Syntactic Properties of Language of Scientific Communication in Persian Scientific Works

Purpose: The language of science is one of the social types of Persian language, which is used by the educated classes in scientific works and contexts. The purpose of this research is to present an overall picture of the syntactic properties of the Persian scientific language. The types of sentences, types of tenses, verb tenses, and syntactic constructions have been identified in the scientific texts, their statistics have been presented, and their content has been analyzed. Methodology: The research questions were addressed through document research methodology, which is one categorized into qualitative approach. To identify the syntactic properties of the language of science, 90 articles in scientific-research publications in two research domain (humanities and basic sciences) and three academic fields (linguistics, geology, and chemistry) were purposefully sampled. These articles are entered into the "QDA Miner Lite" in the form of text, read, and coded. Findings: Around 1390 codes were extracted and analyzed from these works. The findings of the research showed that one of the common syntactic properties of the Persian scientific language was the use of the subjunctive mood and the simple present, simple past tense, and present perfect. In addition, Persian language speaker researchers prefer to use simple sentences, and write their works in a passive voice. The subjunctive mood with 377 codes and the simple present tense with 325 codes were the most frequent themes in the coding process. Conclusion: It seems Persian language speaker researchers have tried to use writing structure which is polite. For example, they prefer to write their works in a passive voice in order to say their thoughts and opinions, politely. In addition, probably, Persian language speaker researchers are following the writing traditions from past centuries, which is not compatible to recent science communication’s basics. Originality/value: This study is the first attempt to identify the characteristics of the language of science in Persian language through the empirical data. The findings of this research can be useful for teachers and educational institutions in teaching the language of science. In addition, institutions such as Persian Language and Literature Academy can take advantage of these findings in their policies. The findings of this research are also useful in computational linguistics.