phonemics
Bashir Jam
Abstract
Sound substitution is a process whereby a phoneme in a loanword is replaced by its closest phone in the borrowing language. English and Arabic share short vowels /I/ and /U/ which are absent in Persian. This comparative study aimed at explaining how these vowels are substituted in Persian within the ...
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Sound substitution is a process whereby a phoneme in a loanword is replaced by its closest phone in the borrowing language. English and Arabic share short vowels /I/ and /U/ which are absent in Persian. This comparative study aimed at explaining how these vowels are substituted in Persian within the framework of optimality theory (Prince & Smolensky, 1993/2004). The findings indicated that the short vowels /I/ and /U/ in English loanwords are replaced by the long vowels [i] and [u], respectively, because they are the closest vowels to /I/ and /U/. However, they change to mid, short vowels [e] and [o], respectively, in Arabic loanwords due to Persian orthography. Therefore, this process could not be explained using an analysis that is solely phonological. Accordingly, the substitution of /I/ and /U/ in Arabic loanwords was analysed using orthographic constraints which have access to graphematical information. This comparative study presented arguments in favor of different constraint rankings which cause the occurrences of these processes.
phonemics
Bashir Jam
Abstract
The present/ future forms of the infinitive verb "dAdan" (to give) are made by adding the prefix /mi-/ and the inflectional endings /-am/, /-i/, /-ad/, /-im/, /-id/, and /-and/ to the stem /de/. These forms include [mideham] (I give), [midehi] (you (singular) give), [midehad] (s/he gives), [midehim] ...
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The present/ future forms of the infinitive verb "dAdan" (to give) are made by adding the prefix /mi-/ and the inflectional endings /-am/, /-i/, /-ad/, /-im/, /-id/, and /-and/ to the stem /de/. These forms include [mideham] (I give), [midehi] (you (singular) give), [midehad] (s/he gives), [midehim] (we give), [midehid] (you (plural) give), and [midehand] (they give) respectively. The pronunciation of these forms in colloquial Persian decreases from three syllables to two because according to the principle of minimal effort speakers tend to use less energy and to make less effort when producing linguistic elements. As a result, these forms are pronounced [midam] (I give), [midi] (you (singular) give), [mide] (s/he gives), [midim] (we give), [midin] (you (plural) give), and [midan] (they give) respectively. This research aims to identify and analyze the phonological processes and constraint rankings that cause the pronunciation of these forms. The rankings are completed gradually until a single inclusive ranking is gained that is capable of explaining all the pronunciations. The primary cause of these pronunciations is the deletion of the verb vowel /e/ to resolve hiatus. Other phonological processes that occur include /d/ deletion, [n] insertion, and vowel raising. This paper adopts morphologically indexed constraints to accommodate feeding opacity in [mide] and [midin]. Moreover, it applies Harmonic Serialism to handle opacity in the former.
Pragmatics
Bashir Jam
Abstract
Persian has borrowed numerous religious (Islamic) words and expressions from Arabic. However, a number of these words and expressions have undergone extension of meaning and/ or physical context. Extension of the physical context means that the original meaning and the physical context of some of these ...
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Persian has borrowed numerous religious (Islamic) words and expressions from Arabic. However, a number of these words and expressions have undergone extension of meaning and/ or physical context. Extension of the physical context means that the original meaning and the physical context of some of these words and expressions have not changed; rather they are used in other physical contexts in addition to their original contexts. The corpus under study includes religious words and expressions used in spoken Persian with or without extension of meaning and physical context. Identifying whether a word or an expression has undergone extension of meaning and physical context is based on the linguistic intuition of the author as a native speaker of Persian. This research presents several examples and discusses them within the framework of Relevance theory (Sperber & Wilson, 1986). In line with this theory, there exists a combination of knowledge, experiences and shared background cultural information about religious words and expressions in the mind of every Persian speaker. Using this combination, not only Persian speakers are aware of their original meanings and physical contexts but also they have access to their extended meanings and/ or physical contexts. In accordance with the Relevance theory, when a Persian speaker hears a religious word or expression s/he considers the physical context to evaluate it and then matches it with her/his background cultural knowledge in order to figure out if the speaker intended its original meaning or its extended meaning.
Bashir Jam
Abstract
Extended Abstract
1- Introduction
The word “râ”is the only postposition in Persian .Its formal pronunciationis never used in the spoken style. The postposition/r/ is pronounced [ro] after words ending with vowels and [o] when it occurs after words ending with consonants. That is because a preceding ...
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Extended Abstract
1- Introduction
The word “râ”is the only postposition in Persian .Its formal pronunciationis never used in the spoken style. The postposition/r/ is pronounced [ro] after words ending with vowels and [o] when it occurs after words ending with consonants. That is because a preceding consonant triggers /r/ deletion. These phonological environments indicate that variation is arguably not random.
2- Methodology
This research aimed at analyzing various environments and phonological processes which change the pronunciation of /r/. In so doing, it came up with the inclusive rankings of the constraints to explain these different pronunciations within the optimality theory (OT) (Prince & Smolensky, 1993/2004).
Optimality theory is one of the most significant developments in generative grammar. The first detailed exposition of the theory appears in Prince and Smolensky's (1993) book, entitled ‘Optimality Theory: Constraint Interaction in Generative Grammar’. Its goal is to explain the phonology of languages only by using a set of universal constraints. No phonological rule is being applied in its analyses because they generally explained the language-specific phenomena. In contrast, constraints in OT are not merely solutions to language-specific problems; they are claims about Universal Grammar (UG) seeking to explain phonological phenomena universally. Furthermore, there is no interaction between rules and constraints, i.e., OT is not a mixed theory. The principles of SPE phonology (Chomsky & Halle, 1968) namely rules and serial derivations between underlying representation (UR) and phonetic representation (PR) have been abandoned by OT; however, UR and PR which are renamed as input and output respectively, are being assumed in the classical sense.
This research deals with optionality also known as ‘free variation’ in the pronunciation of “râ”. Optionality is a case in which a single input is mapped onto two grammatical outputs, although their distribution is not under grammatical control. The fact that variation is ‘free’ does not imply that it is totally unpredictable, but only that no grammatical principles govern the distribution of variants. Nevertheless, a wide range of extra grammatical factors may affect the choice of one variant over the other, including sociolinguistic variables (such as gender, age, and class), and performance variables (such as speech style and tempo). Extra grammatical variables affect the choice of occurrence of one output over another.
In this research, free ranking is applied to explain optionality in the pronunciation of “râ”. According to Kager (1999) as a purely theoretical option to deal with optionality , free ranking was observed by Prince and Smolensky (1993), and has since been argued to be the OT counterpart of optional rule application. When two constraintsC1 and C2 are freely ranked, the evaluation procedure branches at that point. In one branch, C1 is ranked above C2, while in the other branch the ranking is reversed. Evaluation of the candidate set is split into two subhierarchies, each of which selects an optimal output. Free ranking preserves strict domination, which holds within each subhierarchy.
The ultimate goal of this research is to come up with inclusive rankings of the constraints which explain different pronunciations of /r/ in various phonological environments. The results section of this research includes several facts about the phonological processes involved in changing the pronunciation of /r/.
3- Discussion
The choice between /r/’s two allomorphs [ro] and [o] depends on the phonetic properties of the preceding word. If the preceding word ends with vowels [e], [a], and [], then /r/ obligatorily changes to [ro]. In this raising process the underlying low vowel // changes to [o]. However, if the preceding word ends with a consonant, then /r/ obligatorily changes to [o] due to vowel raising and /r/ deletion. The markedness constraints *Apopo and *C]rpopo trigger these two pronunciations respectively. Moreover, /r/ is optionally pronounced [o] after words ending with vowels [i], [u], and [o]. This is due to /r/ deletion which triggers glide insertion to resolve hiatus at an intermediate level between the underlying representation and the phonetic representation.
4- Conclusion
The significance of this research is that it is the first study which introduces different pronunciations of the Persian sole postposition /r/ in various phonological environments .It also discusses several facts about the phonological processes involved in changing the pronunciation of /r/.A significant feature of this paper is that it starts with a constraint ranking and ends with coming up with a single inclusive ranking of constraints that is capable of explaining all the different pronunciations of the postposition /r/. The inclusive ranking is in fact a combination of different constraint rankings
Bashir Jam
Abstract
Hiatus is a situation in which there is no consonant between the nuclei of two adjacent syllables. It occurs when the left syllable lacks a coda while the right one lacks an onset. Hiatus occurs in underlying representation or at a level between underlying and phonetic representations. Its occurrence ...
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Hiatus is a situation in which there is no consonant between the nuclei of two adjacent syllables. It occurs when the left syllable lacks a coda while the right one lacks an onset. Hiatus occurs in underlying representation or at a level between underlying and phonetic representations. Its occurrence is expected in every language, but its resolution is obligatory in languages which require syllables to have onsets. Strategies such as intervocalic consonant insertion, vowel deletion, vowel coalescence, diphthong formation, and glide formation are usually used to resolve hiatus. In this research the conditions and possibilities of using each strategy in Persian are discussed. However, only those strategies which are employed in this language are analyzed using Optimality Theory (Prince and Smolensky, 1993/2004).The ultimate goal of this research is to come up with a single inclusive ranking of constraints which explains all the hiatus resolving strategies in Persian. The results section of this research includes ten facts about the processes and strategies used in resolving hiatus in Persian.
Bashir Jam; Marziyeh Teymouri
Abstract
Careful analysis of the Ferdows Persian accent showed that the back vowel /A/ changes to front vowel [a] in the first syllable of bi-syllabic words and in the second syllable of tri-syllabic words. However, this does not occur in the last syllable. It was also found that different processes occur ...
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Careful analysis of the Ferdows Persian accent showed that the back vowel /A/ changes to front vowel [a] in the first syllable of bi-syllabic words and in the second syllable of tri-syllabic words. However, this does not occur in the last syllable. It was also found that different processes occur before nasals; /A/ changes to [o] before /m/. But before /n/, it changes to [a] in the penult of words having two or more syllables, and to [o] in monosyllabic words as well as the last syllable of words having two or more syllables. Moreover, /n/ is deleted in monosyllabic words and the last syllable of words having two or more syllables. This paper aims at coming up with inclusive rankings of constraints to explain the occurrences and non-occurrences of these vowel changes in various phonological environments in Ferdows Persian accent within Optimality Theory (Prince and Smolensky, 1993&2004).
