English-Persian Word Formation with an Eye on Culture and Thought Effects

1. Introduction

Locke (1690) came to change that old belief saying that thought is independent of language and language is dependent on thought. Word forms are merely reflections of some underlying ideas. It is thought which determines the selection of word forms.

In Vygotsky's view, however, language and thought are logically distinct but contingently related. Vygotsky (1962) stated that "the structure of speech is not simply the mirror image of the structure of thought." In other words, thought is restructured as it is transformed into speech, and completed in the word. He concludes that in growing up within a particular linguistically structured relationship, the child begins to perceive the world not only through its eyes but also through its speech. And later it is not just seeing but acting that is informed by words.

This study is particularly important in that it gives language students a deeper insight into learning vocabulary of the language so that they understand words better and keep them longer.

The following questions will be addressed:

1. What is the effect of thought on word formation?

2. Does culture play a role in forming words?

3. How does word formation process differ in English and Persian?

2. Review of the literature

2.0 Preliminaries

As a history of this topic, this researcher found the Chinese professor Wang Aiguo (1997) who ran a similar study to this one "A Comparison of Word-formation between Chinese and English"; yet it was quite syntactic with little reference to culture or thought patterns.

According to Wang, through studying and analyzing rules of Chinese and English word formation, both Chinese L2 and English L2 learners can also enlarge their native language vocabulary in addition to finding out the similarities and differences between the two languages concerned. Finally he came to the conclusion that through a detailed comparison of word-formation between the two languages, similarity exists between the two although they belong to different writing systems, one is graphic and the other alphabetic; one is inflectional (English) while the other is not. Both languages have compounds, affixations, conversions, blends, abbreviations and loans.

This researcher is particularly interested in semantics and culture by choosing colors, objects, numbers, measure units, address terms, animal terms, religious terms, flowers, stars and planetsdomains to achieve the goals of the thesis.

2.1 Object terms

Gopnik and Choi (1994) examined the linguistic and cognitive development of Korean- speaking children. Compared to English, Korean uses fewer nouns. They found that Korean children were delayed in categorization tasks and the naming explosion. Subsequently in 1995 they discovered that Korean children were superior to the English in means-ends abilities and success/failure words. English speakers were superior in categorization and naming; Korean used more verbs but fewer nouns.

The birth of grammar in children is also worth taking note of. They use single words as a complete sentence and follow the grammatical patterns used by their parents. The effect of social setting and children's interaction here is quite clear.

A grammatical influence on cognition was also tested by many. Some are presented here to help the topic at issue.

2.2 Grammatical marking of form

Carroll and Casagrande (1958) compared Navaho and English. They observed that in Navaho, the form of the verb for handling an object varies with the form or shape of the object. The verb varies if the object is a long flexible object versus a flat flexible or a long rigid one. On this basis, they proposed that Navaho-speaking children would learn to discriminate the forms of objects at an earlier age than English-speaking children do.

2.3 Grammatical marking of gender

English grammatical gender is limited to singular personal pronouns only- he, she, it. Spanish extends this issue to verbs and nouns as well.

Martinez and Shatz (1996) examined this effect on categorization in 3 to 4- year old children. They presented Spanish-English children with pictures of animate and inanimate objects and asked them to put in their belonging groups. There were similarities and differences in their strategies to use. One- third of the Spanish children sorted them by gender while English ones did not so. They concluded that sometimes at least young children may use grammatical gender for classification.

3. Methodology

We need to refer to word formation processes both in English and Persian in order to find out some of the sources which contributed to having a new word. In English, Word formation processes include etymology, coinage, borrowing, compounding, blending, clipping, backformation, conversion, acronyms and derivations.

Persian shares some of those suggested above yet not all of them. Etymology, coinage, borrowing, compounding, acronyms and derivations are prevalent ways of forming words in Persian as well.

3.1 Materials & instruments

A well-known short story titled Animal Farm by George Orwell in English with two different translations by Mohammad Firoozbakht and Amir Amirshahi were utilized to find required data about the use and translation of certain words in the specified domains; besides, a Persian short story entitled " Ahooye Koohi " authored by Mahmood Golab Darrehi was used to atone for any probable defects arisen from translation job and thereby to tap into the Persian culture.

Additionally, I should say that researcher's reference was not limited to the aforesaid books and made use of various other books as well- David Burke's Street Talk containing American slangs and Perrine Lawrence's English Poetry also remained in focus. They were found so rich and useful to give us lots of words which will be discussed within our specified domains.

3.2 Procedure of Data collection

The researcher used the materials mentioned above to collect required data. The data were found sufficient after referring to some other books in English such as Lawrence's English Poetry and Burke's American Street Talk; these two especially helped the researcher to tap an insight into the way English speakers think and how it comes to affect their building a vocabulary system.

It should be noted that the whole books were taken into critical consideration without applying any certain sampling procedure. Facing a pertinent word or a hint in the specified domains, the researcher highlighted them and hard copied for later use. Thus any categorization in domains of colors, numbers, objects, measure units, address terms ,animal terms, religious terms , flowers, stars and planets were noticed along with attention paid to special grammatical points which were expected to help find the influence of culture and thought on building the vocabulary system in both languages.

4. Data analysis procedure

4.0 Preliminaries

The procedure to analyze the data was not statistic in nature; yet, this researcher made partly use of a certain framework utilized by Yarmohammadi (1990) to see into the classification and/or translation of words.

The framework at issue extends the aforesaid framework taking colors, objects, numbers, measure units, address terms, animal terms, religious terms, flowers, stars and planets into consideration, which are helpful here to achieve the goal of the thesis. Besides, a categorization of words and equivalent translations is studied syntactically from viewpoint of being simple, compound, complex, complex-compound, idioms, unities and so on.

Note the process of syntactic word formation in the determined areas of both languages.

* Persian vocabulary

This language makes extensive use of word building techniques such as affixing and compounding to derive new words from roots. Persian has also had considerable contact with other languages, resulting in many borrowings.

*Local word formation (derivation)

Persian language has proved to be so strong and powerful in word building and especially potent in ways a word can be built from combining affixes, stems, nouns and adjectives. Persian frequently uses derivations to build its vocabulary from nouns, adjectives, and verbal stems. New words are extensively formed by combining two existing words into a new one. An example set of words derived from a present stem combined with some of available affixes:

Persian Components English Word class

Dn Dn to know Verbal stem

dnesh dn + -esh Knowledge Noun

dneshgh dn + -esh + -gh UniversityNoun

Furthermore, Persian is using a repetition of words to come up with a new word. Note the words just hereunder:

'zr zr', 'galeh galeh', 'daste daste', 'sabad sabad', 'rafteh rafteh', 'andak andak', 'nz nzi', 'bl bl', 'qete'h qete'h', 'nam nam', 'tep tep' and 'kam kam' are of this category.

To talk about the sounds of birds and some animals, Persian speakers imitate them nearly in a sort of repetition. Here below come a group of such sounds:

Qr Qr konn, ba' ba', qu quli qu qu, bagh baghu, ar ar konn, ow ow, mew mew, wez wez, kuk kuk, qur qur, jir jir, pech pech, qt qt, qah qah, qod qod, haq haq etc.

In the same line with repetitions, Persian speakers often use a close similar word of a certain main word to emphasize the status or clarify the meaning. They are mostly adjectives but other parts of speech can be seen as well. The accompanied word normally means nothing special and cannot stand alone by itself. They just exist to strengthen or aggravate a situation and status. Now find hereunder a series of these words:

New word Parts of speechEnglish equivalent

/t o shghl/ N trash, waste materials

/ khert o pert/ N tools of less use

/ kaj o maj/ adj. crooked

/ doros o rs/ adj.set to rights

*External influence

Persian has influenced the vocabularies of other languages though not so much as it's influenced by them. Many Persian words have also found their way into the English language.

Arabic influence on Persian culture

Iran's defeat and occupation by Arabs which goes back to around 13 centuries ago brought about a swarm of words into the Iranian culture. There came Pahlavi to replace Arabic and when their books were translated into Arabic by new Iranian muslins, Arabic became the language of the intellectuals: Writers, poets and philosophers as well as governmental people chose to speak and write in Arabic.

We need to note here the role of translators in importing words from other languages especially when they fail to find pure Persian equivalents.

/ qute lyamuti nadarim/ we have nothing to keep soul and body together

/ ma'zlek arbabe motlaq heywan ast/ the animal is the full boss , however.

/ khod r be lte chamanzani mi bastand/ they tied themselves to grass mower machines

Turkish/ Russian influence on Persian culture

Turkish in turn affected Persian countries considerably. Throughout history, the Persian-speaking areas including Iran were ruled by a succession of Turk tribes which governed Persian culture and literature. With the exception of certain official designations within the government many of the Turkic words in Persian have a more informal shape and therefore these words don't look foreign to many Persian native speakers:

e.g. q 'mister', doqolu 'twin', komak 'help', toman 'official currency of Iran' (but ril < Portuguese), kk 'brother', qeshlq 'village.

Apart from Turks, Russians also occupied Iran peacefully during our Shahs' regimes when Europeans preferred to enjoy lands and resources in southern Iran and left the northern part for Russians. Naturally they also let their favorite words like ' estekan' (tea cup) into Persian.

European influence on Persian culture

Over the past couple of centuries, Persian language has borrowed many words from European languages mainly French and English. A lot of these loanwords were originally French and use French pronunciation; also other common words mainly come from English, Italian and German as well. The table below shows some examples of common French/Persian words.

Persian French English

dush douche shower

mersi merci thank you

grson garon waiter

*English vocabulary The researcher has tried to categorize the processes of word formation into two parts, simply syntactic and semantic. So far the syntactic part has remained in focus and the semantic one is put off to a later time and more analytical study. Following processes to form a word is partly common in English and Persian.

-Etymology

Know; knew; known; knowingly; unknowingly; unknown; well-known;

- Coinage

Telephone, television, fax,

- Loaning

Alcohol, fianc,

- Compounding

Gun+ powder= gunpowder, black + board= blackboard, white + house = White House,

- Blending

Smoke+ fog=smog, breakfast + lunch = brunch

- Clipping

''Ad'' derived from advertisement, ''Prof'' from professor

-Backformation

Television/ televise, telephone/ phone

-Conversion

Master (n) = master (v), address (n) =address (v)

-Acronyms

AIDS, LASER, UNESCO

-Derivations

Box, inbox, outbox

* Semantic word formation

So far we've had a little focus on syntactic formation of words which is already known and clear to any linguist involved. Though we passed this short time on it, it should be emphasized that we are going to stick to semantic domains with an eye on the effects of culture and thought. To this end, the researcher took a dive in English-Persian literature to gather some supporting data and here is what he has come up with; such domains as colors, numbers, animals, address terms, object naming, measure units, flowers, stars and planets are covered. The following diagram reveals a summary of what is in focus regarding semantic domain and word formation.

Measure units

Our translations at issue have not cited the Persian equivalents for the measure scales in English. They are simply saying 18 inch and 3 foot' which could be baffling to the readers and cause them to get embarrassed often and find it hard to decode or convert into their local scales.

Units such as gram, kilogram, pint, quart, ounce, ton, piece, pile, heap, bushel, bucket, and pound are used in English to show the weight and volume of some materials and substances like milk, water, fish, stone etc. Persian, however, mostly makes use of gram, kilo, tonandmesql to weigh things. Litr, metr, kilometr, snt and farsakh are used for distance. Centigrade is the only scale for temperature in Persian.

A pint of milk or ounces of gold simply sound meaningless and puzzling to a Persian speaker and hard to find the equivalent in his/her language.

To measure an area or distance English applies inch, foot, meter, km, furlong, cm, mm, yard, mile, acre, and so on. Again Persian speakers use fewer units among those all of which are meter family members.

When speaking of animals or people both languages use such units as cattle, swarm, range, gang, group, pair, colony, herd, bunch, flight (the equivalents for Persian); still, Persian has fewer terms to refer to groups of people and/or animals. Colony, herd and swarm remain weird to Persian speakers if referred to ants and bees or gang in reference to a group of people looks strange as well.

Colors and idioms

Colors play a great role in building our vocabulary system both in English and Persian. They cover a wide area and show themselves in the form of idioms, expressions and/or proverbs.

WHITE

*To show white feather (tarsidan), to drink white coffee( shir-qahve nushiadn) , a white-color worker( krmand), to go white ( rang paride shodan), a white lie ( dorughe maslehati), as white as snow( be safidie barf), to be white-bread( pir-o- qadimi budan)

/ siah ru/ = disgraced /del sih/= fed up with sth. / ru safid/ = honored / mu talyi /= golden- haired /mu sharbi /= wine- haired /mu khormyi / = hair of date color / cheshm assali/= eyes of honey color / mishi cheshm / = sheepish-eyed

Iranians think of colors as something relative; it depends where and when to use them. Yellow and red, for instance, are a bit eyes-offending for clothes but beautiful of flowers. Green is so popular indicative of life and spirit though a green car may not look so popular. White, blue and black signify almost the same as for Americans with some exceptions. We find grey a dead color sometimes used by depressed people often.

Animals

Idioms like these "To rain cats and dogs, to make an ass of someone, as blind as bat, as dumb as fish, as cunning as fox, as greedy as wolf " indicate what the English think about some animals.

Alastain Reid (1926) refers to cats as such:

"Dogs say cats love too much, are irresponsible,

Are changeable, marry too many wives,

Desert their children, chill all dinner tables,

With tale of their nine lives".

So they think that cats are die-hard as we think in Persian.

Stars and planets

Anne Curzan (2003) mentioned in his book, Gender Shifts in the History of English, that planets are generally masculine. Yet, people have referred to these celestial bodies both as neutrals, males and females. Note below:

The gender of the sun in old English:

Robert Herrick (1591-1674)

The poet considered the sun a man saying so:

"The glorious lamp of heaven, the sun

The higher he's a getting

The sooner will his race be run

And nearer he's to setting"

The gender of the Saturn in old English: Robert Browning (1872-1889)

"What matter to me if their star is a world?!

Mine has opened its soul to me,

Therefore I love it."

Persian regards some well-known planets as feminine; among them are the sun, the Venus and the Saturn which are clearly attributed to naming girls. /khorshid, ftb, Nhid, Zohre and Zohal/ are the equivalents. Also note that we use ' zohal and Keivan/ to refer to the planet Saturn. Do we really think that Saturn might be bisexual? Clearly Persian names its girl ' Zohal' while its boy ' Keivan'.' Bahrm', translation of Mars, refers to males only.

Flowers

Various flower names are attributed to females in both English and Persian. It seems we both think of them as delicate beautiful and lovely objects which are far from being masculine.

Rose, lily, tulip, poppy, violet, narcissus, jasmine, lilac, aster and others are frequently observed within the names of girls. Equivalent Persians like /Roz, Nilufar, Shaqayeq, Benafsheh, Narges, Ysamin, susan, min/ are all found with high frequency among female names. So the contrast between English and Persian language is little as far as this domain is concerned.

Address terms

In Persian we address people considering their age, social status, occupations and relations:

/q, khnom, q pesar, dokhtar khnom, pedar jun, mdare man, seiyed/

/doktor, mohandes, qorbn, jenb sarvn, jenb rais/

/ karbalyi, hji, mashdi, zyer, hj q, hj khanom, /

/ bandeh, haqir, jenbli, hazrate li/

/ Hei, yru, taraf, bacheh, borujak/

You noticed that we have different terms ranging from impolite derogatory names to normal and very polite way of addressing. In Old Persian even just few decades ago people called out or spoke about one another based on their occupation or anything they were known with. Below find a series of such terms and epithets:

/ Darvish dowregard, Zeinl shirehi, kaml kaftar bz, Akbar lash, Mammad sandvichi, Abbs qahvechi, mammad mesgar, Karim se kale, Akbar landahur, Mohsen mstband,

English also enjoys its various terms for calling and addressing others:

Mr. Jacob, Miss Rose, Mrs. Nilsson, Madam Kuris, Dr. Jackson,

President, Your Excellency, Your majesty, your honor

Fellow, Mack, lad, pal, hey

Religious terms

And God according to the poet John Donne (1572-1631) is described masculine in this way.

"So in his purple wrapped receive me Lord,

By these his thorns, give me his other crown"

The gender of God or Allah in Persian is always masculine maybe due to the direct influence of Arabic which says "Hov- Allah- ol -wahed". Religion has always granted us a lot of new words which keep changing and depend on different cultures and religions. For English and Persian languages, we refer to Islam and Christianity as the two main religions which have their special terms.

English has: temple, nun, monk, saying grace, bible, church, victimization, cross, priest, and clergyman.

Persian has: /ruzeh, masjed, tasbih, nazri, sadaqe, kheirt, hoseinieh, rowzeh, moharam, sineh zani, takeye, zanjir zani, ka'be, zirat, Koran/

Again it's clear that Persian enjoys many more words to offer due to being so various in religious affairs. Religious words have also entered our Persian sayings today reflecting our way of thinking sometimes:

/ cheshm baste gheib migi/

/bikhe gushet ysin mikhune/

/ khoda ruzito jaye dige bede/

Number domain

Both Persian and English take their particular attitudes toward some numbers. However, most numbers remain intact with no attention paid to them as a thought-provoking thing. Below there comes a range of numbers which carry some social thought and meaning with them:

Persian:

7, 14, 5 and 40: seem sacred to most religious people; they are used in reference to Imams especially by the sect of shi'ism. Also we know about 7 Heavens.

20: used to put others' achievements in compliment / kret bisteh/

124000: believed to be the number of prophets sent by God

10: the borderline between pass and fail in a task- looked upon with contempt

1: something like 20; great and high-quality. Besides, God is one only and so Persian speakers mostly believe a good thing should be only one. / khod yaki, zan yaki/

3: this number shows okay / t 3 nashe bzi nashe/ or again we attribute 3 to a religious belief saying / Allah, Mohammad, Ali/- meaning that the third time is done.

13: indicative of bad-omen and people are afraid of

English:

10: very good with high quality (an ace)

7 is usually regarded as lucky/auspicious, that probably survives from various bits of classical (Roman/Greek) culture. Also we know about 7 Heavens.

666 is a number considered evil in the bible (the number of "the beast")

13 is considered unlucky as 13 people sat down at Christ's last supper

3 : again it's considered a number of luck / third time lucky/

1: God , a respected number

6: days to build the heavens and earth

50,000 years, the time of judgment day

5. Findings, Conclusions and Pedagogical implications

5.1 Findings

Naming and categorization followed nearly the same line in both languages especially in domains of flowers and colors though the contrast appears well in some others. Despite this common feature between English and Persian, it was discovered that culture and thought change within the same community. A certain object is referred to from a different angle or a certain word may imply various things in the eyes of people of the same community. The verb " nafahmidan" in southern Iran, for instance, means exactly " nadnestan" ( don't know) while this word sounds insulting to the residents of Tehran or northern Iran; southern people say: " To namifahmi" meaning that " Ettel nadri" ( you are not aware), which implies to northern residents as this: " You are too stupid to understand".

Addressing people by their popularity or profession was so common in the past history of Iran. Today, however, we call each other by first name if being cordial and by family name in formal situations. To address working people by their job titles is quite common as well.

Components of thought such as gender, singularity and animacy of objects simply reveal our worldviews but contribute less to the formation of words. Besides, our two main concerns, culture and thought, constantly change within the same community without much dependence on language.

5.2 Conclusions

The main data were extracted from the short story books already mentioned i.e. Ahooye Koohi' by Mahmood Golabdarrei and Animal farm authored by George Orwell with two translations by Amir Amirshahi and Mohammad Firoozbakht. Additionally, a survey of internet articles and English books in literature like Poetry and Street Talk helped the researcher to complete the domains at issue.

Religion: From among all domains, religion granted both languages a new set of words. Depending on the type of religion a culture adopted, that society changed relevant vocabulary cache and coined or borrowed a replacement. Persian, for instance, was deeply affected hundreds of years ago when Arabs invaded Iran. It used to have its own Zoroastrian words when Muslims attacked and let their culture of Islamic language and customs get settled into the country. Thereafter, Iranians got familiar with Islamic culture and words such as /masjed, sajdeh, namz, zakt, hajj/ etc. Till then they had no idea about / ruzeh gereftan, zakt ddan, hajj raftan/ and the like.

Literature: the role of literature proved to be as strong as that of religion in making words, if not bigger. Story writers, poets and translators were found to have their share of introducing new words and distributing them all over. Through their imagination and thoughts, these literary men manipulated words of different origins and put them in use anywhere they wished. Using lots of plays on language such as similes, metaphors and personifications, a poet or writer reveals his/her way of thinking sometimes.

Environment & family: Through analysis of the books under study, it was discovered that people born and grown up in different cultural contexts think, behave and act differently. It's not a matter of different languages as Sapir and Whorf claimed but the environment proved to be more deciding.

Here below the researcher summarizes the findings so that understanding becomes easier:

Persian was found to use many synonymous words to say the same thing which, in turn, reveals about the verbosity and repetitiveness of Persian speakers. The English story, however, was found to be clear and straightforward with no extra margins. Culture proved to contribute more to the formation of words than thought.

Thought is mainly concerned with the selection of proper words.

Singularity or plurality of items do differ in English and Persian , which indicate a different culture with its specific thinking style; that's why we take measurements via two different measuring systems.

Expressions and sayings expressed by members of a sole society, sometimes, remain baffling and ambiguous to some other people of the same society.

Negative loaning, apart from normal loaning, from western countries to Persian language is worrisome and prevalent in this modern time.

Out of the domains discussed here, flowers revealed little difference in cross-cultural worldviews while others like planets differentiate them more.

Some of the domains at issue reflect a better change in thinking style of an area, like colors and numbers.

Sounds of birds and animals in English show up in simple words while Persian has a double-word equivalent for them in a kind of repetition.

Idioms are either coined native or directly transferred from other languages.

A certain color in English may be viewed and translated a different color in Persian to signify the same thing .

Some sayings in Persian like the ones come below directly reflect the culture of Persian speakers: / mehamn habibe khodst/./ Htam bakhshi nakon/

Units of measurement differ a lot in English and Persian causing EFL learners to get baffled while facing and converting them.

Religion was found to inflict a drastic change on the culture and thought patterns of the invaded or captured land, which leads to changing words, replacing and even deserting the native ones.

Grammatical gender and animacy of objects reveal the way we think and help to categorize them in various words.

Numbers get rooted into the people's culture leading to certain beliefs, judgments and decisions.

Flowers are viewed by both camps as delicate objects so that they are attributed to the names of girls.

Planets and stars greatly differ from view point of gender; Persian speakers see the well-known ones a female such as the sun, the moon, the Saturn, the Venus or the evening star but look at some far -located ones as males or neutral. English almost regards them all as male objects.

The researcher finally came to the conclusion that cultural categories do play a radical role in building our vocabulary systems of both languages at issue; thought, however, revealed it's role in the selection of proper words which exist already.

References

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Brunner. J.S.(1961). Cognitive development.

Burke, D. (2004). Street talk 1-3.

Carroll, J. B. (1956). Language, thought, and reality.

Kunda, Z.(1999). Social cognition.

Lawrence, P. (1990). Literature: Poetry: The Elements of Poetry.

Martinez & Shatz. (1996). Categorization in nonlinguistic area.

Orwell, G.(2006). Animal farm.

Piaget , J. (1973).Cognitive development.

Saif, A. A. (2004).Educational psychology: psychology of learning & instruction.

Seidel & McMordi .(1993). Oxford english-persian dictionary of idioms.

Steinberg. D. (1991).Psycholinguistics: language, mind and world.

W. Carroll. D. (2007). Psychology of language.

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Yarmohammadi .L. (2002).A contrastive analysis of English and Persian.

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English-Persian Word Formation with an Eye on Culture and Thought Effects

By: Ebrahim Abedi

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