how verb compounds are built in Early Middle Japanese. The paper is organized as follows. Section 2 gives a brief introduction to the formation of multi-verbs in Old Japanese; this serves as the starting point of this study. Section 3 moves on to the formation of verb compounds in Early Middle Japanese, focusing upon the argument structure. Section 4 searches for the shifts that lie in the morphology and lexicon in the different stages, in order to ascertain trends in the development of V-V formation from Old Japanese to Early Middle Japanese. Section 5 highlights the distinct formation conditions of V-V compounds and concludes the paper. The data for this paper come from: (a) Monogatari literature, including Eiga Monogatari (EGM), Genji Monogatari (GJM), Heike Monogatari (HKM), Ise Monogatari (ISM) and Ujijui Monogatari (UJM); (b) Nikki diaries, including Tosanikki (TSK), Makura no Soshi (MKS); (c) Waka poetry, including Kokin Wakashu (KKW); (d) Setsuwa literature, including Konjaku Monogatarishu (KJM). 1 To make a distinction with V-V combinations in Early Middle Japanese, this paper refers to serial verb constructions of Old Japanese as multi-verbs. Moreover, this paper only deals with two-verb constructions. Three-verb constructions are not tackled. 6. Multi-verbs in Old Japanese Before attempting to see how the verb compound in Early Middle Japanese is built, it seems appropriate to sketch an overview of multi-verb constructions in Old Japanese. 6.1 An introduction to Old Japanese The Japanese language employed Chinese characters to represent vernacular Japanese on paper before the development of the purely phonetic hiragana script (in the late 800s AD). Kojiki, the oldest extant chronicle in Japan, is written in a mixed Chinese-Japanese script, which is termed hentai-kanbun "variant Chinese". Variant Chinese refers to a script that is a combination of Chinese and a phonetic transcription of Japanese. Nihon shoki is the second oldest extant chronicle and was written in classical Chinese. Man'yöshü is the oldest collection of Japanese poetry and was written in man 'yögana, with Chinese characters used roughly in three principal ways, i.e., to represent Japanese words, to represent Japanese syllables, and to write Chinese loanwords. 6.2 Variation of multi-verbs in Old Japanese Given this background and on the basis of Li's (2012) insights, perhaps we can give a rough description of multi-verbs (M-V) in Old Japanese as: a. Coordinate M-V, i.e. (1)-(2) b. Successive M-V, i.e. (3)-(4) c. Modifier-predicate M-V (V1 modifiers V2) d. Predicate-modifier M-V (V2 modifiers V1) e. Predicate-complement M-V, i.e. (9)-(10) Coordinate M-V: (1) ^m £ « m sm ^ ipapasi ni opwi-nabik-yeru tamamo mo stepping-stone grow-flutter.CONCL water-weeds FOC "The water-weeds grow along the stepping stone in a fluttering (MYS.2.196) , i.e. (5)-(6) , i.e. (7)-(8) zo FOC way." 2 The analysis and glossing of Old Japanese examples follow Frellesvig (2010). A list of abbreviations is given at the end of the paper. (2) m ft « a asi-zuri situtu tatimatini kokoro ke-use- nu feet scoot-INF. CONT quickly.ADV heart vanish-get lost PERF "Keep scooting over, then, the heart does not vanish nor get lost" (MYS.9.1740) Successive M-V: (3) feA ffl AA sawi gapa ywo kumwo tati-Sai river ITJ cloud rise-"Marry the older, and the first person w (KK. 20) watari cross.INF reaches the top of the mountain." (4) mnm m a aa M A ^M3 rn mononopu no ya- swoudi gapa ni tamamonasu ukabe-nagas-ere Samurai GEN many clan river DAT seaweed float-flow.PASS "Many people throng into the river to work like seaweed." (MYS.1.50) In (3) and (4), V1 and V2 are interpreted to be in successive relation. In other words, the V-V combination is considered to be equivalent to Modern Japanese "participle complex predicate (V-te-V) ". Modifier-predicate M-V: (5) * « & # sg n a m FF A awo kagu yama pa pi notate no opo-mi kadwo ni green Kagu hill TOP eastern GEN HON gate DAT * & »A m £ w paru yama tosi mi sabwi- tat-eri spring-time hill PART HON towerin- stand.NMNL "The green hill of Kagu of Yamato stands at the eastern gate, a luxuriant spring-time hill." (MYS.1.52) (6) a Att # pmt m a^ pmt sisi koso ba ipapi-worogame udura koso ipapi-motopore pig deer FOC COND creep-worship quail FOC creep-worship "Pigs, deer and quails creep to worship." (MYS.3.239) 3 ttMl for Aip^A Predicate-modifier M-V: (7) » ft a^A asL pikuman wo ni nipopu paripara iri-midare Hikuma Plain DAT beautiful bush-clover push through-freely "Pushing freely through the bush-clovers, flowering on Hikuma plain." (MYS.1.57) (8) SW4 A m « tamapoko no miti yuki-kurasi Tamahoko COP road go-benighted.INF "I walk on the way until it gets dark." (MYS.1.79) Predicate-complement M-V: (9) ma A tt & s a une mye no swode puki-kapyesu asuka kaze lady GEN sleeve blow-flutter.CONCL Asuka wind "The gentle winds at Asuka fluttered the ladies' sleeves." (MYS.1.51) (10) ^ A # a ^ a aki tate ba momiti kazas-eri yuki-sopu fall come. COND tinted leaves plug.INF go along "When autumn comes, the leaves tint (the god of mountains) godly tributes to the throne." (MYS.1.38a) To sum up briefly, multi-verbs in Old Japanese contain three variations in argument structure, as shown in Table 1. Table 1: Variation of argument structure of multi verbs in Old Japanese (The examples are drawn from MYS) Argument structure Example 1. intransitive V + intransitive V ft^iTC rn^A, aoaa, MMA AA^O S^Afe, SxA<, S£A, AAAfe 2. transitive V + unaccusative V A^A, mnmz, wha< 3. intransitive V + transitive V 4 ttMl for fê road With this in place, perhaps we can pause and draw a preliminary conclusion here: morphosyntax played a central role in Old Japanese. Crucially, the combination of the two constituents appears relatively loose. The two constituents in other words seem to receive equal weight syntactically and morphologically. 7. Verb compounds5 (V-V) in Early Middle Japanese We are now in the position to consider the formation of verb compounds in Early Middle Japanese by focusing upon the argument structure. Based on our data, it appears that at least four variations are available for building a verb compound, namely, (a) modifier-predicate type, (b) coordinate type, (c) succession relation type and (d) complement type. 7.1 Modifier-predicate type [v' V [Vm-V]] It should be noted that, unlike Old Japanese, in which coordinate multi-verbs have the largest applicability of all complex predicates, the modifier-predicate type appears relatively productive in Early Middle Japanese. Typical examples would be (11) and (12): (11) K ti^AO oo L aruka nakika ni kieiri tsutsu mono shi have have-NEG DAT disappear-into CONT thing REST tamahu o goransuru ni HON ACC HON DAT "Looking at (Kooi), who is dying." (GJM • Kiritsubo) (12) ^ d mn t >b ^ m d ® w^wo mizu no nagare mo kokoro yuki ike no men sumiwatari water NOM flow FOC heart go.INF lake GEN surface pellucid "Heart goes as the water's flowing, prellucidly." (EGM. Vol. 36) A salient property of (11) and (12) is that it involves two verbal forms: a main verb, denoted by V2, i.e., A5 iri "come in", wataru "cross", and an adverbial verb denoted by V1, i.e., kie "disappear", sumu "to be pellucid". All the constituents are intransitive. 5 The reason why this paper refers to multi-verb construction as verb compounds will be explained shortly. There is another pattern of modifier-predicate V-V, formed by a transitive V combined with an intransitive V, as illustrated in (13): (13) MB ttfrV AS* i h I^T Tsukikage bakari zo yaemugura ni mo sayarazu Moonlight REST FOC cleaver DAT EMPH hinder-NEG. CONCL MLAV tzZ> 0 sashiiri taru shine into ASS "Only the moonlight shines in, without being hindered by the cleavers." (GJM • Kiritsubo) It should be noted at this point that it was not until Early Middle Japanese that the combination [V+iru] was allowed.6 Illustrations include omohi-iru "think over", kie-iru "disappear", taei-ru shini-iru nagame-iru HkftAS, naki-iru A5, and ne-iru RA5. In Old Japanese, such combinations are not allowed, as the combination of the two constituents seems quite loose. The reason, perhaps, has to do with the grammaticalization that iru has received in Early Middle Japanese, exhibiting a verb weakening. Though it may still indicate change of location, in most cases, the meaning has been metaphorized. In such constructions, the first constituent is the head and could bear either transitive or intransitive features. After Late Middle Japanese (a Japanese linguistic period spanning c. 1200-1600), osore-iru yorokobi-iru appears, which further indicates that iru has become more dependent on the first constituent. 7.2 Verb weakening The phenomenon of verb weakening is worth commenting on. Our data show the following words tend to appear in the preceding position in quite high frequency: 3I< hiku "pull" (quadrigrade7), osu "push" (quadrigrade), ®< kaku "scratch" (quadrigrade), Ho utsu "hit" (quadrigrade). The frequencies of these verbs appearing in the preceding position as well as the later position are the given in Table 2. 6 There is a similar reference in Hyakutome (2001) regarding the auxiliarisation of the verb iru. 7 Quadrigrade verb conjugation: a type of verb conjugation in classical Japanese. Table 2: Frequency of utsu, etc. appearing in the preceding / later position Lexicon Preceding position Later position Total Percentage of preceding position ff^ osu "push" 46 1 47 97% tTo utsu "hit" 67 8 75 89% S< kaku "scratch" 35 1 36 97% ^ su "do" 23 2 25 92% § I < hiku "pull" 69 8 77 89% As can be confirmed by citing the frequency from the database, hiku "pull", osu "push", kaku "scratch", utsu "hit" are likely to appear in the preceding position, which further indicates that their properties as action verbs are reduced and that these verbs appear to function like prefixes. It should be noted that when it comes to Modern Japanese, they are generally used as action verbs and bear strong agentivity. At this stage, it would be appropriate to suggest these prefix-like verbs received "degrammaticalization" as the Japanese language developed. It is also noticed that the following verbs are likely to appear in the later position: Vfc^ idasu "exit" (quadrigrade), tsuku "stick to" (quadrigrade), ISC sawagu "make a noise" (quadrigrade), fc V < ariku "walk" (quadrigrade), ^ 5 masaru "surpass" (quadrigrade), A5 iru "in" (quadrigrade), S5 yaru "give" (quadrigrade), o tatsu "stand" (lower bigrade), ^ ^ nasu "do" (quadrigrade), ^ 5 yoru "approach" (quadrigrade), V O idu "exit" (quadrigrade), ^ o hatsu "realise" (quadrigrade), < yuku "push" (quadrigrade), M ku "come" (ka-irregular), M5 kitaru "come" (quadrigrade), # u "gain" (lower bigrade), @ < oku "put" (quadrigrade), ^5 wataru "cross" (quadrigrade). The frequencies of the above verbs appearing in the preceding or the later position are given in Table 3. Table 3: Frequency of idu etc. appearing in the preceding/later position Lexicon Preceding position Later position Total Percentage of Later position Vo idu "exit" 21 101 122 82% fcV< ariku "walk" 2 45 47 95% fa u gain 2 31 33 93% ^ 15,00% 80.00° o 65.00»o 0.00° 0 65,00% ■ Urdu 25,00°o 85,00% 20.00° o 3 5,00° o 55,00% 3 5,00° o English 0.00° o 0.00° 0 0.00° o 5.00% 45.00% 0.00° 0 ■ Other 0.00° o 0.00° 0 0.00° o 0.00% 0.00° o 0.00° 0 Figure 5: Language use in different social contexts (elder female speakers) Figure 6 shows the proficiency levels of the speaker in Punjabi. It is observed that the elder speakers have relatively better reading and writing abilities as compared to younger ones. Moreover, elder speakers have excellent listening and speaking abilities in Punjabi. The reason behind this high proficiency level is that they have been using it throughout their life. Figure 6: Punjabi language proficiency (elder female speakers) Figure 7 show the results of the same poll based questions, as asked in the case of young female speakers. It was observed that 40% of them think parents are transmitting Punjabi, 50% think they do not transmit it while 10% don't know. Moreover, 45% were of view that it should be transmitted to children while 55% believed it should not be. Figure 7: Opinion on Punjabi (elder female speakers) Regarding the matter of prestige, 75% think it is prestigious language and 70% are proud of being Punjabi speakers. On the other hand, 25% think it is not prestigious while 30% are not proud of being Punjabi speakers. A greater level of language loyalty is to be seen in the case of elder speakers as compared to the younger ones. Similarly as in case of young speakers, shift is also observed in elders ones but not to that greater scale as compared to young speakers. 35% of them think it should be used as medium of education, 60% think it should not be and 05% do not know. Moreover, 40% of elders were of view that initiatives are being taken for Punjabi while 60% do not think likewise. Elder participants were also asked in the questionnaire about language that they think would help them gain prestige in society, the results (as in Figure 8) show shift to Urdu and English but was less as compared to be in case of young speakers as 35% opted for English, 45% for Urdu and 20% for Punjabi. Moreover, another question was asked regarding which language they would wish to be fluent at. 55% expressed that they would like to be fluent at English while 40% opted for Urdu, with Punjabi at only 05%. Which language will help you If you could wake up fluent In a gain prestige in society? language, whioh one would you choose? ■ Punjabi ■Urdu ■ English Figure 8: Prestige value of Punjabi, Urdu and English (eder female speakers) 4.1.3 Male Speakers from Age Group 1 Figure 9 includes information regarding use of language by young male speakers in different domains and with people of different age groups. Shift is to be observed from Punjabi to Urdu but it is somewhat on a lesser scale than that in case of young female speakers. The reason for this may be that females tend to use more prestigious language as compared to males. Still, the speakers tend to use Urdu in most of the domains, with most of people, except for the grandparents (with them Punjabi is used). Moreover, they tend to use English with their friends and within educational institutions (to a great extent) with teachers, but still the use of Urdu prevails. In additions to this, the comparison of male and female data shows that female speakers tend to use English (within educational institutions) more than the male speakers, English being considered a more prestigious language. Figure 9: Language use in different social contexts (young male speakers) Figure 10 shows trend of proficiency of speakers in Punjabi. The results show that as female speakers, male speakers are also not that much skilled in reading and writing Punjabi but they have excellent skills in listening and speaking Punjabi. The comparison between data from male and female participants show that the ability of males to speak and listen Punjabi is much better than that of females, this may be because males tend to use Punjabi regularly (even if on a smaller scale) in several domains. Figure 10: Punjabi language proficiency (young male speakers) Figure 11 shows the result of the poll questions added in the questionnaire. It was observed that 35% of them think parents are transmitting Punjabi, 40% think they do not transmit it while 25% don't know. Moreover, 35% were of view that it should be transmitted to children while 65% think it should not be. Regarding the matter of prestige, 25% think it is prestigious language and 30% are proud of being Punjabi speakers. On the other hand, 75% think it is not prestigious while 70% are not proud of being Punjabi speakers. Similarly, as in case of young female speakers, shift is also observed in young male speakers. Question was added regarding the use of Punjabi for educational purposes. 15% of the participants think it should be used as medium of education, 65% think it should not be used. The reason for not selecting the use of Punjabi for educational purposes may that it lacks that prestige as it is considered to be the language of abuse and is not considered fit for educational matters. A more amazing fact is that in some schools students have to pay fine if they speak Punjabi within the domains. Moreover, 30% of participants were of view that initiatives are being taken for Punjabi while 70% said the efforts are negligible. Figure 11: Opinion on Punjabi (young male speakers) Participants were also asked about language that they think would help them gain prestige in society, the results show incredible shift to Urdu and especially to English as 60% opted for English, 40% for Urdu and 0% for Punjabi. Moreover, another question was asked regarding which language they would wish to be fluent at. 70% expressed that they would like to be fluent at English while 30% opted for Urdu, with Punjabi again at 0%, as shown in Figure 12. 80,00% 70,00% 60,00% 50,00% 40,00% 30,00% 20,00% 10,00% 0,00% Which language will help you If you could wake up fluent In a gain prestige In society? language, which one would you choose? ■ Punjab »Urdu »English Figure 12: Prestige value of Punjabi, Urdu and English (young male speakers) 4.1.4 Elder Male Speakers from Age group 2 Figure 13 includes the figures containing information regarding use of language by elder male speakers in different domains and with people of different age groups. It is clearly seen that they maintain to use Punjabi within most of the domains. There is exception of usage of Punjabi with the children (to a great extent) as 40 % of them use Punjabi while 60% use Urdu. Shift is seen in the use of language within workplaces. 40% of the participants use Urdu while 60% of them use English. The reason for shift is that employers may restrict the employees from using certain language and force one to prefer another one. This shows that English proves to be an important factor for determining the social mobility because those having good command over English are preferred over other individuals. 100.00° 0 S0.00°o 60,OCR o 40,00° o 20,00° o 0,00° o I Il 1 1 1 II. 1 Parents Children Siblings Friends Workplace Market ■Punjabi S0.00°o 40.00° o 100,00° o 73,00% 0,00° Ô 100.00° 0 ■ Urdu 20,00° o 60,00% 0,00° 0 2 7,009 o 40,00° o 0,00° 0 English 0,00° o 0,00°o 0,009 o 5,00° o 60,00° o 0,00° 0 ■ Other 0,00° o 0,00°o 0,0090 0,00° 0 0,00° Ô 0,00° o Figure 13: Language use in different social contexts (elder male speakers) Figure 14 shows the proficiency levels of the speakers in Punjabi. It is observed that the elder speakers have relatively better reading and writing abilities as compared to younger ones. Moreover, elder speakers have excellent listening and speaking abilities in Punjabi. The reason behind this high proficiency level is that they have been using it throughout their life because of being loyal to their mother-tongue. Figure 14: Punjabi language proficiency (elder male speakers) Figure 15 show the results of the same poll based questions, as asked in the case of young male speakers. It was observed that 35% of them think parents are transmitting Punjabi, 40% think they do not transmit it while 25% don't know. Moreover, 40% were of view that it should be transmitted to children while 60% think it should not be. Figure 15: Opinion on Punjabi (elder male speakers) Regarding the matter of prestige, 75% think it is prestigious language & 70% are proud of being Punjabi speakers. On the other hand, 25% think it is not prestigious while 30% are not proud of being Punjabi speakers. A greater level of language loyalty is to be seen in the case of elder speakers as compared to the younger ones. Similarly as in case of young speakers, shift is also observed in elders ones but not to that much greater scale as compared to young speakers. 30% of them think it should be used as medium of education, 50% think it should not be and 20% do not know. Moreover, 35% of elders were of view that initiatives are being taken for Punjabi while 65% do not think likewise. Elder participants were also asked in the questionnaire about language that they think would help them gain prestige in society, the results in Figure 16 (as in Figure 8) show shift to Urdu and English but was less as compared to be in case of young speakers as 65% opted for English, 40% for Urdu and 20% for Punjabi. Moreover, another question was asked regarding which language they would wish to be fluent at. 70% expressed that they would like to be fluent at English while 30% opted for Urdu, with Punjabi at 0%. Figure 16: Prestige value of Punjabi, Urdu and English (elder male speakers) 4.2 Semi-Structured Interviews In order to establish validity of data, Interviews (semi-structured) were conducted. For this one informant from each age group was selected and several questions were asked regarding the Punjabi language and its current scenario in Pakistan. The speakers were identified from the original group and the two were selected who had quite divergent point of views about the status of Punjabi in the eyes of its speakers. Speaker A is a male, 45 years of age (Age group 2) living in urban locality of Sargodha and a teacher by profession. Speaker B is a male, 18 years of age (Age group 1) and belongs to rural side of Sargodha region while studying at University. 4.2.1 Do you think Punjabi is a prestigious language? For Speaker A, the answer was "Obviously yes, I'm of the view that Punjabi is a prestigious language. It has rich literature and a very historic and strong background. It's a sweet language to speak. The problem here in Pakistan is that we consider Punjabi to be language of abuse and lower class (villagers). Young ones should meet the experienced elders in the struggle to find out how sweet and prestigious Punjabi really is." For Speaker B, the answer was an emphatic "No". He elaborated further by saying, "Nobody, if given choice, would like to learn Punjabi. I believe that schools should strictly enforce No Punjabi policy as Punjabi causes accent problems for speakers when they use English later on." 4.2.2 Which language do you think helps people gain prestige in society? In the words of Speaker A, "Urdu is the right choice as it is national language and symbol of pride and honor." Let us quote Speaker B, to him it is "English obviously, Don't you see all these academies for English, Ielts Toefl, Language courses. Why they are for? To teach English like goras'. If we have adopted their dresses why are people ashamed of adopting their language?" Notice the train of thought of young speaker from Age group 1. There is no doubt that English is global language and mandatory for communication but he depicts most of the youngsters of his times who consider sticking to their mother tongue as remaining "paindos" [uncultured] 4.2.3 Should Punjabi be used as a medium of education? The answer was in affirmative by speaker A. Supporting his view point he cited the example of Sindh where primary focus is on Sindhi language. Speaker B believed that it's impossible to use Punjabi as medium of education for Punjabi lacks scientific vocabulary and "sophisticated" expressions. Speaker B: Aj tak Urdu main to parha nahi sky science, bat ap kr rahy hain Punjabi ki. Bhai aisa kaisay hoskta hai? [We have been unable to use Urdu for scientific Education. How is it possible to use Punjabi when Urdu has failed. It is quite impossible, brother] 4.2.4 What effects do you think other languages are having on Punjabi? The question was asked because Urdu and English are dominating linguistic scene of Pakistan. It is quite obvious that giving more status to one language gives the very language power and prestige. The powerful language will tend to be used in the important domains of society such as media, education and movies. Speaker A, in this regard, opined that due to the more powerful and more prestigious languages, Punjabi is being marginalized, being rather slowly murdered at their hands. For Speaker B, the effect is positive and it must be continued till Punjabi "absorbs more vocabulary and becomes a standard language". 5. Field work Findings The main variable considered for this research was Age and the findings show that the trends of shift are more evident in young speakers who tend to use Punjabi less than the elder speaker and prefer Urdu and English over Punjabi though some of them speak Punjabi with elders such as parents and grandparents. In informal settings like hanging out with friends, preference is given to Urdu language over Punjabi as Punjabi lacks prestige. Modern Punjabi speaker has inculcated Punjabi linguistic shame that is hard to be dispelled of and this is the reason why young speakers are not loyal to their mother tongue. Most of the young speakers are of the view that Punjabi should not be used as a medium of education because not everyone has that much receptive and productive ability in Punjabi. This speaks volumes about the future of Punjabi in multilingual Pakistan. Elder speakers use Punjabi nearly in all the domains of life. Sometimes with children too but not in most cases as, due to changing trends of society, they do not want them to learn Punjabi. Elder speakers may switch to languages other than Punjabi for sometime in certain special circumstances (teaching in school, talking to people who cannot understand Punjabi) but they prefer using Punjabi in normal circumstances. It must be noted that their writing competency in Punjabi is also not as good as in Urdu or English - the languages they have learnt in formal settings. Elder speakers consider Punjabi prestigious and it is an honor for them to speak it. For them, it is instrumental to express thoughts and ideas. It must be promoted as medium of education so that its survival and development is ensured. They are of the view that language should be taught to children in order to ensure the continuous transmission through generations. The study findings show the signs of language shift, but they also exhibit signs of hope for Punjabi. Language attitudes expressed in these interviews showed that (a) speakers are aware of Punjabi attrition, (b) members want to try to keep Punjabi alive, (c) elder speakers are more loyal to their language, and (d) it is usually the youngest children who have weak affiliation with Punjabi. They know just the most "imperfect" registers of language and are mostly "semi-speakers". 6. Conclusion Punjabi being the second most spoken language in Pakistan is declining and losing hundreds of speakers day by day due to more powerful languages which pose a threat to the existence of Punjabi. Language maintenance and shift are the long-term, collective consequences of consistent patterns of language choice (Fasold, 1984). The phenomenon is far beyond language attrition as a huge majority of speakers are shifting their loyalties to Urdu. The reasons of shift are numerous like lack of prestige, lack of power, lack of institutional support, linguistic shame etc. It is, therefore necessary, to start projects for the development of Punjabi and moreover parents should teach their children the language as mother tongue (at least the Punjabi families) in order to ensure the sustainability of language. References Baart, J. (2007). Sustainable development and the maintenance of Pakistan's indigenous languages. Crystal, D. (2000). Language Death. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Falk-Bano, K. (1986). Characteristics of Language shift in two American Hungarian Bilingual Communities. Paper presented at 2nd International Conference on Contrastive Linguistics. Fasold, R. (1984). The Sociolinguistics of Society. New York: Basil Blackwell. Grimes, Barbara F. (ed.). 2000. Ethnologue: Languages of the World. 14th Edition. Dallas, TX: SIL International. Grosjean, F. (2001, March). Late and early bilinguals: Similarities and differences. Lecture presented as part of the Barbara Gordon Memorial Linguistics Series, Florida International University, Miami, Florida. Mansoor, S. (1993). Punjabi, Urdu, English in Pakistan. Lahore: Vanguard. Rahman, T. (2003). Language policy, Multilingualism and Language Vitality in Pakistan. http://www.sil.org/asia/ldc/parallel papers/tariq rahman.pdf (Accessed 05.05.2012) Weinreich, U. (1953). Language in Contact. Newyork. Columbia University Press Zaidi, A. (2010). A Postcolonial Sociolinguistics of Punjabi in Pakistan. Journal of Postcolonial Cultures and Societies. Vol. 1(3,4) A Study of Rate of Speech and Intelligibility of Speech in Hearing impaired Pupils of Baghcheban School of Zahedan, Iran1 Mahla SAEDI Islamic Azad University, Science and Research Branch, Iran mahlasaedi@yahoo.com Fateme ALAVI Akram SHEKARIAN BEHZADI Payame Noor University, Iran Falavi76@gmail.com Islamic Azad University, Science and Research Branch, Iran shekarian_akram@yahoo.com Abstract Hearing loss results in disruption of coordination in muscles and structures engaged in speech timing tasks and consequently acquisition of speech sounds is affected. The purpose of this study is to investigate and compare the speed and intelligibility of speech in hearing impaired and normal hearing Persian speaking elementary school boys and girls. 33 hearing impaired students are randomly selected from three hearing impaired groups (profound, severe and moderately-severe) and compared with 60 normal hearing students. The speed of speech was measured according to reading Words Per Minute (WPM), and speech intelligibility was tested by a 5-rank scale method. As expected, the normal hearing had more speed and intelligibility of speech in contrast to the hearing impaired group. Also hearing impaired boys had a better speed and intelligibility of speech compared to hearing impaired girls but in normal hearing group, girls had better speed. The amount of P-value for moderately-severe and sever hearing impaired was 0.006 and this amount for profound and moderately-severe hearing impaired was 0.002, so p-value is <0.05 and significantly important. Profound hearing impaired group read the text more slowly and had lower speech intelligibility than other two hearing impaired groups. Keywords: speed of speech; speech intelligibility; profound hearing impaired; severe hearing impaired; moderately-severe hearing impaired, Persian Izguba sluha ima za posledico motnje v koordinaciji mišic in struktur, ki sodelujejo pri tempiranju govora, kar posledično vpliva na usvajanje glasov govora. Cilj te študije je raziskati in primerjati hitrost in razumljivost govora pri slušno prizadetih in pri normalnih osnovnošolskih otrokih, katerih materinščina je perzijščina. 33 slušno prizadetih učencev je bilo 1 Our special thanks goes to the staff and students of Baghcheban school of Zahedan who helped us during the whole period of administering our tests. Izvleček Acta Linguistica Asiatica, 3(2), 2013. ISSN: 2232-3317, http://revije.ff.uni-lj.si/ala/ DOI: 10.4312/ala.3.2.61-70 na slepo in izbranih izmed treh skupin slušno prizadetih (globoko prizadetih, hudo prizadetih in lažje do hudo prizadetih), da bi jih primerjali s 60 slušno normalnimi otroki. Hitrost govora se je merila s številom besed na minuto (WPM), razumljivost pa s petstopnejsko lestvico. V skladu s pričakovanji so normalni otroci v primerjavi s slušno prizadetimi dosegli večje hitrosti pri govoru ter so bili bolj razumljivi. Prav tako so slušno prizadeti dečki dosegali boljše rezultate pri hitrosti in razumljivosti govora kot pa slušno prizadete deklice. Nasprotno pa so deklice z normalnim sluhom dečke prekašale v obojem. Koeficient P za lažje do hudo slušno prizadete ter za hudo slušno prizadete je bil 0.006, za globoko in lažje do hudo prizadete, 0.002, v obeh primerih < 0.05, torej statistično signifikanten. Globoko slušno prizadeti so brali besedilo počasneje in so bili bolj nerazumljivi kot ostali dve skupini slušno prizadetih. Ključne besede: hitrost govora; razumljivost govora; globoko slušno prizadeti; hudo slušno prizadeti; lažje do hudo slušno prizadeti, perzijščina 1. Introduction Language learning is one of the skills that should be tackled from the very early years of life and in case of neglect, human beings are faced with a lot of irreparable damage. Some factors are involved in impeding language learning one of the most important of which is hearing impairment. In learning a language a special place should be reserved for hearing since it has (at least) temporal priority compared to other human senses. From the first day of life, a child reacts to the sounds of his/her environment and later s/he produces sounds known as cooing. Here we first review some of the studies that have been conducted in the field of hearing impairment. Then we explain the method of our research and the results. After that we have a discussion part in which we compare and contrast the findings of the present paper with the previous research. Venkatagiri (1999; also cited in Ahadi et al., 2009) examined the speed of speech in three tasks of reading a text, describing a text and conversation by 16 male and female college students between the ages of 19 to 31. The results were as follows: - speed in reading a text: 174-186 words per minute, 249-251 syllables per minute - speed in describing a text: 133-147 words per minute, 171-181 syllables per minute - speed in conversation: 136-144 words per minute, 183-204 syllables per minute Svirsky (2000) measured English language skills of children who had lost their hearing ability in pre-language period, before and after cochlear implantation and reached the conclusion that in the face of personal differences, people with the best scores had developed their oral language systems based on the auditory data received from cochlear implantation. Another research by Oliveria, Ortiz, and Vieira (2004) was carried out on 11 people with speech paralysis aged from 18 to 69. In the control group, for every patient there were 3 normal people with the same age and gender. The results showed that in both tasks of reading a text and two-minute conversation, the speech-paralyzed group had a significantly lower speed of speech compared to the control group. According to Pena-Brooks and Hedge (2000) deaf children can not learn and imitate the mental activity of their parents and other hearing adolescents just because these children can't hear these people's talks. The process of development in spoken and written language is essentially slower in hearing impaired people than the normal and in the case of congenitally hearing impaired children. According to them, speech intelligibility is also a problem. Finally it's useful to refer to a research conducted by Tye-Murrey and Woodworth (1989) on 28 deaf children with cochlear implantation to measure their speech intelligibility. The hearing of these children had begun to decrease when they were in their pre-linguistic period. The score for the speech intelligibility was obtained by analyzing the percentage of correct phonemes and words which they produced during both spontaneous and imitative speech. The results indicated low speech intelligibility for children who had used cochlear implantation for 3 years (i.e. 53 percent of phonemes and 22 percent of words were correct). This research also showed that children with cochlear implantation before 5 years of age were better in speech production skills compared to children who were cochlear-implanted after 5. In line with the above studies, the present research combines two methods of Rank Scale and WPM to the aim of investigating the speed and intelligibility of speech in hearing impaired students in Baghcheban school and examine if the findings are approved here or not. 2. Research Method The method of this research is a combination of descriptive study and fieldwork and it tries to investigate the effects of hearing on speed and intelligibility of speech. Our statistical population consisted of two groups: Hearing impaired children from a school for exceptional children named Baghcheban as our experimental group and normal hearing male and female children from Salman Farsi and Sama schools as our control group. The control group consisted of 60 male and female elementary school students with normal hearing (15 girls and 15 boys in the third grade, 9 years old; 15 girls and 15 boys in the fifth grade, 11 years old). Since we had no variability for age, the standard deviation, which is an index of dispersion, was zero. The number of hearing impaired students was 33 (17 boys, 16 girls) who were at the third, fifth, and complementary fifth grades. 7 girls were profound hearing impaired between the ages of 10-16, average 12, standard deviation 2.23; 4 girls, severe hearing impaired between 10-13, average 11, standard deviation 1.51; 5 girls, moderately severe hearing impaired between 10-15, average 12.5, standard deviation 2.19. Among boys, 4 students were profound hearing impaired, between the ages of 1016, average 12.5, standard deviation 2.51; 7 students, severe hearing impaired between 10-14, average 11.42, standard deviation 1.61; and 1 student was moderately-severe hearing impaired aged 13. For calculating the students' speed of speech we requested them to read a selected text from their Farsi (Persian) course book. Then by counting the number of pronounced words, dividing it by the total time spent on reading and multiplying it by 60, we gained the speed of speech in terms of words per minute (WPM): (Richard E. Ham, 1999) For evaluating the students' intelligibility of speech, we used the results of a research by Peng, Spencer, and Tomblin (2004) in which the intelligibility of speech of children with cochlear implantation had been evaluated. The children participated in this study had lost their ability of hearing before the pre-linguistic period. Peng and his colleagues presented these children's speech samples for non-professional adolescents with normal hearing. 3 Normal hearing students judged the speech of every child by a scale of 5 ranks. Rank 5 meant a completely intelligible speech and rank 1 meant a speech not intelligible at all. This method of calculating the intelligibility of speech is called "Rank Scale Method". In our research, recorded samples of students' speech which had been read from a 100-word text were played for 3 non-professional adolescent normal hearing listeners. They were requested to give a rank from 1 to 5 to the intelligibility of speech of students without consulting each other. Among the ranks given by the listeners, the rank which was agreed on by two of the listeners was considered as the correct rank. Most of the time, ranks given by the listeners were the same or similar. For comparing the statistical rank of male and female students' intelligibility of speech with hearing impairment, we used Levin Test. For comparing the statistical rank of male and female students' intelligibility of speech with hearing impairment according to their hearing status, we used ANOVA. For analyzing the relationship between the speed of speech and intelligibility of speech in male and female students with hearing-impairment, we used Spearman Test and for analyzing the same relationship according to the students' hearing status, we used Kruskal-Wallis Test. 3. Results Dispersion and central indices of speed of speech in male and female students with hearing-impairment in elementary school according to their hearing impairments are as follows: The average of speed of speech in male students with profound hearing-impairment was 38.77, severe hearing impairment 51.66 and moderately-severe hearing impairment, 51.91. The average of speed of speech for female students with profound hearing impairment was 35.18, severe hearing impairment 43.5 and moderately-severe hearing impairment, 45.25. In students with hearing impairment the speed of speech of boys was higher than girls but in control group girls perform better in this task. For intelligibility of speech, none of the hearing impaired boys obtained rank 5. Totally, 52.9 percent of them obtained rank 1, 17.6 percent of them rank 2 and 3 and finally 11.8 percent rank 4. Hearing impaired girls could not obtain rank 4 and 5. Totally, 75 percent of them got rank 1, 18.8 percent rank 2 and 6.3 percent rank 3. According to Table 1 below, 85.71 percent of all students with profound hearing impairment obtained rank 1. This means that the speech of most of them was not intelligible. In severe hearing impaired group, 37.5 had unintelligible speech, 50 percent of them obtained rank 2 which means 20 percent intelligible speech and 50 percent rank 4 which means 80 percent intelligible speech. According to the same table, 100 percent of hearing impaired girls had completely unintelligible speech. In severe hearing impaired group too, 100 percent of their speech was unintelligible. Finally, in moderately-severe group, 60 percent obtained rank 2 meaning that 20 percent of their speech was intelligible. Table 1: Intelligibility of speech (in reading a text) for students with hearing impairment in elementary school according to hearing status and gender Gender Rank Scale for Speech Intelligibility Profound Freq./% Severe Moderately-severe Total Boys Rank 1 6 85.71% 3 37.5% 0 0% 9 52.95 % Rank 2 1 14.29% 1 12.5% 1 50 % 3 17.65 % Rank 3 0 0% 3 37.5% 0 0% 3 17.65 % Rank 4 0 0% 1 12.5 1 50 % 2 11.75 % Rank 5 0 0% 0 0% 0 0% 0 0% Gender Rank Scale for Speech Intelligibility Profound Freq./% Severe Moderately-severe Total Girls Rank 1 7 100 % 4 100 % 1 20 % 12 75 % Rank 2 0 0% 0 0% 3 60 % 3 18.75 % Rank 3 0 0% 0 0% 1 20 % 1 6.25 % Rank 4 0 0% 0 0% 0 0% 0 0% According to table 2 (Tukey test), there is a meaningful difference between severe and moderately severe group and also between profound and moderately-severe group but there is no meaningful difference between profound and severe group. Table 2: Comparison of the statistics of speech intelligibility in male and female students with different hearing status using Tukey test Hearing Group (I) Hearing Group (J) Mean Difference (I-J) Standard Deviation P-Value Profound/ Severe 0 24% 1 Moderately-severe -1 23% 0.002 Severe/Profound 0 24% 1 Moderately severe -1 23% 0.006 4. Discussion Our research investigates three factors of speed of speech, intelligibility of speech and gender in students with hearing impairment. In this section we compare our studies with some of the previous researches. In the field of speed of speech, our observations confirm the findings by Nickerson (1975), Pissoni (2000) and Geers (2002) in which there is a relationship between the degree of hearing impairment and speed of speech: With increasing the degree of hearing impairment, speed of speech decreases. Our research doesn't confirm the findings of Venkatigiri (1999) which was mentioned in the introduction. The reason may come from the fact that in our test the unit of measurement was "word" and the test was carried out on children while in Venkatagiri, the unit was "syllable" and the research was carried out on adolescents. Another slightly different research was Zellner (1998). It shows that the difference between the threshold of hearing between two groups of profound hearing impaired and moderately-severe hearing impaired children causes a meaningful difference in the speed of speech between these two groups. In general, this is done through two mechanisms, i.e., of "pause" and "extending the length of speech units". In our research the only mechanism used by examinees to decrease the speed of speech was "pause". Regarding the intelligibility of speech, our findings confirm studies such as Munson, Edwards and Beckman (2005), Rob and Peng (1992) and Seifpanahi (2006) which point to the existence of a relationship between intelligibility of speech and degree of hearing impairment. We didn't use hearing aid or cochlear implantation for our students. Therefore, we couldn't make any comparison with other researches in this field. However, other studies including Chin, Finnegan and Chung (2001) and Tobey, Geers, Brenner, Altuna, and Gabbert (2003) were in line with the present research. These studies also emphasize better intelligibility of speech in normal hearing people compared to the hearing impaired. They showed that there is a direct relationship between the progress of hearing impairment and decline in intelligibility of speech. Groups with moderately-severe, severe and profound hearing impairment in this order gained the highest statistical scores in intelligibility of speech. Another research which is different from the present study in terms of ranking hearing impairment is Smith (1975). As we said earlier he believes that the speech of profound hearing impaired people is 20 percent intelligible, which equals rank 2 in the present research. Looking at our results we observe that most of the people with profound hearing impairment are put in rank 1 (completely unintelligible) and therefore different from the study by Smith. The reason can be attributed to the fact that Smith has used spontaneous speech by examinees for his test but we have used a guided method of reading a 100-word text. As for the relationship between speed of speech and intelligibility of speech in hearing impaired people, an interesting finding is reported in Seifpanahi (2006). He contends that the speed of speech in examinees with rank 5 is higher than examinees with other 4 ranks but there isn't any meaningful difference among those 4 ranks. This shows that in completely intelligible speech, speed of speech is higher but even if 20 percent of speech is unintelligible (for example in rank 4), the rate of speech intelligibility can not have any positive meaningful effect on children's speed of speech. This finding was confirmed in our study and we observed that in hearing impairment higher than moderately-severe, the intelligibility of speech does not make any meaningful difference in the speed of speech. In the previous studies, speed of speech and intelligibility of speech were measured according to the status of hearing-impairment but the present research adds up the factor of "gender". Here we found that speed of speech in reading words and intelligibility of speech are different for hearing impaired boys and girls. Boys had a higher speed and more intelligible speech than girls while in normal hearing boys and girls, girls had a better performance. 5. Conclusion According to the finding of this research, children with hearing-impairment have a lower speed and intelligibility of speech than normal hearing children. In the hearing impaired group, moderately-severe, severe, and profound hearing impaired children in this order had higher speed and intelligibility of speech. In general, there is a direct relationship between the status or rate of hearing impairment and the speed and intelligibility of speech: with increasing hearing impairment, the speed and intelligibility of speech declines. In terms of gender, boys have a better performance than girls in tasks of speed and intelligibility of speech. References Ahadi, H., Shahbodaghi, M., Mokhlesin, M., Mahmoudi Bakhtiyari, B. (2009). A comparative study of diadochokinesis and the rate of reading and speech in second grade primary school students of Tehran, Iran. Audiology, 18(2-1): 63-69. Chin, S. B., Finnegan, K. R., & Chung, B. A. (2001), Relationships among types of speech intelligibility in pediatric users of cochlear implants. Journal of Communication Disorders, 34(3): 187-205. Geers, A. (2002) Cochlear implants and education of the deaf child, third-year results. General Institute for the Deaf Research Periodic Progress Report, 35: 5-20. Munson, B., Edwards, J., & Beckman, M. E. (2005). Relationships between non-word repetition accuracy and other measures of linguistic development in children with phonological disorders. Journal of Speech Language and Hearing Research, 48 (1): 61-78. Nickerson R. S., (1975). Characteristic of the speech of deaf persons. The Volta Review, 77 (6): 342-363. Oliveira, C. R., Ortiz, K. Z., & Vieira, M. M. (2004). [Dysarthria]: A spesech rate Study. Pro Fono, 16 (1): 39-48. Pena-Brooks, A., & Hegde, M. N. (2000). Assessment and treatment of articulation and phonological disorders in children. 2nd Edition. USA: Pro. An International Publisher. Peng, S. C., Spencer, L. J., & Tomblin, J. B. (2004). Speech intelligibility of pediatric cochlear implant recipients with 7 years of device experience. Journal of Speech Language and Hearing Research, 47(6): 1227-36. Pisoni, D. B. (2000). Cognitive factors and cochlear implants: Some thoughts on perception, learning, and memory in speech perception. Ear and Hearing, 21(1): 70-8. Richard E. Ham. (1999). Clinical management of stuttering in older children and adults. Gaithersburg, Md: Aspen Publication. Robb, M.P. and Pang-Ching G.K. (1992). Relative timing characteristic of hearing-impaired speakers. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 91: 2954-60. Seifpanahi, S. A. (2006). Study of oral diadochokinsis, speed of speech and speech intelligibility in hearing impaired and normal hearing students of 15-18 years old of Tehran. Tehran university of Science and Medical, M.A Thesis. Smith, C. (1975). Residual earing and speech production in deaf children. Journal of Speech and Hearing Research, 18: 795-811. Svirsky, M. A. (2000). Language development in children with profound and prelingual hearing loss, without cochlear implants. The Annals of otology rhinology & laryngology Supplement, 85: 99-100. Tobey, E. A, Geers, A. E., Brenner, C., Altuna, D., & Gabbert, G. (2003). Factors associated with development of speech production skills in children implanted by age five. Ear and Hearing, 24(1 Suppl): 36S-45S. Tye-Murray, N., & Woodworth, G. (1989) The influence of final-syllable position on the vowel and word duration of deaf talkers. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 85(1): 313-21. Venkatagiri, H. S. (1999) Clinical measurement of rate of reading and discourse in young adults. Journal of Fluency Disorders, 24(3): 2009-26 Zellner, B. (1998) Fast and slow speech rate: A characterization for French. ICSLP, 5th international conference on spoken language processing, Sydney (Australia), 7: 31593163. TECHNICAL NOTES A Semantic Change Model for French Loanwords in Persian Azadeh Sharifi MOGHADDAM Shahid Bahonar University of Kerman, Iran asharifi@uk.ac.ir Farimah Farrahi MOGHADDAM phdffm@yahoo. com Abstract The aim of this study is to propose a model of semantic change which corresponds to synchronic analysis of the data set. For this purpose, the study examined semantic change orientation of French loanwords in Persian. Zomorrodian's (1373/1994) book on European loanwords in Persian was selected as the database from which 1878 French loanwords were extracted. The data was analyzed semantically by consulting Bellows and Bellows' (1919) dictionary in order to compare meanings of the original lexical items against the present meaning of the loanwords. A number of 330 loaned items were found to have undergone a type of semantic change. The corpus was examined against the existing semantic change typologies. Finding these models to be incomplete, a new model was proposed. This model, being synchronic and non-linear, is of a more elaborate design with the following advantages: a) all items (loanwords) of the corpus could be contained in it, and b) all categories of this model were filled up by loaned items. Keywords: Persian; loanwords; semantic changes; denotational meaning; connotational meaning Izvleček Cilj te študije je predložiti model pomenskih sprememb v besedišču, ki bi ustrezal sinhroni analizi podatkov. V ta namen je bila proučena orientacija pomenskih sprememb pri francoskih tujkah v perzijščini. Na osnovi Zomorrodianovega (1373/1994) dela o evropskih izposojenkah v perzijščini je bilo izbranih 1878 izposojenk iz francoščine. Ta korpus je bil analiziran na osnovi slovarja Bellows and Bellows (1919), da bi lahko primerjali tedanje pomene izposojenih besed v francoščini s pomeni, ki jih imajo te izposojenke v sodobni perzijščini. Tako je bilo najdenih 330 izposojenk, pri katerih je prišlo do spremembe pomena. Te spremembe so bile kategorizirane na osnovi obstoječih tipologij pomenskih sprememb. Ker pa so se te tipologije izkazale za nezadostne, študija predlaga nov model tipologije sprememb. Ta, sinhroni in nelinearni model je bolj podrobno načrtovan in ima naslednje prednosti: a) tipološki model pokriva vse lekseme v preiskovanem korpusu, ter b) vse kategorije modela so zapolnjene z leksemi iz korpusa. Ključne besede: perzijščina; izposojenke; pomenske spremembe; denotativni pomen; konotativni pomen Acta Lingüistica Asiatica, 3(2), 2013. ISSN: 2232-3317, http://reviie.ff.uni-lj.si/ala/ DOI: 10.4312/ala.3.2.73-88 1. Introduction Geographical or social closeness between languages known as "language contact" results in the growth of loanwords through the process of borrowing, a technique which is truly believed to be a common and frequent means of acquiring new words in all languages (Crystal, 2008; Trask, 2003). Following this general tendency, Persian has borrowed numerous words from many languages, such as English, German, Greek, Russian and particularly from Arabic and French, the biggest source of loanwords in Persian among different European Languages. Iran has favored foreign relations with Europe since Shah Abbas I of the Safavieh (Safavid) dynasty. The turning point in the relations of Iran and Europe definitely dates back to Qajar dynasty, especially at the time of second Shah, Fath Ali Shah, who allied Persia with France, resulting also people going to France to pursue education or just to visit (Zomorrodian, 1373/1994). Later on, a group of French officers was sent to Iran upon Mohammad Shah's (also of Qajar dynasty) request for military help (Ghani, 2006). This contacts paved the way for loanwords from European languages to enter into Persian, in particular in the areas of military, science, everyday usage etc. Borrowed French lexical items have been adopted in different ways: - Some items have undergone no change in form/signifier as well as in meaning/signified. - Some items may have undergone change in form/signifier but no change in meaning/signified. - Some items may have undergone change in meaning/signified with no change in form/signified - Some items may have undergone changes in both form/signifier and in meaning /signified. Table 1: Samples of form/meaning changes in the loanwords No. Original/loan word Meaning in French Meaning in Persian 1 marmalade /marmalad/ jam jam 2 tulle /ture/ net net 3 park /park/ park; cow pen park 4 figure /figur/ form; diagram; face; human shape form; human sense; gesture Changes in loanwords can be initiated by the time they are borrowed or in the course of time upon further use and application, as Kay (1995) explained: "Loan words are especially open to modification, both on entering the language, and with time.... The flexibility of form and meaning of loanwords enables them to adapt easily to the structure of the host language, and current trends and needs." (Kay (1995, p. 72) For example, while the meaning of the French Loanwords "blonde" has been specialized by the time of borrowing to mean a fair girl, the word "manteau" has after the Islamic Revolution of 1979 in Iran been generalized to mean women's customary outfit. As a universal rule, all living languages change through time (Trask, 2003), and as loanwords become part of the target language through the process of borrowing, the change in their lexical meaning is neither strange nor extraordinary, but seems to be unavoidable. 1.1 Semantic Change Typologies In the quest for finding a model which could properly correspond to the mechanism of semantic changes of French loanwords in Persian, a number of proposed typologies have been found. All these typologies were found to have two shared features: a) a diachronic approach to the study of semantic change and b) being based and tested on a single language. Also, the models tend to be progressively refined so that classifications based on them get more and more mature and complete through time. Below, a list of semantic change models will be introduced: The first typologies of semantic change were proposed since about mid-19c. It was Stern (1931) who extended the typology into seven items: substitution, analogy, shortening, nomination, regular transfer, permutation and adequation. In a period of two years, Bloomfield (1933) proposed his own semantic change classification being the most widely accepted in the English-speaking academic world: narrowing, widening, metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche, hyperbole, litotes, degeneration and elevation. Ullmann (1957/1962) made a distinction between the nature and consequences of semantic change: I) Nature of semantic change: metaphor, metonymy, folk-etymology, ellipsis and II) Consequences of semantic change: widening of meaning, narrowing of meaning, amelioration of meaning and pejoration of meaning. Finally the most recently devised and elaborated categorization in course of semantic change typology, which has gained and attracted increasing acceptance, belongs to Blank (1998): metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche, specialization, generalization, cohyponymic transfer, antiphrasis, auto-antonymy, auto-converse, ellipsis and folk-etymology. He refused to include amelioration and pejoration of meaning as well as strengthening and weakening of meaning in his typology, as he believed them not to be objectively classifiable. 1.2 Statement of the Problem, Objectives and Research Questions Based on the great number of French loanwords in Persian, this study aims to propose a model which can properly describe semantic change behaviors in this language. The objectives of the present paper are to arrive at a model which favors two premier features: a) all items (loanwords) can be fitted into it so that no item is left out; b) all categories of this model are filled up with the items of the corpus so that no category would be left blank. In the light of the goal stated above, this paper seeks to find the answer to the following questions: 1) How relevant are the previously proposed semantic change typologies in terms of French loanwords in Persian? 2) How feasible is it to propose a new semantic change model whose categories are all filled up which is accounting for all the loaned items in the data? The present study thus aims to examine sufficiency of the existing models as well as the need for a new model for semantic changes of French loanwords in Persian. 2. Methodology In order to study the semantic change behavior of French loanwords in Persian, Zomorrodian's (1373/1994) book on European loanwords was used as the data source for the extraction of French loanwords in Persian. Zorrodian provides a full account of straightforward borrowings as well as the meanings according to the contemporary Persian language. In this study of semantic changes of French loanwords in Persian the meanings are studied at two discrete points in time: the first one is the time when loanwords first were borrowed in Persian, i.e., some 170 years ago (Qajar era) and the second point is the contemporary Persian. Iran and France generally enjoyed a friendly relationship since the Middle Ages. The Qajar era was taken since it served as the turning point in the two countries' relations paving the way for the entrance of French terms in different areas into Persian (Ghani, 2006). From among 1878 French loanwords that were examined, a number of 330 lexical items were identified to have undergone semantic changes. For this purpose, the meanings of all of the 1878 lexical items were checked in Persian based on Moeen (1353/1974) and French based on Bellows and Bellows (1919). Then, the meanings were compared and the changes classified according to the observed types of semantic change they indicated. The items that did not undergo any change (1548 items) were excluded from the study and were not further analyzed. The theoretical framework employed in this study builds on the existing models of semantic change. The models are studied against the data to see their adequacy to explain the change of all examined French loanwords in Persian. Based on the results, a new model of semantic change is to be proposed, which is the main objective of this study. 3. Review of the Related Literature Studies done on semantic changes in Persian especially on the French loanwords are scanty. Below is the list of related studies on the subject: Gomnami (1370/1991, cited in Ahadi, 2002) focused on the varied linguistic and metalinguistic causes and consequences of lexical and semantic changes in Persian after the Islamic revolution of 1979. Safavi (1387/2008) reviews the main semantic changes of lexical items in contemporary speech variety of Persian. This study became the guideline for another one conducted by Gandomkar (1389/2010) who studied semantic change resulted from "projection" in Persian proverbs. She concluded that proverbs retain the whole semantic load pertinent to a story or an allegory with which they are ascribed Regarding loanwords, Ghaffari (1378/1999) examined how Persian affected or better to say changed English and French loanwords in forms and meanings from Mashrouteh era (1285/1906) to date. Pakar's (1381/2002) research centered round the study and analysis of phonological changes pertinent to French and English loanwords in Persian. 4. Results and discussion In this research, 330 semantically changed French loanwords were analyzed against the existing models to determine the adequacy of these models to deal with the data as well as the need for a new model in which all items are fitted in and all categories are filled up. 4.1 Inadequacy of the Semantic Change Models In order to have enough evidence to propose a new semantic change model, the first step is to find adequate reasons in rejecting the existing models in the analysis of French loanwords in Persian. Two main features which are questioned against each existing model are: A) Are all categories in a single typology filled up so that none is left blank in that no members fit in? B) Are all items in the corpus of the present study included in a single typology? Typologies of change proposed in 19c turn out to be inadequate, not being rich enough to comprise all types of observed changes. Stern's (1931) typology does not account for "metaphorical changes". Also, the data did not have any items for "analogy". It sounds inadequate to maintain analogy in a semantic change classification since analogy involves a change in the syntactic structure of the word and more obviously in its parts of speech. Regarding Bloomfield's (1933) typology, there is no category to cover "ellipsis", and also the data showed no "hyperbolic items". As for Ullmann (1957/1962), he did not entail "synecdoche" in his observation. Also, the analyzed data presented no items in the "ellipsis" category. Blank's (1998) typology, as the most elaborated model, did not include "ellipsis" and "amelioration". Also, no semantic change item in the present study was found to belong to such types as "auto-antonymy" and "auto-converse". The points made so far are summarized in Table 1 below. Table 2: Features of semantic change typologies against the corpus of the study Authors All items in the corpus are included All categories in the typology are filled up Stern No No Bloomfield No No Ullmann No No Blank No No As the table shows, both columns are homogeneously negative which means there are some semantic changes that are not included in any of the mentioned typologies. Now that the insufficiencies of these typologies have been made clear, the next step would be to develop a new model that can effectively and practically describe the corpus of the present study which is indeed the concern of the next section of this chapter. 4.2 Proposing a Model for Semantic Changes Search for a comprehensive semantic change model has been based on the analysis of all the French loanwords in Persian regarding their meanings in French at the time of borrowing and their meanings in cotemporary Persian. From here, the change types were extracted and organized in a model that covers all the semantic changes observed in the data and whose categories are filled up by the relevant items (loanwords). French loanwords have shown to be of three types: 1. Denotational semantic changes, which are changes in the referential, literal or explicit meaning(s) of the word, for example when a word with different meanings in the source language is has its meaning narrowed down to one meaning in the target language. As an example, the word "pipe" meaning "tube used for smoking tobacco, windpipe, flute and whistle" in French, is used in Persian with only its first meaning. 2. Connotational semantic changes, which are changes in the non-referential, implicit or metaphorical meaning(s) of the words in the source language, for example the French loanword "fossile" has changed metaphorically to mean "the old man" in Persian. 3. Denoconnotational semantic changes, which are changes of both types of denotational and connotational in a single word. For example, one of the four meanings of the French loanword "tableau" as well as a figurative meaning are used in Persian. Examining the results of the semantic change analysis, it can be seen from Table 3 that denotational changes are more frequent than connotational changes. Also, the least frequent changes are deconnotational type. Table 3 shows the frequency of each semantic type, which are also diagrammatically represented in Figure 1. Table 3: Percentage table of semantic changes Semantic change Number Percentage across loanwords Denotational 254 76.96% Connotational 50 15.16% Denoconnotational 26 7.88% Total 330 100% Indeed, as the above table shows, denotational changes with (76.96%) are the most frequent semantic change while connotational changes (15.16%) are the second most frequent semantic change. Finally, the denoconnotational changes (7.88%) are ranked third. In what follows, each of the aforementioned changes will be discussed in full and illustrated with examples (Persian words associated with French loanwords are phonemically transcribed according to IPA font and placed in two slashes / /). In what follows, the types of changes as well as their subtypes are explained and illustrated: 4.2.1 Denotational Semantic Changes Based on the data, denotationally-changed loanwords have either undergone "specialization" or "projection" that are discussed below: Specialization "Specialization" describes a state of change in the denotational properties of a word so that it is applicable in fewer contexts than were appropriate for the original word (Campbell and Mexico, 2007). That is, when a word has three senses in the source language and only one or two of them become evidently feasible in the target language. For example, the loanword /korokodil/ meaning "an aquatic reptile" and "the skin" in French, is specialized in Persian so that it only refers to "an aquatic reptile". Other examples of this type are: Table 4: Examples of specialization No. Original/loan word Meaning in French Meaning in Persian 5 orchestra /?orkesr/ orchestra; band orchestra 6 occasion /?okazijon/ great bargain; opportunity; circumstances great bargain 7 boulevard /bolvar/ boulevard (main road); promenade boulevard (main road) Projection The data provided a number of cases, which are structurally compound in the target language (i.e. French in the present study). When borrowed into Persian, these items tend to shorten, changing into some simple forms. In this process, the whole meaning is shifted or pejorized to only one part of the compound upon borrowing. Fore example, in French, fer a friser means "curling iron", fer corresponds to "iron" and friser is associated with "curl". In Persian, the shortened loanword, /fer/ absorbs the whole meaning of the compound. To clarify the point, more examples are offered: Table 5: Examples of projection No. Original/loan word Meaning in French Meaning in Persian 8 nœud papillon /papijon/ bow tie bow tie 9 Prise de courant /periz/ power outlet power outlet 10 Courant d'air /kuran/ draught draught Comparing the two types of denotational changes, "specialization" is more frequent than "projection". The following table shows the frequency of each type. Table 6: Descriptive statistics regarding denotational semantic change Semantic change Number Percentage Specialization 247 97.24% Projection 7 2.76% Total 254 100% As the table shows, specification outnumbers projection in the change process of the loanwords under study. 4.2.2 Connotational Semantic Change According to the data, connotational aspect of semantic changes is subdivided into two groups, namely "figurative load" and "emotional load", each being correspondingly pertinent to the inferential properties of meanings. Figurative Change The figurative semantic load associated with loanwords concerns the inferred meanings based on resemblance, vicinity and similarity. According to Cruse (2006), "linguistic expressions are said to be figurative, or used figuratively, if their intended meaning is (a) something other than their literal meaning and (b) can be understood on the basis of generally applicable principles of meaning extension..."(p.63). This sense of relatedness is a mental perception of a single sense attributed to the original word in the source language. The corresponding figurative changes could accompany yet another state of change being either narrowing or widening which explains their area of usage. In this study, the two terms of "specification" and "narrowing" are meant and used differently; while in narrowing a single sense of a word is affected, in specification the whole-scale level (all senses) is changed. Moreover, narrowing and not specification points to a connotational type. Figurative change comprises: 1. metaphor, 2. metonymy, and 3. synecdoche. 1. Metaphor Cruse (2006) defines metaphor as "a relation of resemblance or analogy, although this is not explicitly stated" (p. 106). It therefore describes a state in which a new meaning is generated based on implicit or explicit similarity or conceptual parallelism with the original word's meaning. For example, the loanwords /pasag/ takes a metaphoric sense as it refers to a "shopping center". A state of resemblance exists in French and Persian senses, though it is not explicitly stated. Corresponding changes in metaphoric senses could accompany yet another state of change being either narrowing or widening. Further examples are offered below: Table 7: Examples of metaphor No. Original/loan word Meaning in French Meaning in Persian Type of change ii antenne /?anten/ signal receiver signal receiver; figurative use (spy) widening 12 manteau /manto/ over coat; mantle; cloak Woman's uniform narrowing 2. Metonymy It is a change based on nearness in space or time (Bloomfield,1933). It is therefore a kind of semantic change in which a concept retains the name of another word that is placed adjacent to it in order to refer to something else. In French, epaule means "shoulder". In Persian, the loanword /?epol/ takes a metonymic sense as it refers to a "shoulder pad". A state of nearness in place is obvious in the Persian sense, which explains the vicinity attributed to shoulder and shoulder pad that is placed over the shoulder. The corresponding changes in metonymic sense could accompany yet another state of change being either narrowing or widening. Below are further examples: Table 8: Examples of metonomy No. Original/loan word Meaning in French Meaning in Persian Type of change iS bottine /putin/ boot soldier's boot narrowing 14 locomotive /lokomotiv/ engine of a train train widening 3. Synecdoche "Synecdoche" is a semantic change based on whole-part or part-whole associations so that either a part of a whole would represent the whole, or the whole would be established in a way to represent the part associated with the whole. Campbell and Mexico (2007) referred to it as "A kind of semantic change, that involves a part-to-whole relationship in which a term with more comprehensive meaning is used for a less comprehensive meaning or vice versa"(p.199). In French, blond means "light in color". In Persian, the loanword /blond/ also has a synecdocheic sense as it refers to a "woman who has light-colored hair". A part-to-whole relation is observed in the Persian sense. The corresponding changes in synecdocheic sense could accompany yet another state of change being only widening. Comparing the mentioned types of figurative semantic changes, metaphor (30 cases) and synecdoche (3 cases) are respectively the most and the least frequent types of changing. Table 9: Examples of synecdoche No. Original/loan word Meaning in French Meaning in Persian 15 blond /belond/ person of light complexion; fair, light color fair haired; fair, light color 16 moteur /motor/ engine; motor; motorcycle engine; motor Emotive Change Apart from the figurative loads of words, there is yet another load associated with words, the emotional part. This highlights the mental perception in connection with the lexemes. The corresponding emotional changes could accompany yet another state of change being either optionally narrowed or widened. Emotive change includes: 1. pejoration, 2. amelioration, and 3. litotes. 1. Pejoration "Pejoration" describes an added negative value to the already stated sense of a word. Campbell and Mexico (2007) termed it as a kind of "Semantic change in which the sense of a word takes on a less positive evaluation in the minds of the language users i.e. an increased negative value judgment" (p. 40). This meaning change does not wind up into a new meaning; rather an affective association is made between the word and its meaning in the target language (being Persian in this particular study). In French, toilette means "washroom, WC" and "dressing". In Persian, the loanword /towalet/ refers to "washroom, WC" and "dressing" but as for the first sense, the meaning is regressed in a negative manner therefore pejorized or changed for the worse. The corresponding changes in pejorated sense could accompany yet another state of change that is solely narrowing. Table 10: Examples of pejoration No. Original/loan word Meaning in French Meaning in Persian 17 chauffeur /Rufer/ driver driver; fireman; stocker; brigand 18 alcool /?alekol/ alcohol alcohol 2. Amelioration "Amelioration" describes an added positive value to the already stated sense of a word. Campbell and Mexico's (2007) definition was that amelioration is a "Semantic change in which the meaning of a word shifts towards a more positive value in the mind of the language's users: an increased positive value judgment. In French, gigolo means "a man supported by a woman usually in return for his attentions" and "a professional dancing partner or male escort". However, in Persian the loanword /dgigulu/ refers to "a man who tries to attract attentions through his appearance". As it is far obvious, the sense in Persian item (the only item which was found) is specialized and the meaning is elevated in a positive manner therefore ameliorated or changed for the better. 3. Litotes "Litotes" describes a state in which the already stated sense of a word stands out quite more vividly in the target language than was appropriate for the original meaning so that the meaning becomes stronger and reinforced (Bloomfield, 1933). In French, phrase means "a sentence or a phrase" and "a professional dancing partner or male escort". In Persian the loanword /feraz/ refers to "a sentence or a phrase" in a more prominent way so that this word is only utilized in special contexts of dignity and honor for example phrases from Nahjolbalaghe. The Persian item (the only litotic item of connotational semantic change) is specialized in meaning. Comparing the mentioned types of emotive semantic changes, pejoration (3 cases) is more frequent type than the other two types. Moreover, regarding the connotational semantic types, figurative changes are more frequent than the emotive ones, as the following table shows: Table 11: Percentage table of figurative and emotive changes Semantic change Number Percentage Figurative 46 92% Emotive 4 8% Total 50 100% 4.2.3 Denoconnotational Semantic Changes This kind of change entails the properties of both denotational and connotational changes in a single lexical item, that is, the loanword changes both in referential and nonreferential metaphoric senses of meaning. In French, "côtelette" means "chop" and "a small piece of meat with a bone". In Persian, the loanword /kotlet/ is specialized so that it only refers to "a food made of ground meat and some other ingredients" which has itself narrowed down from the second sense in French based on metaphor. In the following table, items of both denotational and connotational semantic changes in a single item are offered: Table 12: Examples of denoconnotational semantic changes No. Original/loan word Meaning in French Meaning in Persian Type of change 19 tableau /tablo/ picture painting; notice board; black board; table; scutcheon picture painting; notice board; evident (figurative) specialization narrowing metaphor 20 blouse /boluz/ pinaford, apron; pocket; work suit shirt specialization narrowing metaphor 21 gest /3est/ gesture; deed, act; story gesture, figure specialization narrowing litotes 22 sévère /sever/ rigid; stern; harsh stern; quick specialization wideninging litotes 23 châssis /Rasi/ frame; slide; sash; chase frame; tall woman (fig) The study of the data shows that items in this category may change denotationally in the form of specialization. Also, connotational semantic changes of metaphor, pejoration, amelioration and litotes were observed but no cases for metonymy and synechdoche were not found. 4.3 The New Proposed Model By careful observation of the data, the researchers were able to propose their own semantic change model which is presented hereupon in Figure 1. In this scheme, meaning shifts are treated quite differently, i.e., words are studied according to their denotational and connotational semantic loads unlike previous typologies which treated senses of the words accumulatively. () = optional Figure 1: The new proposed semantic change model 5. Conclusion This study sought to examine and study semantic change properties of French loanwords in Persian. In so doing, a total number of 1878 loanwords were extracted from Zomorrodian's (1373/1994) book and then were analyzed regarding their meanings; out of this number 330 items were found to have changed semantically. The analysis regarding these semantically changed items revealed some facts about the systematic behavior of French loanwords leading to a model for all the observed changes. Since the previously proposed models were not adequate enough to cover the whole data, a new model was proposed in which all the changes could be classified into categories, and all categories could be filled up with words. Based on the data analysis, different types of changes were distinguished and then organized into the designed model, which is summarized from top to bottom as follows: - French loan words showed to change either in denotational (explicit) meaning or in connotational (implicit) meaning or in both (namely deconnotational meaning). - Denotational changes, as the most frequent semantic changes (254, i.e., 77% of the total of 330) are subdivided into "specialization" and "projection", in which the former (97% out of 254) is more frequent than the latter (3%). - Connotational aspect of semantic changes is subdivided into "figurative load" and "emotional load", the former being more frequent (92%). - The categories of "metaphor", "metonymy" and "synecdoche" are subgroups of "figurative changes" among which "metaphor" is the most frequent (62% of all figurative load changes). - The categories of "pejoration", "amelioration" and "litotes" are subgroups of "emotional changes", "pejoration" being the most frequent change (62% of all emotional load changes). - Deconnotational semantic changes are the least frequent type including different subdivisions of both denotational and connotational changes, among which the semantic changes of "specialization" and "metaphor" are most frequent. 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