and /e/ to /u/" A Study on Shifting the Vowels /e/ to /i/ in Present tense and Imperative verbs initiating with the morpheme /be/ in Abadani dialect" Depending on Optimality theory"

Khuzestani or Jonubi dialect known as Abadani dialect is one of the well-known Iranian dialects to which less research are dedicated. To this end, the present study aims at investigating, the shifting of vowels /e/ to /i/ and /e/ to /u/ respectively, via the progressive assimilation in imperative verbs with present tense initiating with /be/ in Abadani dialect. These phonological shifts do not occur in all speech events. The analysis of the collected data carried out descriptively within the theoretical framework of Optimality. The optimality tables explain why these processes do not occur in all cases, using the faithfulness and markedness constraints. The results have shown that the first consonant of the neighboring syllable after the morpheme /be/, determines the happening or blocking of the above mentioned transformation.