The Study of Lenition Processes in Sistani Dialect Based on Autosegmental Phonology

Goldsmith (1976), in Autosegmental Phonology, has extended the phonological representation from linear to non-linear order in tonic languages. Because of the non-linear specification and the existence of layering construction of this theory, the present study deals with Lenition processes in the Sistani dialect in terms of spreading and delinking principles as proposed in autosegmental phonology. The method of this research is descriptive-analytic. To this end, 20 male, old, low educated and rural Sistani dialect speakers have been selected by random. The data has been gathered by interviewing and recording their free speech. Then the relevant data were extracted from the recorded sentences and transcribed. The phonological rules of the data have been described and analyzed based on the principles of autosegmental phonology. The research results show that the spreading process in the Sistani dialect occurs in the form of processes including palatalization, velarization, and uvularization of nasal consonants, and place of articulation assimilation as well as spirantazation of stop consonants. Moreover, the spreading process happens in vowels in the form of nasalization as well. Also, delinking process takes place in deleting initial consonants /h/ and /ʔ/, final consonants /h/, /ʔ/, /n/, /t/and /d/, middle consonants /h/ and /ʔ/ and deleting voiced feature at the end of words.