Language Research

Abstract In this study, the syllable structure in Central Kurdish (Sorani) language has been phonologically investigated. In this investigation, the syllable structure has been compared with the views which are based on orthography believe in CGVCC, CCVC and CCVCCC syllable structures (based on the frequency of occurrence in previous studies). This study examines the presence of a high front lax vowel /I/ in underlying representation or its epenthesis in surface representation during derivational stages. For this purpose, both internal and external linguistic evidences are employed. An audio corpus of the speakers of Mariwan and Sulaimani, along with a questionnaire for determining the native speakers’ intuition in counting the word syllables have been employed as the research data. Evidences from vowel changes in cognate and borrowed words, diachronic data, the application of phonological rules in the syllable domain, sonority sequencing principle and selection of the most sonorous element as syllable nucleus and consonants as onset and coda, along with acoustic cues for the presence of this vowel in phonetic representation explain the phonological syllable structure in Central Kurdish. Basic tenets of generative phonology like referring to two levels of representation, and the phonotactic rules on the distribution of building blocks of syllable form the theoretical framework of this study. The results show that from two opponent hypotheses regarding vowel /I/ existence in phonetic form: 1) existence in UR and faithfulness mapping to SR; 2) lacking in UR and emergence in SR as result of vowel epenthesis rule, regarding above-mentioned phonological arguments, the former is confirmed. By accepting the presence of vowel /I/ in underlying representation and the similarities between glides and other consonants as the second member of the onset, the syllable structure in Central Kurdish, like standard Persian, is CV(C)(C). In phonetic representation onset clusters of consonant-glide is the result of vowel deletion due to the shared place of articulation with the following glide.

Abstract Vowels of a language can be characterized within an acoustically defined space according to native listeners’ perceptual intuition. This study investigated Persian listeners’ perception of a synthetic vowel space in which F1, F2, and F3 varied in a systematic manner. Our experimental design was based on the “Simple Target Model”. In an identification task thirty subjects heard each stimulus once in random order, and responded by choosing orthographic signs of Persian vowels. The identification of vowels depends on F1 and F2 (p<0.00001), but not on F3.  Our results highlight the importance of F1 and F2 in distinguishing Persian vowels, in agreement with those obtained in previous production experiments.

Abstract The present study clarifies the difference between orthographic words and their phonological correspondents in Persian writing system via computing orthographic depth of Persian writing system. In this article, first, the relationship between orthographic forms of the words and their phonological correspondents is formalized by using context free and context sensitive grapheme-phoneme rules. Then, the phonological bases of diacritics are studied. Finally, a method for computing orthographic depth of Persian writing system is introduced regardless of linguistic knowledge. The results indicate that it is possible to reduce the depth of Persian writing system by phonological, morphological and syntactic knowledge of the native speakers.  

Abstract In this article, conspiracy which has been introduced by Kisseberth (1970) is studied in Azarbaijani Turkish. Sometimes, in a language or some languages, certain rules are used to avoid a special output or they try to reach a specific structure in the output. Although these rules are apparently different processes, they have the same target which is accepting or rejecting a special structure in the output. In other words, when two or more rewrite rules directly or indirectly support some constraint on surface forms, they are involved in a conspiracy. In this article, conspiracy is first explained based on examples from Persian. Then, it is shown that in Turkish, in order to avoid adjacent vowels and to accept obligatory counter principle (ocp), processes of vowel epenthesis and vowel deletion are in conspiracy. Finally, constraints involved in this process and their ranking in this language will be delineated.