Vowel Reduction in Vowel /æ/ in Kermanian Accent

The purpose of this paper is investigating vowel reduction in vowel /æ/ in Kermanian accent. Vowel reduction is a process which occurs in an unstressed syllable. It leads to change unstressed vowels and tend them to other vowels. In order to investigate vowel reduction in Kermanian accent, 6 male native speakers of Persian are participating which 3 of them are native speakers of Kerman and 3 others, speakers of standard Persian accent. The data included 4 words which were read by speakers and were recorded by a Shure microphone in the acoustic room of the linguistic department of Sharif University of Technology. Then duration, intensity, F1, F2, COG and f0 of the vowels were measured. The results show that duration, intensity and fundamental frequency of this vowel are less in Kermanian accent than that in standard accent. Also, the results of studying F1 and F2 of [æ, i, o] proves that this vowel in Kermanian accent is tending to center. So, this kind of vowel reduction in Kermanian accent is called centripetal.