Document Type : Original Article
Authors
1
English Language and Literature Department, Faculty of Literature and Humanities, University of Sistan and Baluchestan, Zahedan, Iran.
2
English Language and Literature Department, Faculty of Literature and Humanities, University of Sistan and Baluchestan, Zahedan, Iran
3
Department of Linguistics, Tarbiat Modares University, Tehran, Iran.
Abstract
The present study describes and analyzes the phonological constraints governing derivational prefixes in Sarhaddi Balochi dialect, utilizing the framework of Optimality Theory (Prince & Smolensky, 1993/2004). The data of this research, comprising 98 derived words with diverse syllable structures of base including: (CV, VC, CVC, CVCC, CVCV, CVCVC, CVCCVC, CVCVCV, CCVC, CCVCC, VCVC), were collected via interviewing with 15 native low-literacy and illiterate speakers (10 men and 5 women), aged 60 to 75 years old in the villages of Khash county and from library resources. The research findings indicate that this dialect benefits from a dynamic word-formation system in which specific derivational prefixes are used for constructing different grammatical categories such as derived nouns with the prefix /ham-/, derived verbs with 3 prefixes /dar-/, /sar-/ and /ber-/, derived adjectives with 5 prefixes: biə-/, /na-/, /nɑ-/, /bɑ-/ and /ham-/, and derived adverbs with 2 prefixes: /ham-/ and /biǝ-/. Ultimately, data analysis in optimality tableaux show that derivational prefixes can be explained within the framework of the constraints of Optimality Theory (Prince & Smolensky, 1993/2004), such as "syllabic and metrical" constraints like "Onset", "*Complex Onset and Coda", and "Alignment Right (Morpheme-Syllable), and "structural conformity" constraints including "Maximality and Depedancy of Input-Output", "Linearity" and "*Integrity" .
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