Collocational Clashes within Linguistic Hybridity

From Abhari Turkish to Abhari Persian

Abstract

This study aimed at finding the reasons of deviations from typical Persian collocations among Abhari Persian speakers. In this direction, categories of collocations and collocational clashes, as well linguistic hybridity were explored. First, Abhara Turkish sentences which were supposed to have the most clashes in the process of translating into Persian were compiled along with their Abhari Persian equivalents. After checking with an educated Persian native speaker, 41 sentences were chosen as collocational clashes in the Standard Persian. Each one of these sentences was categorized according to the taxonomy proposed by Benson (1985). In the next step, these Turkish sentences were put in the form of a printed questionnaire with 41 items and distributed among Abhari participants. All the participants (217 members) were born in Abhar and lived there. They were native speakers of Abhari Turkish and normally spoke in that dialect. They were asked to write the same Persian equivalents they use for each Turkish sentence. After collecting the questionnaires, the Persian equivalents of each Turkish sentence were categorized in order to check their similarity to and difference from typical Persian and determine the factors involved in these clashes and interferences. In this phase, the collectedm data were analyzed based on Beekman and Callow’s (1974) model of causes of collocational clashes. The most frequent patterns of collocational clashes belonged to Object +Verb pattern, and the least one belonged to Subject + Verb pattern. The most important causes of these clashes were word-for-word translation by keeping the primary meaning of words and transferring the structure of mother tongue (Turkish) into Persian, non-observance of collocational possibilities in Persian, and over-translation.