Lexical Considerations on a Number of Pronunciations Proposed in the Book Pronunciation in Early Persian Poetry: Using Poetry to Determine Old Pronunciations

Determining the pronunciation of words - based on the prosodic meter and rhyme - has been a topic of long discussion for Persian literati and lexicographers, and in the modern era, editors of Early Persian literature have also shown great interest in this subject.  Recently, Vahid Idgah Torghabei (1399/ 2020) has done a comprehensive study on this subject, titled Pronunciation in Early Persian Poetry, in which he presents numerous findings on uncommon and dialectic alongside some pronunciation suggestions. In the current study, some of the authorʼs conjectures are criticized and denied based on lexical considerations.  Since these considerations emphasize the pronunciation of words, they can be utilized in future similar researches in the general sense and besides criticizing the book. Reviewing this evidence reveals some flaws and methodologic weaknesses in this work: First, the authorʼs inadequate mastery over the lexicon of Middle and New Iraninan languages. Second, his tendency towards systematization by the cost of neglecting exceptions which is in contrast with the claim of “Total Inductionˮ and the critique of “Uniforming and generalizing Outlookˮ in the study.  Finally, the most critical problem of his methodology, which is the domination of a prescriptive understanding of phonetic features of dialects.