Consonantal Compensatory Lengthening in Persian

This article presents a moraic description of the relation between two prosodic features in Persian: segmental lengthening and syllable weight. The data contains imperative forms in which the initial consonant of verbal stems may undergo compensatory lengthening following the diachronically shortened vowel of the imperative prefixes. The result of analyzing the data in Moraic Theory provides us with more evidence in support of the idea that vowel or consonant lengthening has no phonemic value and makes no semantic distinction (considering minimal pairs) in modern Persian, however it causes differences in the quantity of syllable weight. In the framework of Moraic Phonology, the distinction among light, heavy and super-heavy syllables is represented by the number of moras assigned to the syllable segments and weight sensitive phonological processes like compensatory lengthening of vowels and consonants apply in order to keep the number of moras unchanged and set the syllable weight fixed.