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Discourse markers determine how the addressee’s perceptions are different from or similar to each other. Considering the importance of discourse markers in increasing children’s verbal and linguistic skills and increasing the coherence level of their discourse (Gerhardt, 1990), the purpose of this study is to use the Hansen model (1998) to study the production process of Discourse Markers in the narrative discourse of 7 and 10 –year-old Persian-speaking children and adults. The present research is descriptive and analytic. 37 of the children were 7 years old and 40 were 10 years old. Children were selected purposefully from elementary schools of Tehran. Also, 18 adults were selected in order to compare children’s performance with theirs. The retelling experiment was performed according to the method of Choi (2007) and Kyratizis and Ervin Tripp (1999). The results showed that the subjects were able to use different types of discourse markers in their narrative discourse. The total use of discourse markers in children was more than that of the adults. It seems that sometimes coherence compensates cohesion and sometimes logical and semantic relationships based on prior knowledge play a role instead of discourse markers.
1. Introduction
Discourse Markers are a non-propositional linguistic element whose primary role is to connect different parts of the discourse and their scope is quite diverse and variable. Considering the importance of discourse Markers in increasing children's language and verbal skills and, consequently, raising their level of reasoning about world phenomena, the present research aimed to use Hanson’s model (1998) to study the process of producing discourse markers in the narrative discourse among 7 and 10-year-old Persian speaking boys and girls, and finally to compare their performance with an adult male and female performance.
 
.Research Hypotheses
1. Seven, ten-year-old, and adult Persian-speakers use various types of discourse marekers that cause coherence in the narrative context retold by them.
2. with the development of language skills, the use of discourse markers in seven, ten-year-old and adult Persian-speakers will increase in the narrative context.
3. There is a significant difference in the use of discourse markers by the seven, ten-year-old, and adult Persian-speakers.
 
2. Literature Review
Choi (2007) in an article examined the use of discourse markers in children aged four to twelve and adults. The results of his research showed that four-year-olds can use some discourse markers such as so and and. The use of and as a discourse marker is decreased in adults compared to children, but the use of so as a discourse marker increased in adults stories compared to children. Overall, the number of discourse markers decreases in adult stories. Spooren and Sanders (2008) studied the order of coherence relations between the discourse components of Dutch children (6-7 years old and 11 years old). Their results showed that additive relationships are learned before causal relationships. Mehrabi Sari (2013) examined three age groups (4-5, 5-6, 6-7). Her results revealed that the frequency of some discourse markers increased with age development and the frequency of others was constant, but in general, there was no growth trend in the use of discourse markers by children aged four to seven years.
 
3. Methodology
The present study was conducted in the winter of 2016 on 20 ten-year-old girls and boys (fourth grade of elementary school) and 16 girls and 20 boys in the age group of seven years (first grade of elementary schools). All children were monolingual Persian-speakers. Also, to compare the growth trend of children in using the discourse markers, 18 adults (male and female) with an average age of 28.32 participated in this study. In total, 94 samples of stories were obtained from the subjects of this study.
In this quantitative and descriptive research, the retelling story test based on Choi (2007) and Kirtzis and Erwin Trip (1999) was used to get an idea of ​​how children use discourse markers in the narrative context. To evaluate the "reliability" of the data coding, the data of this study were coded by two coders. We used McHagg (2012) interrater reliability to examine the percentage of agreement between the two coders. The percent agreement in data coding was 91.93%. In cases of disagreement, the two coders agreed through discussion.
 
4. Results
The results of this study indicate that the subjects in all three age groups had the highest use of discourse markers indicating sequence of events (baʔd, baʔdan, baʔdeʃ). Ten-year-olds and seven-year-old children by using 275 and 230 discourse markers respectively use the sequence DMs more than adults. The use of sequence DMs was significantly reduced in adults compared to children (19 discourses). In total, ten-year-olds with a total of 400 discourse markers had the highest use of them. Seven-year-olds with 290 DMs, and adults with 51 DMs used them less than ten-year olds. Also, to investigate the differences in the performance of the three age groups in using discourse markers Fisher exact test was used. The results of this test indicate that there is a significant difference between the three age groups only in the use of the two discourse markers va ‘and’ and xob ‘well’ (‘and’: P <0.003 and ‘well’: P <0.012) and in the case of other discourse markers, there was no significant difference between the subjects' performance (p> 0.05).
 
5. Discussion
According to the prediction of the 1^st Hypothesis of this research, Seven, ten-year-old, and adult Persian-speakers use various types of discourse markers that cause coherence in the narrative context told by them. The data showed that seven-year-olds used eleven (baʔd > baʔdan> baʔdeʃ >ʔammɑ, vali> pas> ʧon, ʔɑxe> va> masalan>xob), ten-year-olds used thirteen (baʔd > baʔdeʃ > baʔdan > va> masalan, jaʔni> ʔammɑ, vali> xob> pas> hɑlɑ> ʧon, ʔɑxe) and adults also used eleven (baʔd, baʔdeʃ, baʔdan, va> vali> xob> ʧon, ʔɑxe >masalan, jaʔni>pas) types of discourse markers. Therefore, the 1^st Hypothesis  of this research is confirmed.
The second hypothesis is confirmed for the two age groups of the children, but is not confirmed for the comparison of children group with the adult group.
Based on the last hypothesis of this study, there is a significant difference in the use of discourse markers by three age groups, but data analysis revealed that although there is a difference between the number of used discourse markers between the three age groups, but this difference only in using the two discourse markers, /xob/ 'well' and /va/ 'and' was significant, and in using other discourse markers, was not significant. Therefore, the last hypothesis is confirmed only for the two mentioned discourse markers and is not confirmed for the other discourse markers.
 
6. Conclusion
By comparing the performance of children with adults in using discourse markers, it was observed that the total discourse markers of adults were significantly reduced in narrative context, and children in both age groups were more likely to use discourse markers. These results are consistent with Choi’s (2007) studies. Adult language fluency and the number of words in their lexicon, memory power, use of other metalingual tools such as rhythm, body language, and intonation seem to reduce discourse markers in an adult narrative context. So far no research has specifically addressed the reason for this, perhaps sometimes coherence compensating for cohesion, and at other times prior knowledge-based semantic-logical relations play roles instead of discourse markers.

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The purpose of this study is to investigate the syntactic merging process of the middle constructions in Persian within the minimalist framework proposed by Bowers (2010, 2018). Within this framework, Bowers analyzed the merging of active, middle and passive sentences based on the two categories of 'Predication' and 'Transitivity'. It is worth mentioning that in his latest works, Bowers (2010, 2018) has replaced the transitive phrase (TrP) by 'voice' with its core features intact.
The voice category used in Bowers (2010) is a generalization of the transitivity category previously proposed by Bowers (2002). In general, this category enters into a "matching relationship" with objects. Bowers (2018) in his approach calls this node a role of "transitive voice" which is represented as (Vtr). In fact, Bowers goes back from a more general interpretation of this node to a more detailed one. These changes are merely in the name of syntactic nodes and have no effect on the syntactic properties of transitive nodes, because it is evident that Bowers still knows transitive active constructions, middles and passives, including the transitivity category, and unergative and unaccusative constructions without this category

According to the theoretical framework of the Minimalist Program is there any evidence of the middle voice found in the contemporary Persian? 2. In case it is proven, as proposed by Bowers, does the process of syntactic merging of middle construction follow ‘the universal order of merge’? 3. What is the distinction between middle, unaccusative and unergative constructions in Persian? Based on the mentioned questions, these hypotheses can be made: 1. although the active and passive constructions are common in Persian, there might be also some evidence for the middle voice. 2. The process of middle formation in Persian follows the universal order of merge. 3. Middle, unaccusative and unergative constructions are different in terms of the merging process.
Regarding middle construction, the limited number of studies by Iranian linguists has focused on the presence or absence of this construction in Persian. For example, Jabbari (2003), by accepting the existence of middle construction in Persian, has used ‘intransitive construction’, instead of the term ‘middle construction’. He considers it as a construction between active and passive. He claims that although these verbs are formally similar to active verbs, semantically they are comparable to passive verbs. On the other hand, Rasekhmahand (2007) assumes that middle construction cannot be attested as a ‘voice’ in Persian and it is not at all comparable to active and passive constructions. He referred to it as ‘inchoative construction’ which is the reverse of causative sentences.
The data of the present study are collected from Dadegan website (The corpus of syntactic dependency of Persian language). For a better illustration, tree diagrams of Minimalist Program have been used during the data analysis.
The findings of the present paper confirm the hypothesis on the existence of middle voice in Persian. Moreover, the universal order in the process of merging middle constructions (Bowers, 2010, 2018) has been attested. According to this arrangement, the merging position of the subject of the verb, which holds the semantic role of 'agent', is the lowest position in the diagram and the other verb arguments are merged subsequently, based on a determined order. Representation of verb arguments in the form of syntactic nodes is the innovative aspect of this research within the framework of the Minimalist Program.
 

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Qashqai Turkic is one of the southwestern​​ (Oghuz) Turkic languages which is spoken in the south of Iran. The intense and long-term linguistic contact of Qashqai Turkic with Persian has caused profound changes in it’s original characteristics at all language levels and its convergence with Persian language is increasing day by day. In this research, in the framework of the code-copying model introduced by Lars Johanson, the syntactic changes occured in this language as a result of contact with Persian have been studied. Changes in causation strategies, strategies for expressing modality, expressing the verb "have", deletion of genitive case marker of the possessor in a genitive-possessive construction, change in the expression of copula and existential verbs, investigation of evidentiality, investigation of newly made compound "belä+possessive suffix", change of case government in some verbs, investigation of the presence of Persian Ezafe, Persian indefinite article and Kurdish definite article in Qashqai Turkic, deletion of the interrogative enclitic -mI and change in order of adjective and indefinite article (bir) are the items that have been studied in this study. In this research, in addition to re-evaluating the results of previous research about syntactic changes in Qashqai Turkic, some new achievements have also been introduced by investigating and analyzing a written corpus consisting of seven story books and relying on the quantitative data obtained from this investigation.

1. Introduction
Contact-induced change which is traditionally called borrowing, is one of the main types of language change. The rate and extent of this change is directly proportional to the intensity and duration of language contact. Qashqai Turkic, which is one of the southwestern (Oghuz) Turkic languages in Iran, has undergone profound changes in its syntactic structure due to its intense and long-term contact with Persian. In this research, we have identified these changes at the level of simple sentences, and by statistical analysis, we have determined the extent and progress of the changes and also re-evaluated the results of past research in this regard.

2. Literature Review
Researchers who have worked in the field of contact linguistics in Turkic languages have pointed out various syntactic changes that have occurred as a result of their contact with Indo-European languages and especially Iranian languages. Changes in causation strategies, strategies for expressing modality, expressing the verb "have", deletion of genitive case marker of the possessor in a genitive-possessive construction, change in the expression of copula and existential verbs, change in evidential marking role of the suffix -mIš, change in pronominal system by newly made compound "belä+possessive suffix", change of verb government of postpositions (case suffixes) in some verbs, investigation of the presence of Persian Ezafe, Persian indefinite article and Kurdish definite article in Turkic varieties of Iran, deletion of the interrogative enclitic -mI and change in order of adjective and indefinite article (bir) before nouns are among the changes that have been mentioned. These studies were reviewed here as Soper (1987), Johanson (1998), Özkan & Musa (2004), Csató (2005), Kıral, F. (2005), Hashemi Zarajabad (2009), Karakoç (2009), Bosnalı (2010), Erfani (2012), Nazari & Routamaa (2012), Sultanzade (2016), Bulut (2016, 2018), Heydari (2019) and Johanson et al. (2020).

3. Methodology
In this study, contact-induced syntactic changes have been identified by examining and analyzing seven story books published in Qashqai Turkic in Iran. The extent and progress of these changes have been also determined by statistical results obtained from counting native and modified structures. The theoretical framework used in this research is the code-copying model introduced by Lars Johanson and applied in a lot of research about contact linguistics in Turkic languages.

4. Results
By examining the corpus and based on quantitative data obtained from counting both native and modified structures, the results of this study can be summarized as follows:

• Despite the native order, the dative object often appears after the verb.
• Following Persian paradigms, two analytic causative constructions have been developed using the verbs qoy- (to put) and ver- (to give).
• In modals of necessity and possibility, instead of the native morphological strategies, the analytic use of the modal adverb gäräk (must) and bälkäm (maybe) which appears with the main verb of the clause in optative mood, has been developed. According to a pattern that exists in Farsi, verbs sometimes used in the past tense to refer to irrealis mood. To express the ability, an analytic solution has been developed using the verb bašar- (to succeed).
• Along with more and more convergence with Persian, a more advanced construction has been developed to express the verb to have in Qashqai.
• The presence of Persian Ezafe construction, Persian indefinite article and Kurdish definite article was confirmed with a relatively limited extent.
• In most genitive-possessive constructions, the possessor noun appears without the genitive case marker.
• The verb government of postpositions (case suffixes) in some verbs such as bɑšlɑ- (to start), soruš- (to ask), inɑn- (to believe) and ɑs- (to hang) has been changed by following the Persian paradigms.
• Copula and existential verbs were used interchangebly with relatively low frequency.
• The evidential marking role of the suffix -mIš in Qashqai Turkic has been lost under the influence of Persian and this suffix is ​​used to express the perfect aspect. In addition, a copied analytic construction is also developed to express evidentiality using demä ki (Don’t say that...).
• Qashqai pronominal system has been changed by a newly made compound "belä+possessive suffix" following Persian pronominal system.
• The interrogative enclitic -mI has been disappeared and replaced by a rising intonation at the end of sentence.

The order of adjective and indefinite article (bir) before nouns has been changed.

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The present paper aims to investigate the polysemy of the Persian word /šax/ from the perspective of cognitive sociolinguistics. The study begins with introducing the tenets of cognitive sociolinguistics, and then goes on to investigate the polysemy of the Persian adjective /šax/ within this framework. In cognitive sociolinguistics, it is believed that polysemy cannot be reduced to a static state, one and the same for all speakers of a language. Rather, social variables like age and gender of speakers affect the way they perceive different senses of the polysemous words. This paper, in line with cognitive sociolinguistic, studies on polysemy, specifically those of Robinson (2010, 2012a, 2012b, and 2014), employed advanced statistical methods of Logistic Regression and Cross Tab to study the polysemy of Persian adjective /šax/ among 200 Persian speakers, both male and female, of different ages, selected from the Narmak neighborhood, Tehran, Iran, within the time span of spring and summer 2018. The results show that the cognitive sociolinguistic approach works desirably in lexical polysemy studies. In addition, the use of advanced statistical methods revealed a number of important facts about different senses of /šax/ in terms of age and gender, which provide a better description of polysemy in Persian language.

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Abstract
Objective: This study aims to find the most suitable type of oral narrative for assessing the transitivity system used by hearing-impaired students studying in ordinary schools with their hearing counterparts.
Methods: Three types of oral narratives, including personal narration, storytelling, and story improvisation were collected. The participants were eighteen hearing-impaired students (selected as an available sample) along with eighteen hearing students. Oral narratives were transcribed and analyzed using Halliday's transitivity system framework. And data analysis was carried out using SPSS 26 and based on the normality of the data in each of the transitivity indicators, two-independent samples t-tests and U Mann-Whitney tests were conducted.
Results: Findings revealed that all three types of oral narratives of hearing-impaired students contained transitivity indicators lower than average, this difference was significant for processes (p=0.047) and participants (p=0.029) in improvisation, and for circumstances only in Personal narrative (p=041). However, in the total three types of narratives, the median difference between the two groups is significant in all transitivity indices (p= 0.24, p=0.022, and p=0.001 for processes, participants, and circumstances respectively).
Conclusion: In light of the results of this research, the storytelling task, which is the most widely used form of assessment in communication disorders, cannot capture the narrative weaknesses of hearing-impaired students enrolled in regular schools, and it is necessary to use more spontaneous narrative tasks such as personal narration and improvisation of narrative in evaluating and rehabilitating these children.