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This article explores the effect of iconicity and textual cohesion on processing causal relations in Persian discourse using an experimental method. A reading-time task with a within-subject design was set up. Twelve 3-sentence experimental scenarios and 12 filler scenarios were constructed. Iconicity and cohesion were the independent variables and participants’ reaction time (RT) was the dependent variable. The cohesion variable manipulated the degree of cohesion between the first and second sentences of scenarios. The iconicity variable manipulated the order of the second and third (cause and effect) sentences of scenarios. Forty-eight participants read the scenarios and verified if the target sentence, which asserted the implicit causal relation between the second and third sentences of scenarios, was correct. The RTs of the participants were collected using DMDX program. The data were then submitted to a mixed-model analysis in R. The main effect of iconicity and cohesion on participants’ RTs was found. There was no interaction effect between iconicity and cohesion. The target sentence had the shortest RT in the condition with iconic and high-cohesion scenarios. Also, the target sentence in the condition with iconic but low-cohesion scenarios was processed as fast as the target sentence in the condition with non-iconic but high-cohesion scenarios. The findings confirm the facilitatory effect of iconicity on understanding causal sequences. The results also show that if, for discourse reasons, information is provided non-iconically, the existence of highly cohesive relations between the causal sequences and the previous context can compensate the non-facilitatory effect of non-iconic sequences.

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Derivational suffix “-ak” is one of the Persian productive affixes attached to different bases and creates many different meanings. Historical evidence affirms despite of the diversity of meaning, all the derivations come from the same original affix, with high potentiality in polysemy. The present article follows the cognitive-typological approach aims at investigating the polysemous behavior of the mentioned suffix while introducing the (sub)schemas of derivations in the framework of Construction Morphology. It deals also with the processes of metaphor and metonymy as two bases involved in the semantic extension. And then, by concerning the achievements of the first part with typological considerations, it shows the relationship between the cognitive processes involved in the polysemy and the typological motivations that follow them, i.e., economy and iconicity. Moreover, it examines how the typological explanations, specifically the concept of the semantic map, are not only valid for cognitivists, but also it can address more specific issues such as explaining the existence of polysemy within a single derivation. In this study, the Semantic Map Connectivity Hypothesis is also confirmed by those derivations that simultaneously imply more than one meaning, or that have undergone a change in meaning over time.
 

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In this research, the semantic properties of Persian reduplicative constructions were studied in the framworks of “Iconicity Theory”, in general, and the quantity principle in particular. Researches on reduplicative constructions in most languages have reveraled the connection of these constructions to such meanings as augmentation, increased quantity, internsification, continuation, repetition, completion, and distribution. The aim of this research was to show the connection of Persian reduplicative constructions to the aforementioned meanings within the framworks of “Iconicity Theory”, the principle of quantity, and the revised version of Regier's model (1998). The extensive research on form-meaning correlation in Persian causative constructions seminated in the development of a semantic classification of Persian reduplicative constructions (The attached semantic types lists 1-5).

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It is a typological observation in more than 90% of languages where the basic word order is either subject–verb–object (SVO) or subject–object–verb (SOV). Functional typologists believe that the prevalence of these two orders; in which the subject precedes the two other elements, and the verb and the object are contiguous is due to the functions of language in the real world. Hence, the two principles of subject salience and verb-object contiguity have been proposed. The typological explanations put forward for these two principles hold that transitive sentences of a language have come into existence as a result of the encoding of the prototypical transitive action scenario. In such a scenario, subject salience is a result of the fact that the transitive action scenario is started by the doer of the activity. Also, because of the tight causal relationship between the activity and its receiver, the linguistic counterparts of these two elements, too, tend to be contiguous. Since functional pressures can only be manifested in language through human cognition, the present paper looks at the cognitive processes involved in the cross-linguistic prevalence of the afore-mentioned word orders.