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Publication Date: 2025
Language Related Research (23223081) 16(6)pp. 115-143
Sound substitution is a process whereby a phoneme in a loanword is replaced by its closest phone in the borrowing language. Many English loanwords with consonants /T/, /w/, /k/ and /g/ have been adapted by Persian. None of these consonants exist as a phoneme in Persian. The pronunciation or substitution of these consonants by their closest phone in Persian depends on the phonological environment; the dental /T/ is replaced by [t] and [s] respectively in the onset and coda. The bilabial /w/ is replaced by [v] in the onset. However, since [w] is only used as an intervocalic consonant in Persian, it acts like an intervocalic consonant upon the declusterization of word initial /sw/. Therefore, it is not usually replaced by any consonant in this environment. Finally, the velar consonants /k/ and /g/ either change to palatal [c] and [Š] respectively or do not change at all, due to the phonological environment. This research aimed to explain each of these sound substitution processes within the framework of optimality theory (Prince and Smolensky, 1993/2004). It presents arguments in favor of constraint rankings which cause the occurances of these processes. © 2026, Tarbiat Modares University. All rights reserved.
Publication Date: 2025
Journal of the Acoustical Society of America (15208524) 158(6)pp. 4294-4307
Fricatives vary acoustically across languages and individuals, with speaker variability shaped by both phonetic and non-phonetic factors. This study examined between- and within-speaker variability in Persian voiceless fricatives (/f/, /s/, /ʃ/, /x/) and how linguistic environments, such as syllable position and lexical stress, affect this variability. A gender-balanced sample of 24 Persian speakers was recorded in two sessions, 1-2 two weeks apart. Acoustic analysis targeted the first four spectral moments and duration. Results showed that center of gravity captured the greatest between-speaker variability, followed by standard deviation, skewness, duration, and kurtosis. Across segments, the alveolar /s/ exhibited the highest speaker-specificity, followed by /ʃ/, /f/, and /x/. Gender-based patterns emerged: for males, the center of gravity and skewness of /s/ were most discriminative, whereas for females, the center of gravity and standard deviation of /ʃ/ were most effective. The labiodental /f/ showed some speaker-specific characteristics only in the male group. Voiceless fricatives in syllable-initial positions demonstrated more speaker-specificity, while lexical stress did not impact between-speaker variability. Results also highlight cross-linguistic differences in the acoustic cues most effective for speaker differentiation and demonstrate that optimal features can vary across speaker populations. Adaptive algorithms are therefore crucial for improving forensic speaker comparison. © 2025 Acoustical Society of America.
Publication Date: 2022
Language Related Research (23223081) 13(2)pp. 623-654
The acoustic information can be evidence for many considered matters in other linguistics areas, especially in spoken morphology and speech processing. The present study investigates the Persian derivational words of prefixes and the degree of parsability in processing, understanding, and receiving the meaning of derived words by some acoustic evidence. For this reason, the derived words of the prefixes «nɑ», «ham», and «farɑ» and their bases were extracted from the Institute of Humanities. We chose two parsable and non-parsable derived words of each derivational prefix and put them in carrier sentences. Then, We investigate the acoustic features such as duration, pitch, formants, intensity, duration of maximum intensity, and the clarity of transition point The results show that the relative duration of parsable words is more than non-parsable words. The degree of co-articulation in pitch frequency, first, second, and third formant frequency of non-parsable words in transition points of affix and base and statically position of affix is more than parsable words because of incorporation and without potential pauses. In non-parsable words, the relative maximum duration of intensity is more with the smooth trend. So, the clarity of formants in parsable words is more than in non-parsable words at the transition points. © 2022, Tarbiat Modares University. All rights reserved.
Publication Date: 2020
Language Related Research (23223081) 11(2)pp. 257-285
Being a descriptive-analytic research in Persian language, the present study deals with morphophonological processes to examine the performance of Stratal Optimality Theory for the first time. Stratal OT is a hybrid model of OT in which the insights of Lexical Phonology and Morphology are broadly combined with parallel OT. Stratal OT posits constraint evaluation at three distinct levels or strata: stem, word and phrase level and as such it can show the intermediate levels showing the formation of the optimal option. This multi-level variation of the original OT model may provide more economical and elegant explanations of problems involving opacity, derived environment effects than other Parallel OT theories that have been developed to address these issues. The data in this research have been collected through databases and written phonological resources. This paper studies deletion, insertion and compensatory lengthening processes within Stratal OT. The relevant constraints and their interactions in each level have been represented through different tablues. The results showed that Stratal OT has more explanatory power than Parallel OT to explain the mentioned processes. Interestingly, Constraints at each level follow a consistent ranking pattern. © 2020, Tarbiat Modares University. All rights reserved.
Publication Date: 2017
Acta Scientiarum Language and Culture (19834675) 39(2)pp. 191-201
This paper aims to investigate the stress patterns of Ilami Kurdish, a southern variety of Kurdish language, based on the criteria proposed by Kager (1995) and also Hayes (1995) regarding the stress patterns of human languages, including 'boundedness', 'quantity sensitivity', 'word headedness', 'foot headedness' and 'directionality'. After analyzing Ilami Kurdish data and specifying the stress patterns of this dialect of Kurdish, we adopt Optimality Theory framework, which is a modern perspective towards phonology, to show how the optimal candidates are in conformity with the universal phonological constraints in Ilami dialect. All in all, it can be said that Ilami is a right-bounded quantity-sensitive variety as far as monomorphemic words are considered.The next part of the research is devoted to the study of the stress pattern of compound words in Ilami Kurdish. In order to evaluate the stress pattern of these constructions, we use PRAAT software program to analyze the data collected from native speakers of Ilami. Concerning the stress pattern of compounds, it was observed that this is always the rightmost syllable of the final morpheme that bears the strong stress, regardless of the length of word and the number of morphemes. Actually, this tendency always violates the main-left (C) universal constraint according to which a clitic group (c) is left- headed.
Publication Date: 2016
Language Related Research (23223081) 7(5)pp. 309-341
The aim of this study is to determine the underlying laryngeal feature of Persian obstruents in final position and their neutralizations based on the concepts of Laryngeal Phonology and acoustic measurements. Four female speakers read the words inserted in three carrier sentences. Hence the effect of three environments on neutralization phenomenon has been investigated: pre-silence word final position, pre-vowel word final position, pre-obstruent word final position. Applying Praat software (version 5315) seven acoustic correlates of voicing distinction have been extracted from the data: vowel duration, consonant duration, voice bar duration, voice rate, voice onset time, burst duration and intensity of burst. After statistical analysis, underlying laryngeal feature has been specified based on the concepts of laryngeal phonology. The findings show that the distinctive dimension in Persian obstruents is GW which is not neutralized in final position. Furthermore, Persian unmarked phonemes are passively voiced in inter-sonorant position. Thus Persian, like other Germanic languages, is an aspiration language in which GW is phonologically specified. © 2019 University of Minnesota Press. All rights reserved.
Publication Date: 2016
Language Related Research (23223081) 7(5)pp. 91-118
The present study, using some morphological Persian constructions, explores Morphological Doubling Theory (Inkelas and Zoll 2005, henceforth MDT) and its essential claim as regards resulting reduplication when the morphology calls twice for a constituent of a given semantic description. In contrast to the previous theories and approaches categorizing reduplication as phonological duplication, MDT categorizes it generally as reduplication of given morpho- semantic features. To answer the research question and know whether the formation of Persian reduplicated constructions are explainable and justifiable in MDT framework or not, using two categories of semantic and morphotactic evidence, some Persian data are analyzed in MDT framework. Semantic evidence such as root allomorphoy, synonym constructions, echo reduplication, medial full reduplication and antonym constructions together with morphotactic evidence such as ezafe vowel, indifference-ke construction, interfix, linker or enclitic and melodic overwriting are some pieces of used evidence for exploring MDT framework in the studied constructions in Persian. The present study, with a descriptive-analytic method, has been carried out by studying some Persian data gathered through people’s daily natural conversations, written works on Persian morphology and authors’ intuition. Analyzing the gathered data reveals that adopting MDT, in addition to presenting a comprehensive description and analysis of Persian reduplication, makes it possible to describe and study the structure and semantic of the reduplicated constructions that were not appropriately analyzable previously. © 2016, Tarbiat Modares University. All rights reserved.
Publication Date: 2015
Language Related Research (23223081) 5(4)pp. 149-170
This paper aims to investigate the ways in which socio-linguistic parameters such as gender contribute into the turn organization of defense sessions. Interruption plays an important role in the organization of turn taking in the interactions of defense sessions. The current paper is then primarily focused on the description and analysis of interruptions in the interactions of dissertation defense sessions of Persian speakers using the “community of practice” approach. A number of discourse and pragmatic functions (e.g. defense, directiveness, cooperation, competition, etc.) have been identified for interruptions in relation to the power relations of interlocutors in the interactions. Apart from qualitative analysis, some quantitative findings have been provided for further clarification. The analysis of data shows that it is mainly the social status of a speaker that influences the types and frequency of interruption rather than his/her gender. In other words, the social variable does not play an important role in the interruption for turn organization in the defense sessions of Persian speakers. © 2015, Tarbiat Modares University. All rights reserved.
Publication Date: 2015
Language Related Research (23223081) 6(4)pp. 122-152
The contrastive function of [spread glottis] in the description of stops and fricatives has been approved in many languages, such as English, but its role in the phonological behavior of Persian stops, not fricatives, has been discussed yet. This paper based on Glottal timing theory shows that regarding this laryngeal feature in the description of Persian fricatives has got phonetic plausibility. By taking its contractiveness into account, Persian phonetic possibilities, then, regarding this feature has been dedicated in the framework of derivational approach. The results also show that applying this feature brings more economic and efficient analyses about some superficial unrelated phonological processes such as spirantisization of velar stop, fricativization of aspirated onsets and postfricative voicing based on autosegmental and optimality theoreis. This is why this paper suggests that voiceless fricatives together with voceless stops would form a natural class based on the shared feature, that is [+spread], and their voiced counterparts form a natural class due to shared [-spread] as well. © 2015, Tarbiat Modares University. All rights reserved.
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