Phonological Processes in Ghāyeni Persian
摘要
This chapter aims to investigate the phonological processes of Ghāyeni dialect, a variety of Persian language spoken in Ghāyen, a city in South Khorasan province, Iran. The phonological processes including lenition, raising, fronting, metathesis, compensatory lengthening, pluralization, clitics, and Ezāfe construction were studied in this dialect. The research data were gathered based on the leading author’s intuition, a native speaker of Ghāyeni, and also through recording the speech of native speakers. They were then transcribed according to the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) and analyzed based on generative phonology. Deletion of /h/ in coda position, whether alone or in a cluster, leads to compensatory lengthening of the vowel. Deletion of the final /n/ and deletion of final consonants /t/, /d/, and /m/ in some coda clusters are other forms of phonological processes. Lenition is another process that leads to the spirantization of /b/ and /G/. /ā/ preceding nasal sounds undergoes the process of fronting. /ā/ followed by /n/ or /m/ raises to /u/ and /o/, respectively. Another form of raising occurs in words ending in /b/ or /v/ followed by /ā/ and also /a/ followed by fC (#(C)afC#). To satisfy the sonority sequence, some sounds may undergo metathesis. The manner of the plural morpheme is morphophonologically different when attached to a word ending in a consonant than when ending in a vowel. The type of vowel, according to the feature of height, makes the plural morpheme morphophonologically different. Subject and object enclitics also exhibit different manners when attached to verbs. Furthermore, attaching to words ending in vowels and consonants in Ezāfe construction, Ezāfe marker /-e/ shows different manners.