Linguistics
History
Due to the widespread and specialized researches performed and the projects at hand the faculty of Linguistics is one of the most significant units of the Institute for Humanities and Cultural Studies. Currently, it has 19 faculty members including five professors, five associate professors, five assistant professors and four staff members; and it comprises of three departments of Theoretical Linguistics, Applied Linguistics and Ancient Iranian Languages and Culture.
Objectives
- Developing mainstream theoretical linguistic research on Persian language and other dialects spoken in Iran.
- Developing interdisciplinary research in linguistics, such as cognitive linguistics, semiotics, clinical linguistics and socio-linguistics, computational an corpus linguistics, narratology and the interface between literature and linguistics.
- Application of computerized systems in different branches of linguistics;
- Developing research on Middle Persian;
- Establishing relationships with networks and associations of linguistic communities and related fields;
- Making the linguistics achievements applicable and relevant to national and regional needs and issues of Iran, including teaching Persian in scientific and cultural centers abroad;
- Cooperating with domestic and international linguistic institutions active in educational and research projects.
- Applying linguistic research in the analysis of language variations and other instances of the Iranian-Islamic civilization;
Scientific, Research and Educational Activities
- More than 70 completed research projects and 14 ongoing projects, including three major research projects of the Institute;
- Persian Language Data Base: this database is a huge linguistic corpus comprising of both modern and historical Persian language texts equipped with searching, recovering, processing and indexing software, accessible online by scholars and researchers of Persian language all over the world.
- Teaching Persian language and culture to non-Persian speakers: Persian language as a valuable medium to access a long lasting culture and civilization and important literary and historical texts has a well defined and vivid place for scholars all over the world. The Faculty of linguistics has always been active in teaching Persian language and culture to non-Persian speakers by sending teachers, fostering scientific collaboration with other institutions and conducting independent research projects. Zaban-e Farsi (Persian Language) and Farsi-e Goftari (Spoken Persian) provided by this faculty are two important educational sets of books for teaching Persian to Non-Persian speakers both inside and outside the country.
- Farhang-e Jame’e Farsi-e Mianeh-Farsi-e No (The Comprehensive Dictionary of Middle Persian-Modern Persian) is a bilingual linguistic dictionary which includes all terms of Middle Persian Zoroastrian texts, accompanied by transcriptions, semantic descriptions and textual references of each word. The corpus of this dictionary and the sources used for extracting the necessary information for compiling the dictionary are written texts in the Middle Persian. This corpus contains 62 short and long texts. The entries gradually take form and are put on the site; up to now the entries beginning with letters گ(= z), & (= š)،ت(= t) وج(= l) now are accessible.
- Holding MA degree programs of General Linguistics and Ancient Iranian Languages and Culture, since 1990 and PhD programs of General Linguistics and Ancient Iranian Languages and Culture since 2002;
- Publishing more than 60 specialized books, many of which have received valuable prizes:
- Vajehname-ye Gooyesh-e Behdinan-e Shahr-e Yazd (Dictionary of the Behdinan Dialect of Yazd);
- Vajeh va Ma’na-ye An az Farsi-e Mianeh ta Farsi (Word and its Meaning from Middle Persian to Persian);
- Barresi-e Dinkard-e Sheshom (A Study of the Sixth Denkard);
- Dastnameh-ye Soghadi (Soghadian Handbook);
- Nameh-e Khatoon Orgi va Sad o Noozdah Pareh Neveshtar-e Soghadi(KhatoonOrgi’s Letter and a Hundred and Nineteen Pieces of Soghadi Writings);
- Zaban-e Farsi Baray-e Gheir-e Farsizabanan (Persian for Non-Persian Speakers);
- Holding lectures, meetings and workshops and conferences;
- Publishing a scientific-research journal : Zabanshenakht (linguistics);
- Co-publishing other linguistic journals, such as Zaban va Zabanshenasi (Language and Linguistics), the journal of the Linguistics Society of Iran(LSI).