Substitution of Short Vowels in English and Arabic Words borrowed by Persian: A Comparative Study

Document Type : Original Article

Author

• Bashir Jam

Associate Professor of Linguistics, Shahrekord University, Shahrekord, Iran

https://doi.org/10.22067/jlkd.2024.88896.1253

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 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.

Keywords

• Sound Substitution
• Pronunciation of English Loan Words
• Pronunciation of Arabic Loanwords
• Short Vowels
• Orthographic Constraints
• Optimality Theory

Main Subjects

• phonemics

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