Investigating the weakening process in Sirjani dialect; Self-unit phonology

In autosegmental phonology, Goldsmith (1976) expanded the phonological representation from linear to non-linear in frequent languages. Due to nonlinearity and the existence of layered structure in this approach, the present study with descriptive-analytical way define and analyze some of the phonological processes including spirantization, assimilation,, deletion and compensatory lengthening based on the principles of autosegmental phonology, i.e. spreading and delinking (McCarthy, 1988) in Sirjani dialect. To get the end, 40 speakers with different genders, ages, educations, jobs and from multiple areas of Sirjan city were selected randomly and data were collected by using free speech recording, interviewing and available library resources about Sirjani variety; then, the collected data were transcribed by using the "APA" and the existing phonological processes were extracted and classified based on the Kul division (2007). Consequently, the analysis of the used rules in linguistic corpus was done following principles of autosegmental phonology. The results of the research showed unlike the fortition process, there are many instances of lenition process in Sirjani variation and the spreading process is realized in the form of spirantization of stop consonants and assimilation of place of articulation and voicing  and the delinking process is manifested only in the form of consonant deletion.