An Analysis Based on Optimality about Vowel Reduction to Resolve Hiatus in Kurdish and Persian

The present study deals with hiatus resolution through vowel reduction in Kurdish and Persian based on OT phonology. A collection of movies, TV series, and written texts formed the corpus of the study. In data description and analysis, the linguistic intuition of native Persian and Central Kurdish speakers were used. Based on the analysis, the authors concluded that Persian and Kurdish use glide formation through vowel reduction to resolve hiatus in certain phonetic environments. In Persian, to resolve hiatus, the two high vowels /i/ and /u/ are converted into a short vowel and the glides /j/ and /w/, respectively. In Central Kurdish, glide formation occurs in high vowels /i:, u:/ and mid-high vowels /ē:, ō:/. Glide formation in Persian is accompanied with a quantitative change in vowel /i:/ and a quantitative and qualitative change in /u:/. In contrast, glide formation in Central Kurdish is accompanied with only quantitative change in long vowels. The OT analysis revealed that the main factor driving hiatus resolution in both Persian and Kurdish is the need for an onset in syllable structure. In contexts in which glide formation occurs through vowel reduction, the active constraints in Persian and Kurdish are: ONSET, AGREE(place), MAX, DEP, IDENT(µ).