The Study of Some Morpho-phonological Processes in Azeri Turkish Zanjani Dialect based on The Optimality Theory

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

• Farnaz Ebadi ¹
• Mohammad Reza Orouji ¹
• Sakineh Ja'fari ¹
• mehri talkhabi ²

¹ Department of Language and Linguistics, Zanjan Branch, Islamic Azad University, Zanjan, Iran

² Department of Persian Language and Literature, Zanjan Branch, Islamic Azad University, Zanjan, Iran.

https://doi.org/10.22067/jlkd.2024.85728.1223

Abstract

At the present study, some Morpho-phonological processes in Azeri Turkish, Zanjani Dialect were studied based on Optimality Theory (Prince & Smolenski, 1993). This was a descriptive-analytical study and was based on interviews with 30 native speakers (between 15 and 75 years old) of Zanjan in three groups of adolescents, Middle-aged, and the elderly (each group included 10 interviewees). Their voices were recorded and later on were transcribed. All the words were transcribed based on IPA, version 2005. In this study, constraints were identified and ranked. Those constraints which were of two kinds (markedness and faithfulness constraints) competed against one another to select the optimal candidate. Results illustrated that ONSET and HARMONY were considered as high-ranked constraints, whereas IDENT-IO constraint was considered as low-ranked one, the violation of which didn’t render the candidate non-optimal. It can also be concluded that morpho-phonological rules in Turkish Azeri, Zanjani Dialect could be analyzed via the optimality theory.

Keywords

• Azeri Turkish
• Faithfulness constraints
• Optimality Theory
• Markedness constraints
• Morpho-phonological processes

Main Subjects

• phonemics