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Some studies of complex predicates suggest that light verbs are bleached semantically and are unable to bear the role of an autonomous predicate (Jespersen, 1965; Cattell, 1984; Grimshaw & Mester, 1988). Although it is accepted that the semantic content of light verbs is deficient, we address the issue that such a claim ignores the semantic relation between light verbs and the corresponding main verbs. The claim in this paper is that light verbs preserve the force-dynamic schemata of the corresponding main verbs totally systematically but the concept area is transferred from physical to abstract-psychological domain. Indeed, it is claimed that, although light verbs do not have totally predictable meaning, their contribution to the meaning of the predicate is completely systematic and to some extent clear. The present study focuses on two light verbs “ KARDAN” ( to do) and “ DASHTAN” ( to have) to indicate somewhat this systematization.      

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This paper aims to investigate the ways in which socio-linguistic parameters such as gender contribute into the turn organization of defense sessions. Interruption plays an important role in the organization of turn taking in the interactions of defense sessions. The current paper is then primarily focused on the description and analysis of interruptions in the interactions of dissertation defense sessions of Persian speakers using the “community of practice” approach. A number of discourse and pragmatic functions (e.g. defense, directiveness, cooperation, competition, etc.) have been identified for interruptions in relation to the power relations of interlocutors in the interactions. Apart from qualitative analysis, some quantitative findings have been provided for further clarification. The analysis of data shows that it is mainly the social status of a speaker that influences the types and frequency of interruption rather than his/her gender. In other words, the social variable does not play an important role in the interruption for turn organization in the defense sessions of Persian speakers.  

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The process of compound predicates (CPr) formation in Persian has got little attention on behalf of linguists. This paper aims to situate the components of Persian light verb constructions in contexts that can be justifiably invoked as a motivation for CPr formation. The authors believe that CPrs can be considered as direct or indirect products of incorporation process.
We hold here a broad concept of incorporation, namely X incorporation (XI), in which X indicates categories including nominals, adjectives and prepositional phrases. This process, explicated by means of some concepts from Cognitive Grammar, involves CPrs originating from complete clauses, and then passing through a compositional path where a nonverbal and a verbal element are selected out of a clause and end up in a complex predicate. In such a hypothetical path, a verb argument is occasionally omitted and the verb complement or adjunct, having a higher cognitive salience, is incorporated to it.
The investigation will continue with focusing on the LVCs constructed with LV kardan ‘do, make’, as the most frequently used light verb in Persian. The paper will also explore how different paths could be associated with different ‘heavy’ meanings of kardan.
Moreover, each CPr may further provide speakers with constructional schemasupon which other LVCs formed with a given LV can be sanctioned.
Considering different kinds of LVCs explained in this paper, we can say that the semantic contribution of LVs falls into one of the two following possibilities depending on how the LVC in question is formed:

i.      Compositional path is directly conceivable. When this is the case, the semantics of LV is equivalent to, or derived from, a main or extended sense of its non-light counterpart, as in emtehân dâdan ‘to take an exam’ (lit. to exam-give), xâb raftan ‘to fall asleep’ (lit. to sleep_N-go), and lâne kardan ‘to nest’ (lit. to nest_N-do).
ii.    Compositional path is indirectly accessible through a constructional schema. In this case, the LV‘s semantic contribution can be thought of as dissolved in the constructional meaning of the relevant schema, as in imeyl zadan ‘to email’ (lit. to email_N-hit) whose LV has nothing to do with ‘hit‘, but imports a sense of ‘communication’ immanent in the constructional schema X + zadan which is in turn inherited from telegrâf zadan ‘to telegraph’ (lit. to telegraph_N-hit).
iii.  The compound verb is a denominal verb in which the light verb serves to verbalize a non-verbal element. In this case the semantic contribution of the light verb is to add processual meaning to the predicate.

 

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The current study will be focused on the analysis of modern Persian conditionals based on a cognitive-pragmatic approach.
The study proceeds to answer three questions: 1) Can Sweetser's (1990) theoretical model elucidate the different cognitive and pragmatic dimensions of Persian conditionals? 2) What are the conventional readings of agar (‘if’, the common particle in Persian for the conditionals) in Farsi, and in which conditionals are they most present? And finally 3) Can we draw a relationship between subjectivity / intersubjectivity and conditionals?
The study assumed a pure and descriptive research whose data were largely derived from contemporary spoken Persian over a period of three months.
To answer the questions, the investigation is comprised of three parts.  The first part includes the analysis of triple classification of conditionals (e.g. content, epistemic, and speech act conditionals) in Persian sentences based on Sweetser's model (1990) and upholds the efficiency of this model to a great extent.
The second part deals with the ways in which 'agar' construes several readings in Persian conditionals and classifies them as necessary and sufficient condition, topic marker, and concessive readings.
Finally, the discussion focuses on the subjectivity and intersubjectivity aspects in relation to hypotheticality of conditionals and it argued that the hypotheticality of conditionals can be fairly explained in terms of subjectivity and intersubjectivity. Accordingly, we can propose the grammaticalisation of agar in Persian conditionals.
Moreover, this paper furthers the issue by looking at the ways in which conditional insubordinate clauses are triggered by cooptation (in Heine’s term); this happens by foregrounding the components of discourse situation, in particular, subjectivity and intersubjectivity. In fact, it can be asserted that subjectivity and intersubjectivity can account for the various conditional sentences applications in Farsi
 

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Confined masonry consists of load-bearing walls with some slender cast-in-place tie columns connected with tie beams. These confining elements are usually made of reinforced concrete and especially located around the critical points such as openings and corners. Although the response of confined masonry walls has been extensively studied in experimental tests worldwide, the analytical models capable of capturing deformation and strength characteristics of these walls and also technical guidelines which can help engineers to numerically evaluate the seismic resistance of confined masonry structures are rate. In this study, the micro-modeling strategy is adopted for the numerical simulation of unreinforced masonry walls confined by reinforced concrete tie columns and beams. A modified version of general path dependent contact density model is used to simulate the complicated response of brick-mortar interaction in the mixed mode of shear and axial deformations. A nonlinear finite element analysis program called “WCOMD_SJ” is used for this purpose. This program has been developed at University of Tokyo and is an analytical tool for two-dimensional static and dynamic nonlinear analysis of reinforced concrete structures based on fixed smeared crack approach. This program has been modified by the second author for nonlinear macro and micro analysis of masonry structures. In order to validate the analytical approach, experimental test results and gathered data from literature are used. The comparison between experimental and analytical results shows good agreement between analytical and experimental findings. Then through a parametric study, the effect of opening and also the interactional effect of adjacent walls on the lateral response and strength of confined masonry walls are numerically investigated. Finally a simple but rational method for modeling the nonlinear behavior of confined masonry walls is proposed. The comparison between this model and numerical results confirms the reliability of the proposed model. Since available experimental results are rare, an analytical study is also performed for investigating the accuracy of the proposed relations.

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Three types of meaning i.e., propositional, textual and interpersonal were acknowledged for language in the tradition of functional studies. In light of such appraoch, this study aims: 1) to describe different types of meanings of in (this) and ân (that) in Persian and, 2) to show that how basics of grammaticalization can be applied to provide a synchronic survey of the semantic variety of the aforementioned dectic expressions as discourse markers in Persian. On the basis of grammaticalization in terms of Traugott & Dasher (2002), this paper examines the different uses of these linguistic elements by looking at their propositional, textual and interpersonal meanings. The analysis indicates that in & ân are used exophorically, anaphorically and textually in their referential meaning and also used in the bridging contexts. Moreover, the investigation shows unlike ân, the semantic changes of in extends beyond the bridging contexts. So in (this) as a discourse marker, functions textually, subjectively and inter-ubjectively. Grammaticalization of the deictic expressions supports Traugott & Dasher's clines. However, indexicalizing speaker's spatial aspects, in & ân have impersonal subjective meaning. Therefore, Traugott & Dasher's semantic cline, should be modified in way of impersonal subjective > personal subjective > inter-subjective to describe the behavior of these linguistic elements in this respect. 

 

1.  Introduction

Although studying different uses and semantic development of deictic expressions in Persian seems to be perciptible at first, it isnot that much easy to convey the sheer complexity of the situation. This paper tries to study different pragmatic and semantic dimentions of these linguistic expressions on the basis of grammaticalization, which is essentially a diachronic concept. Using samples of in (this) and ân (that) in daily Persian conversations, this study aims: 1) to describe different types of their meanings and, 2) to show that how basics of grammaticalization can be applied to provide a synchronic survey of the semantic variety of the aforementioned dectic expressions as discourse markers in Persian.

2. Literature Review
Most studies pertaining to diectic expressions in (this) and ân (that) in different languages emphasizes their role in expressing speaker’s attitudes and feelings and also discourse management in addition to their propositional meaning (Perera & Strauss, 2015, p.36).
Persian researchers (Amid, 1963, Moeen, 1995, Sadri & Hakami, 2002, Moshkvar, 1971), adopting a traditional approach and insisting upon the concept of referentiality, commomly declared that in and ân are used to refer to near and distant respectively. However, what has been ignored in such studies was that they just paid attention to their referential meanings at sentence level and did not cover the discourse-pragmatic dimentions.

3. Methodology
The data of this study were obtained from fifteen hours of daily Persian conversations in a one-year period. From the mentioned corpus, 260 cases of using the deictic expressions in and ân were identified from different situations and in various constructions. To conduct this research, all 260 cases were first categorized into propositional, textual, and interpersonal meanings, following Halliday (1970, 1979), Trauggot (1982), and Brinton (1996).  Different uses of the deictic expressions were then classified based on the classification propopsed by Halliday and Hassan (1976), Lyons (1977), Fillmore (1982), Levinson (1983, 2004) and Diessel (1999) in terms of propositional meaning. After that, according to Heine (2002), items that simultaneously had a propositional meaning at the sentence level as well as discourse meanings (textual and interpersonal) were categorized into bridging contexts. Continuing to examine the types of meanings and uses of the expressions, the cases that functioned as a discourse marker were identified and were put in textual, personal and interpersonal categories based on the concepts presented. Lastly, their semantic variations were examined based on the views of Trauggot and Dasher (2002), analyzed from the perspective of synchronic grammaticalization and the proposed clines of these developments were presented.

4. Results
The analysis indicates that in & ân are used exphorically, anaphorically and textually in their referential meaning and also used in the bridging contexts to function for the retrieval of linguistic information, projection, feeling and emotion expression, avoidance of unpleasant concepts and referent identification. Moreover, the investigation shows unlike ân, the semantic changes of in extends beyond the bridging contexts. So in as a discourse marker, textually has a function in changing the topical trends and creating a pause to formulate the upcoming discourse. It is subjectively used to designate and emphasize the upcoming discourse and to create a contrast and inter-subjectively functions in speech acts such as requesting, asking and advising. Grammaticalization of the deictic expressions supports Traugott & Dasher's clines. However, indexicalizing speaker's spatial aspects, in & ân have impersonal subjective meaning involving the grammaticalization process. Therefore, Traugott & Dasher's semantic cline, should be modified in way of impersonal subjective > personal subjective > inter-subjective to describe the behavior of these linguistic elements in this respect. In sum, the current study used a descriptive-analytical methodology to describe the discourse-pragmatic aspects of in & ân and indicated that these linguistic elements have different types of uses which the notion of grammaticalization (e.g. Traugott and Dashar, 2002; and Brinton, 2008) provide a solid theoretical framework to describe and analyze these expressions as discourse markers in Persian. In sum, the current study used a descriptive-analytical methodology to describe the discourse-pragmatic aspects of in & ân and indicated that these linguistic elements have different types of uses which the notion of grammaticalization (e.g. Traugott and Dashar, 2002; and Brinton, 2008) provide a solid theoretical framework to describe and analyze these expressions as discourse markers in Persian.