Grammatical Analysis of the Noun Group Structure in the Writing of Non-Iranian Persian Learners: The Case of Chinese Learners of Persian, Level B2

Abstract

The research's aim is to become more familiar with the grammatical features of writings of Chinese learners of Persian (CLP). The main question is how is the grammatical structure of noun groups (NG) in the writings of CLPs level B2. Determining the most used and least used dependencies of the NGs in CLP's writing and also measuring the effectiveness of Bateni's descriptive grammar are among the sub-question of the research. The research is descriptive-analytical and uses a corpus of the final writing test of the 36 CLPs in the Persian language teaching center of IKIU. According to the findings, most of the NGs (84%) had no dependents; in single-dependent NGs, which accounted for 15% of the total NGs, the following dependencies of "noun", "adjective" and the leading dependent "deixis & quantifier" had the highest frequency. In the two-dependent NGs, which had about 1% of the total NGs, and also in the few three and four-dependent NGs, the "noun" and "adjective" dependent had the highest frequency. In general, the findings indicate the ability or low willingness of Persian learners to expand the internal structure of NGs with ahead and follower dependents. At a more detailed level, the findings show the ability or willingness of CLPs to use follower dependencies than leading dependents. It seems that by teaching the grammatical structure of the NG to Persian learners, the quality of their writing can be increased. The research also confirms the effectiveness of Bateni's descriptive grammar in accurately describing the writings of CLPs.

Keywords

• non-iranian persian learners
• chinese learners of persian
• level b2
• noun group
• writing