Vowel Epenthesis in Final Consonant Clusters of Azerbaijani Turkish

This article studies vowel epenthesis in final consonant clusters in Azerbaijani Turkish within Optimality Theory. Final consonant clusters are licensed in some words in Azerbaijani yet in others a vowel is inserted within final consonant clusters. This article tries to find the reason for vowel insertion and also the quality of inserted vowels within Optimality Theory where it can be explained by interaction and ranking of markedness and faithfulness constraints. Ranking of constraints is language-specific so this article, also tries to find constraints involved in vowel epenthesis within final consonant clusters and their ranking in this language. Study of data reveals that vowel is inserted in final consonant clusters for satisfying SON SEQ constraint and the inserted vowel always has [蘨] feature and the [back] and [round] features of this vowel are underspecified. For satisfying IDENT (back, round) constraint, following vowel harmony in Azerbaijani Turkish, these features are determined by a preceding vowel.