Volume 2, Issue 3 (2011)                   LRR 2011, 2(3): 53-83 | Back to browse issues page

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1- Assistant Professor, Department of Linguistics, Shahid Beheshti University, Tehran, Iran
2- M.A., Department of Linguistics, Shahid Beheshti University, Tehran
Abstract:   (6665 Views)
The importance of researches within the syntactic scope of different languages and dialects in scientific frameworks has specifically gained interest within the Optimality Theoretic Framework (OTE), within which the variety differences can be defined by differential rankings of the same set of constraints, and the concept of “Unity in Variety” in different linguistic domains is achieved. The present dialectological study is aimed to investigate the word order of declarative projections (including transitive, intransitive and clefting sentences) in Ateni/ Saravi dialect of Mazandarani language. To achieve the goals of the investigation, 27 dialectal declarative sentences are analyzed and represented by the usage of tableaus and diagrams throughout the paper. The analysis is performed by the aid of Grimshaw's (2001) left alignment constraints (Head Left, Specifier Left and Complement Left) as well as her (2001, 1997) obligatory element constraints (Obligatory Head and Obligatory Specifier). For the sake of determining the appearance and absence of subject in the projections studied in the dialectal data, the research applies Kohn's (2003) structural constraints including that of faithfulness (Full Interpretation, Parse) and markedness ones (Opearator-Specifier, No - Lexical Movement, Stay). Following Grimshaw (2001), the investigation of the concept of unity in variety has been followed throughout this study not only by the usage of alignment constraints but also by their number of violations; i.e. the variation lies only in which of the constraints to be violated, and the number of times it violates. In accordance, the present research demonstrates that the sameness of the number of elements in the dialectal projections results in the sameness of the total number of alignment violations that approves the unity in spite of superficial linguistic varities. Keywords: Word order typology, Alignment constraints, Obligatory element constraints, Structural constraints, Unity in variety.
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Article Type: Research Paper | Subject: Linguistics
Published: 2011/06/14

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