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This article aims at preparing the dialect atlas for southern half of Hamedan province and measuring the distance between dialects according to principles of dialectometry. Method: descriptive-analytic method is used. The data has been gathered from 15 locations through systematic random sampling, in 5 counties of Hamedan, using a questionnaire consisted of 149 words and phrases and 44 basic sentences derived from Swadesh basic concepts list.. 25 words claasified in four main catheories(nature, family, animals, time) have been chosen using random sampling method for this study. Findings: lexical varieties and their distributions have been shown in 5 location symbol Dialect Atlases. The degree of similarity and distance between different locations, the least and most frequent word forms, and the degree of lexical variation in all categories and all locations have been measured. Results: according to distance matrix and the resulted dendogram, the dialects have been classified into 9 groups. The dialect distance between locations 14 & 15 in Hamedan County is the least with lexical similarity of 60 percent. Locations 8 & 9 in Malayer County have also shown great amount of lexical similarity about 56 percent. Lexical similarity between dialects in Malayer and Nahavand are more than other counties. Lexical variation in “nature” category is the highest and in “animals” is the lowest.     

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This research aims at analyzing and comparing the development of lexical cohesive devices (repetition, collocation, synonymy, hyponymy, meronymy) in Persian-Speaking students’ written discourse at primary level (9 to 12 years old) according to logical meta-function introduced in Halliday and Mathiessen’s systemic functional grammar (2004). Descriptive analytical method is used in this study. 45 students (boys) studying at primary school (4^th, 5^th and 6^th grades) in 1393-94 have been selected through random-sampling. Two written tests in the form of picture stories were administered for gathering the written data. Frequency, percentage and pattern of development of using lexical cohesive devices were compared and analyzed. The frequency of lexical cohesive devices in 4^th, 5^th and 6^th grades were, 862, 967, and 1119. Repetition and collocation in all grades are the most frequent and hyponymy and meronymy are the least frequent devices. The percentage of repetition decreases from 4^th grade to 6^th grade while in hyponymy and meronymy it is increased. According to Kruskal–Wallis test the differences of using synonymy and repetition are not significant although differences of using collocation, hyponymy and meronymy are significant (p≤ 0/05). It seems that not only the frequency of different lexical cohesive devices in students’ written discourse increases as the grades increase, but also more sophisticated  lexical cohesive devices are found in writings of the students in higher grades.

 Keywords: Lexical cohesion, written discourse, Functional grammar, Students.

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Focusing on Persian language continuum of styles, this research aims at studying the stylistic variation of Persian language according to the native speakers’ judgment of the formality of some Persian sentences that are related semantically, and conveys the same proposition, but considered to be different regarding the number of formal or informal and colloquial words, phrases, and syntactic features in them. Therefore, this research is categorized as a research in perceptual dialectology. The main goal is to analyze the relation between the lexical and structural features of formality with the native speakers’ perception of the degree of formality of the sentences.The main questions this research tries to answer are as follows: Is it possible to define the degree of formality of a sentence according to the linguistic features? And, which phonetic, lexical and structural features exert more influence on Persian speakers’ judgments?
 The research hypotheses are as follows: It is possible to define the degree of formality according to some linguistic features like how close the pronunciation of a word is to standard language, the use of some formal or informal words and expressions. And, the use of some lexical items and expressions or taboo words affects the native speakers’ judgment more than other features.
 A researcher-made questionnaire consisting of 15 sentences which communicate the same proposition was used for gathering data on speakers’ judgments. Informants were 70 men and women in three different age-groups, 20-30 (n=35), 30-40 (n= 20)and 40-50 (n=15) who analyzed and graded the sentences, according to the degree of formality, on a continuum from the most to the least formal, based on their intuition. A descriptive – analytic method was used to analyze the data quantitatively and qualitatively. The topic and theoretical frame work of the research are the innovative features of the study.
The results show that it is possible to measure the approximate degree of formality of a sentence by counting the stylistically marked linguistic features. Nevertheless, the speaker’s judgment on the degree of formality does not necessarily depend on the number of these features, and some lexical items and terms that are marked due to observing politeness will affect their judgment. In general, lexical choices and some phonetic changes seem to have more influence on the speakers’ judgments than structural features.

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Iran is a multicultural and multilingual country. Bilingualism has always been a matter of interest to the scholars in different fields like linguistics, psychology, and sociolinguistics. Studying the linguistic and cognitive features and the development of the two languages in bilingual children are of great importance in many regards like education, language development, and language planning. This study aims at analyzing Farsi and Mazandarani narratives of bilingual Mazandarani-Farsi children aged 4-6 in order to study the language development in these children according to age and to compare their development in each of these two languages. The narratives are analyzed at the micro and macro structure levels in four age groups: (A: 4-4.5; B: 4.5-5; C: 5-5.5; D: 5.5-6). The results show that the narratives get more complicated as the children grow and "age" has a significant effect on these categories at macro and microstructure levels: action, consequence, coordinating conjunction, and mental and verbal processes. Comparison of MLU and the total number of words in Farsi and Mazandarani narratives indicates that there is no significant difference between narratives according to age and the language.
1. Introduction
This research aims at analyzing narratives of Mazandarani-Farsi bilingual children in both languages (Mazandarani and Farsi) to study the effect of age, and language on children's performances regarding the complexity of narrative structure at macro and micro levels. Narrative analysis has been the center of attention in various linguistic studies on different target groups from different points of view, i.e. psycholinguistics, clinical linguistics, sociolinguistics, and functional linguistics, etc. on the other hand bilingualism has always attracted linguists interested in different subjects like the effect of bilingualism on education, or cognitive skills, etc. In this study, these two fields meet each other to help us find the answers to these research questions: what are the differences between Mazandarani, and Farsi narrative structures of Mazandarani-Farsi bilingual children at macro and micro levels? What is the effect of age on the complexity of bilingual children’s narratives in both languages?
 
2. Literature Review
Reviewing the literature of linguistic studies on bilingualism reveals that most of the researches aimed at studying the effects of bilingualism on education at the school level, some of such studies are as follows: Khanhasani (2011), Farazmand (2011), Asare and Bafti (2012), Keyvanlou and Meghdari (2012), Shiralipour, et al (2013), etc; but very few studies in Iran have focused on narratives of bilingual children: Eftekhari et al (2005) studied the effect of  Semnani language on the MLU of 6 year old bilingual children in comparison to monolingual children, and concluded that Semnani doesn’t have any negative effect on MLU. Elyasi, Sharifi & Karimipour (2013) studied the narratives of 4 Kurdi-Farsi bilingual children using a picture story for data collection (Frog Where Are You?) according to Berman and Slobin (1994) functional framework. They concluded that there are some differences in children’s performances in two languages regarding active and passive, and marked sentences. Rostambeik, Amiri, Enayati & Ramezani (2017) studied the complexity and length of narratives of students with and without learning disabilities and concluded that analyzing narratives is a useful method for studying and comparing language skills. Kamari (2016) studied cohesion in narratives of monolingual children aged 3-9 and concluded that after the age of 7 narratives are more complex. Studying the narrative structure of bilinguals has been the focus of many researches out of Iran. Some of the most related ones to this study are as follows: Berman and Slobin (1994); Gutiérrez-Clellen (2002), Minami (2005), Uccelli & Paez (2007), Chernobilsky (2009), Gagarina et al (2015), Bohnacker (2016).
 
3. Methodology
Using a descriptive-analytic method, this research analyzes the narratives of 16 Mazandarani-Farsi bilingual children, aged 4-6. Informants were selected from among the bilingual children in kindergartens of Juybar, a city in Mazandaran Province. Kindergartens were selected through random sampling, and children were chosen through targeted sampling considering age and being bilingual. Informants were classified into four age groups (A: 4-4.5; B: 4.5-5; C: 5-5.5; D: 5.5-6). Therefore, data included 32 narratives, 16 in Persian and 16 in Mazandarani. In addition to narrative structure, length of the narratives and MLU were analyzed and compared in narratives in both languages. SPSS version 25 is used to perform statistical analysis. For narration, a picture story named “Frog where are you?” (Mayer, 1969) was used. Each bilingual child once listened to the story in Mazandarani told by a native speaker of Mazandarani while looking at the picture book, and retold it in Mazandarani, and once in Farsi and retold it in Farsi. The narratives were analyzed regarding macro and micro narrative structures, based on Petersen, Gillam & Gillam (2008) framework.
 
4. Results
Mazandarani and Farsi narratives produced by children in four different age groups were analyzed at two levels: micro structure and macro structure. In this research macrostructure includes character, setting, internal response, plan, action, and consequence, and microstructure includes coordinating conjunctions, subordinating conjunctions, verbal and mental processes, adverbs, and extended noun phrases. Considering the categories at each level, it is possible to say that the macrostructure level describes cognitive skills while microstructure level focuses more on linguistic features of the narratives. The results show that in all age groups the points the children got in macro structure analysis are higher in Farsi narratives. The points increase as the age increases, so from group A to group D, we witness a raise in the points the children got.  Also, at micro structure level children got more points in Farsi narratives. At this level also, older children got more points in Farsi narratives, but it is not the same for narratives in Mazandarani. The number of words of narratives in both languages increase as the age increases. Comparison of the MLU in narratives show that in both languages MLU is the highest in fourth group.
 
5. Discussion
According to the results, Mazandarani-Farsi bilingual children produced more complex narratives in Farsi comparing to Mazandarani. In Farsi narratives, in all groups, children got fewer points in internal response and plan categories, i.e. none of the children in groups A, C, and D referred to the feelings or emotions of the characters of the story. Also, none of the children in groups A and B referred to the plan. At the microstructure level, children didn't use subordinating conjunctions properly. The statistical analysis shows that age has a significant effect on children's narratives in Farsi. Analyzing the micro and macrostructure in Mazandarani narratives shows that none of the children referred to the internal response of the characters, and they also got fewer points in the category of plan, and they also didn't use subordinating conjunctions and adverbs properly. The statistical comparison between the narratives in Farsi and Mazandarani regarding macro and microstructure shows that at macro level the difference in the categories of action and consequence is meaningful and at the microstructure level the difference in the use of mental and verbal verbs and coordinating conjunctions are significant. In general, the difference in the total points that the children got in narrative structure analysis in Farsi and Mazandarani is statistically significant.
 
6. Conclusion
The results show that the narratives get more complex as the children grow and “age” has a significant effect on these categories at macro and microstructure levels: action, consequence, coordinating conjunction, and mental and verbal processes. In fact, children were not that successful in more complex cognitive skills like referring to characters’ feeling or plans. They also didn’t use conjunctions properly to make complex sentences. The comparison of MLU and the total number of words in Farsi and Mazandarani narratives indicates that the effect of age and language on these categories are not statistically significant. Bilingual children performed better at the macrostructure level in both languages. The comparison of the number of words and MLU in Farsi and Mazandarani shows no significant difference. On the other hand, although the length of the narratives increases as the age increases the effect of age on narrative length is not statistically significant. Based on the results, narrative analysis can reveal interesting linguistic and cognitive skills of bilingual children. In the case of Mazandarani –Farsi bilinguals, it seems that children generally perform better in Farsi than Mazandarani which is probably the result of Farsi dominance in that area.

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One of the fields that has been influenced by the linguistic methodology, and the results of the researches in the interdisciplinary fileds of psycholinguistics and clinical linguistics is the study of speech disorders, like stuttering. Stuttering is a speech disorder characterized by repetition of sounds, syllables, or words; prolongation of sounds; and interruptions in speech known as blocks. An individual who stutters exactly knows what he or she would like to say, but has trouble producing a normal flow of speech. In recent years many studies have examined whether there is a relationship between stuttering and linguistic features of the speech of those who stutter. This study is focused on the lexical domain, namely the lexical density, and lexical diversity that can be considered as the lexical richness. Lexical diversity is usually defined as the range and variety of vocabulary in a language sample. Lexical density provides a measure of the proportion of lexical items (i.e. nouns, verbs, adjectives and some adverbs) and function words in a language sample. 
Therefore, this study is aimed at comparing the lexical density and diversity in the narrations of children who stutter (CWS) (aged between 4 to 8 years), and children who do not stutter (CWNS) in the control group. Therefore, it investigates whether children who stutter have limited verbal skills compared to children who do not stutter. Since some theories claim that CWS have poorer language skills, comparing their linguistic performance in different domains to their fluent peers can contribute to the studies in this field through shedding light on the weak and strong points of these children’s language abilities. The sample consists of the narrations of 14 children who stutter (CWS) classified into two age groups: (4-6 and 6-8), and 14 age-matched children who do not stutter (CWNS) as the control group selected through convenience sampling method. They have been asked to narrate a wordless picture book, “Frog where are you?” (Meyer, 1969), and their narrations have been analyzed, and compared according to the lexical density and diversity between children who stutter, and the children in the control group, and also between the two age groups. The percentage of the use of different words in different grammatical classes, i.e. noun, verb, adjective, adverb, and different function words in their narrations was also compared between the groups. 
Lexical diversity was analyzed through computing MSTTR (Mean Segmental Type-Token Ratio) by Word Smith 6. To measure lexical density, Lexical and functional words in the children’s narrations were counted, and classified. The results were compared between the experimental group and control group in different age groups. SPSS 21 was used to test the significance of the differences observed between the groups. The results revealed that CWNS demonstrated more lexical diversity compared to CWS, but the difference was not significant. CWS used more content words and less function words than CWNS in their narrations and the difference is statistically significant. Comparing different grammatical classes showed that CWS narrations contained more nouns than CWNS narrations, whereas CWNS have used more verbs, adjectives and adverbs. However, the difference in the percentage of adverb usage was the only statistically significant item.


1. Introduction
Understanding the relationship between fluency and language skills has been an area of focus in many studies. Many researches has examined whether the language abilities of children who stutter (CWS) are equivalent to those of children who do not (CWNS). Two of these language abilities in lexical domain are lexical diversity and lexical density which are aspects of a greater concept: lexical richness. Lexical diversity is usually defined as the range and variety of vocabulary in a language sample. Lexical density provides a measure of the proportion of lexical items (i.e. nouns, verbs, adjectives and some adverbs) and function words in a language sample. Therefore, the current study is aimed to answer these questions using narrative discourse:

•    How do 4 to 8 year old CWS compare to peers in their lexical diversity?
•    What is the difference between 4 to 8 year old CWS and CWNS in their lexical density?

Based on Demands and capacities theory (Neilson & Neilson, 1987; Starkweather, 1987), that predicts that fluency breaks down when communication demands exceed individual capacities, the hypothesis of this study is vocabulary skills are weaker in CWS compared to peers.

2. Methodology
Participants: participants were14 CWS classified into two age groups: (4-6 and 6-8), and 14 age-matched CWNS as the control group selected through convenience sampling method (gender was not matched). None of the children had suspected any other language disorders and displayed typical social-emotional development, normal hearing ability and no neurological problems, according to speesh therapists reports. Data Collection: Samples were elicited by having children construct a story that correspounded to a wordless picture story, Frog where are you? (Mayer, 1969) with 29 pictures. The reason for chosing narrative task was narration often contains more complex language than conversation because speakers use more adverbial clauses and elaborated noun phrases to tie multiple characters and actions together,so given better samples for lexical density. Data Analysis: Each participant’s narration were audio-recorded and transcribed by researchers. Each word in samples was labled based on whether it is a content or function word. Content words was categorised as noun, verb, adjective and adverb. Function words consisted: prepositions, conjunctions, pronouns, articles, object marker, determiners and auxiliary verbs. Number of total words, number and frequency percentage of  total content words, total  function words, nouns, verbs, adjectivse and adverbs were calculated for each particapnt sample. For assessing lexical diversity, number of unique word roots dividing by the number of total words in samples of total narratives of 4-6 and 6-8 year old children in each group (CWS and CWNS) calculated by WordSmith (V6) software. MSTTR (Mean Segmental type-token ratio) algorithm is used in WordSmith which calculates type-token ratio in samples with defference size. SPSS software (V21) and nonparametric tests Mann–Whitney U test and Kruskal-Wallis used to conduct statistical analyses.

3. Results
The results revealed that CWNS demonstrated more lexical diversity compared to CWS, but the difference was not significant. CWS used more content words and less function words than CWNS in their narrations and the difference is statistically significant. Comparing different grammatical classes showed that CWS narratives contained more nouns than CWNS narrations, whereas CWNS have used more verbs, adjectives and adverbs. However, the difference in the percentage of adverb usage was the only statistically significant item.

4. Conclusion
The findings suggest some subtle level of lexical skills like using divers words in length, phonological or phonetic complexity and other linguistic factors in CWS. It seems their linguistic capacities in producing fluent speech isn't less than communicative demands. Also some theories like EXPLAN predicts function words are more likely to be stuttered in children compared to content words, so less using of function words in CWS can be considered as an avoidance behaviour. As well as eliminating adverbs that are adjunct can be a strategy to avoid words that probably produced stuttered.