Document Type : Research Paper
Author
Department of English, Shahrekord University, Shahrekord, Iran.
Abstract
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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 dental consonants /D/ and /T/ which are absent in Persian. This comparative study aimed at explaining how these consonants are substituted by Persian speakers within the framework of optimality theory (Prince and Smolensky, 1993/2004). The findings of this research indicate that their substitution in English (loan) words depends on their position in the syllable; the dental consonants /D/ and /T/ are replaced by the dento-alveolar consonants [dÏ] and [tÏ] respectively in the syllable onset of (loan)words because they are the closest consonants to dentals. However, /T/ changes to [s] in the coda position since the markedness constraint ‘LAZY’ which favors sounds produced with less energy prohibits the substitution of /T/ by the more effortful stop consonant [tÏ] in this syllable position. With regard to Arabic (loan)words, the substitution of the dental consonants /D/ and /T/ (which are represented by the graphemes <ذ> and <ث> respectively in Arabic orthography) depends on how these graphemes are pronounce in Persian. Therefore, this process cannot be explained using an analysis that is solely phonological. So, there is a need for an analysis which incorporates graphemes as well. Technically speaking, a constraint which has access to graphematical information is needed. Some optimality theory phonologists who came up with this need while working on other languages have already proposed orthographic constraints as the third type in addition to faithfulness and markedness constraints. Accordingly, the pronunciation of the graphemes <ذ> and <ث> in words adapted from Arabic by Persian was analysed using orthographic constraints which require these graphemes to be always pronunced [z] and [s] respectively. This comparative study presents arguments in favor of different constraint rankings which cause the occurances of these processes
Highlights
Keywords
- sound substitution
- pronunciation of English (loan) words
- pronunciation of Arabic loanwords
- dental consonants
- orthographic constraints
- optimality theory
Main Subjects
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