Understanding Discoursal Causals in Persian: Evidence From Eye-Tracking

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

1 M.A. in Linguistics, Department of Linguistics, Faculty of Humanities, Tarbiat Modares University, Tehran, Iran

2 Associate Professor, Department of Linguistics, Faculty of Humanities, Tarbiat Modares University, Tehran, Iran.

3 M.Sc. in Business Administration, Neurobusiness Lab, Department of Business and Administration and Engineering, School of Management, Economics and Progress Engineering, Iran University of Science and Technology (IUST), Tehran, Iran.

4 M.A. in Linguistics, Department of Linguistics, Faculty of Humanities, Tarbiat Modares University, Tehran, Iran.

Abstract

This article investigates how native Persian speakers process and comprehend affirmative and negative discoursal causal assertions. To examine this, an eye-tracking experiment was conducted with 10 male and 20 female Persian-speaking participants. The main experiment involved 32 Persian vignettes, each containing three sentences: an opening sentence, a target sentence (affirmative or negative discoursal causal), and a concluding sentence. The polarity of the target and concluding sentences was varied (affirmative vs. negative) within participants. When participants heard an affirmative discoursal causal assertion (e.g., Because my skin was dry, I applied moisturizer), they primarily fixated on the factual phrase ("applying moisturizer"), with a fixation probability of 63%, whereas the conjectural phrase received little attention, attracting only 12% of fixation probability. A similar pattern was observed for negative assertions (e.g., Because my skin was not dry, I did not apply moisturizer), where participants focused on the factual phrase ("not applying moisturizer"), attracting only 63% of fixations, largely ignoring the conjecture, with a fixation probability of only %19. Fixation data confirmed that factual phrases consistently received more attention than conjectural ones during early processing stages. In the final analysis, the effect of specificity on fixation patterns was tested. Results showed that specificity did not significantly influence either early attention or increased attention to factual content across polarity conditions. Overall, the findings align with Mental Model Theory, emphasizing the cognitive priority given to factual representations

Keywords

Main Subjects

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Research in Western Iranian Languages and Dialects
Volume 13, Issue 3
September 2025
Pages 85-102

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