Degree of Phonological Contrast in Contemporary Persian Language
Journal Title: Journal of Researches in Linguistics - Year 2020, Vol 12, Issue 1
Abstract
Abstract In this article, the current Persian phonological contrast system is addressed under the framework of functionalism. The Degree of Phonological Contrast (DC), as a quantitative index, is determined for consonants in terms of sonority, manner, and place of articulation, and tongue height, place, and length for vowels. The findings of this study demonstrate that DC can be explained for consonants and vowels in similar and dissimilar phonological classes. Keywords: minimal pairs, degree of contrast, functional load, sonority, phonological class Introduction The main question in this article concerns the extent to which Persian phonology employs the contrast of a pair of phonemes in the word formation. This question is already reported for consonants and vowels. The hypothesis of the research implies that decreasing the similarity of the opposition members in phonological features increases the prevalence of minimal pairs and vice versa. For this purpose, the phonological contrast and functional load of the functionalism are quantified according to the formula of the DC. Then, the DC mean is determined for consonants in terms of initial, middle, and final positions within words, and the number of syllables for vowels using non-linear mathematical functions. Findings confirmed that the dissimilarity of vowels in length, along with the similarity of consonants in non-sonority and coronality, are among the pervasive factors in Persian word formation. Materials and Methods Research data include 41718 minimal pairs extracted from the generative lexicon (Eslami et al., 1383) with a volume of 52858 entries using a computer program. In this program, each entry’s phonological form is compared with phonological forms of approximately the same length (with one unit of length error). If the difference is one, the two words are considered a minimal pair. Minimal pairs that differed in consonants were classified according to their beginning, middle, and end. Moreover, those that differed in vowels were classified according to the number of syllables. Diagrams of exponential and logistic functions were employed to study the relationship between the DC in consonants and the position of consonants at the beginning, middle, and end of words on the one hand, along with the relationship between the DC of vowels and the number of syllables on the other. To evaluate the research hypothesis, a comparison between the values of DCs, as well as their descending order, was performed. Discussion and Conclusion Examining the minimal pairs in the Persian lexicon shows that the DC of Persian consonants increases as we move from the beginning to the end of the word. Moreover, as the number of syllables increases, the DC of vowels decreases, and the inflection point of DC mean variations rest on three-syllable words. Conversely, as the number of syllables increases, the DC of consonants decreases, while there is no inflection point of DC mean variations on three-syllable words. Overall, DC for dissimilar classes is greater than that of similar classes. Specifically, the DC of vowels (in terms of tongue height and length) for dissimilar classes is more than that of similar classes, while it is the opposite for the place of articulation. However, the DC of consonants varies according to sonority, manner, and place of articulation for both similar and dissimilar classes. Therefore, the members of minimal pairs tend to be non-sonorant and coronal.
Authors and Affiliations
Mahmood Bijankhan* Professor, Department of Linguistics, Faculty of Literature and Humanities, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran. mbjkhan@ut. ac. ir Sedigheh Roshan Ghanbari Graduate student, Department of Computational Linguistics, Faculty of Sciences and Technologies, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran sedigheh. roshan@ut. ac. ir
Keywords
Related Articles
- EP ID EP705242
- DOI http://dx.doi.org/10.22108/jrl.2020.123985.1496
- Views 71
- Downloads 0
Speaker-specific features of simple vowels in Persian based on the source-filter theory
Abstract Based on source-filter theory, the present research attempts to investigate between- and within-speaker variability in simple vowels of Persian using experimental phonetics tools. This research aims to discover...
Effects of Gender Differences on Expressing Pain
Abstract The present paper aims to investigate the role of language and gender in expressing pain. Pain is usually described as a personal subjective experience and sometimes it is believed that language is the only dev...
Phonological Analysis of Question Word “ku?” in Persian
Abstract The Persian question word [ku] which means “Where is/ are…?” is used for both third person singular and plural nouns. In the standard spoken Persian, upon the addition of the [] formative it changes to [ku] a...
Investigating the Syntactic Structure of Small Clauses in Kurdish (Mokryani Variant): A Minimalist Approach
Abstract The present study aims at providing a proposal within the framework of the Minimalist Program regarding both the category status of the small clause (SC) and the case marking of its internal noun phrases in the...
Comparing the Ability of Perceptual Simulation in Children with Developmental Dyslexia and Typical Children: An Embodied Cognition View
Abstract One controversial issue in embodied cognition is that lower cognitive abilities (e.g. perception) influence higher cognitive abilities (e.g. language). In particular, with regard to this idea, several studies h...