مجله زبان شناسی گویش های ایرانی
سال پنجم شماره 2 (پیاپی 7، پاییز و زمستان 1399)

The article has been written according to a typological survey on clitic as a linguistic particle in Taleshi and Tati language which is one of the northwest and Caspian Seaboard languages. To consider that both Taleshi and Tati are from the same language family and different classification of clitics among Iranian dialects and languages, the writer purposes to determine the variation of clitics and their position in these two languages. Into the research, linguistic data of Taleshi and Tati has been investigated based on a questionnaire of clitics on the Max Plank website. It has been arranged on typological investigations of clitics on which has been analyzed in 5 separable parts including general features of the language, categories, specific features, place of clitics in the phrases, and its movement. The data collected from the central regions of Talesh City and Takistan province has been analyzed on basis of the descriptive-analytical- comparative method. The results will express that there is a sameness on general features and differences in variation and categories of clitics between these two languages. Also, some specific features of clitics such as stress, ordering, gap, and functions in the sentences are the same between both of these languages. Moreover, the position of clitics and their movements are the same in Taleshi and Tati and Wackernagel’s law about the second position is verifiable for these languages.

In this research, the formal structure of dual constructions in the Lori Dehlorani dialect was examined by using Shaghaghi’s (1379) division of the reduplication process. Formal classification, following Shaghaghi’s division of the reduplication process, includes complete and incomplete reduplication and their types, completed mere reduplication, completed added reduplication, and then incomplete prefix reduplication and incomplete suffix reduplication. First, the dual constructions of the Lori Dehlorani dialect, which numbered 523 cases, were presented in separate tables and their frequency was determined. Then, the collected information was analyzed to examine the structure of dual construction in the dialect of Lori Dehlorani as one of the dialects of southwestern Iran. The results showed that the Lori Dehlorani dialect uses a variety of structures classified in the Shaghaghi classification to produce dual constructed words, and dual structures in this dialect are iconic construction, but their frequency is not the same. Thus, “dual suffix structures” with a frequency of 148 (%28) and “dual prefix structures” with a frequency of 5 cases (%1) of the total duality structures in the field of formal analysis, respectively, are the highest and lowest applications in the mentioned dialect.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the difference between cultural-geographical words in the dialects of different regions of Iran. The question is whether the Whorfian theory of linguistic relativity is confirmed by what exists in the scope of these terms and consequently, the relationship between language and thinking process in these dialects must be considered from a cognitive perspective or this difference and the subject of "cultural-geographical vocabulary" in general should be analyzed from the opposite side, i.e. the influence of culture and society on language. This research was conducted by the descriptive-analytical method in several stages and through two questionnaires (with 110 and 148 participants, respectively). Considering all the components involved, the data were analyzed qualitatively and quantitatively. The results show that geographical-cultural words are related to the socio-economic conditions of cultures rather than to the cognition and way of thinking of people of different regions. These words do not reflect cognitive distinctions rather, they are a mirror of the geography, climate, ecosystem, occupations geographical-cultural customs of their speakers and as part of a larger discourse, they carry and reflect many details and unspoken words from the geography and climate of the place of production. Thus, these lexical differences go back to the differences in the culture and ecology of the speakers and it is not in the realm of linguistic relativity and cognition. The findings emphasize the narrow border between these two types of lexical differences, which is usually ignored in cognitive-discourse research.

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.

The present research is focused on the assessment of the efficiency of Optimality theory within Iranian (Razan and Tabriz) and Istanbul varieties of Turkish. The main research questions are as followed: 1. How much can the Optimality theory be effective in exploring the Turkish varieties? 2. Are there any typological differences in categorizing the varieties under consideration? If yes, how are they? The research results demonstrate that The Optimality theory in exploring rounding harmony in the varieties under consideration is very effective. For instance, it can realize the optimal form among the similar forms which are used in them by substituting restrictions. Despite the similarities observed within the syntactic, morphological, and other areas of the three varieties, within their typological area differences are detected, according to which the three systems can be classified in triple hypothetical categories of A, B, and C which can be proved within the tableaux of Optimality analysis.

This article investigates the phonetic process of consonant elision of /ʁ/ (Tabriz dialect) in different phonemic environments within optimality theory (OT). The purpose of this study is to determine the phonemic circumstances in which this consonant is deleted. Also, determining deletions governing this process by examining the interaction between global violable constraints and ranking them is another purpose of this article. The research is conducted based on descriptive-analytic and field methods. Data are collected and classified according to the position where this process has taken place. Data analyses show that consonant /ʁ/ is always deleted on the boundary between two syllables: 1. at the coda position of the first syllable. 2. at the onset position of second syllables. But it should be noted that this consonant has never had a phonetic appearance in the beginning part of the first syllable of words and also never been deleted from the coda position of words. In syllable boundary, i.e. in both positions markedness constraint MAX-ʁ≠ and *ʁ is active and located in a higher ranking position than faithfulness constraint MAX-IO (segment). The results show that both above cases happen following the deletion process of consonant /ʁ/, compensatory lengthening, deletion, and changing in syllable structure. Findings also show that constraints with fixed ranking can easily explain the deletion of this consonant in these two positions and not deleting it from the coda position of the word.

The present research describes and analyses some phonological processes of spirantization, approximation, and deletion in Sirjani variety based on optimality theory by using the descriptive and analytical method, this theory is the work of Prince and Smolensky and is one of constraint-based theory. To conduct this research, 10 male and female speakers aged 50-65 years and illiterate were randomly selected. Linguistic data were collected using free speech recording, interviews with speakers, and available library resources related to the Sirjani variety. The collected data, after being confirmed by the native researcher of this research, are classified and ranked according to the type of process that results from interaction faithfulness and markedness constraints. Some of the obtained results of this research are: the factor of occurrence of lenition process in optimality theory is, the phonetic stimulus in reduction of production attempt. This phonetic stimulus is in the form of LAZY constraint. Also characterized the type of occurrence of any of phonological processes of lenition in Sirjani variety.

Azeri Turkic is an agglutinative language. One of its dialects is widely spoken in Tabriz. The goal of this paper is to study the functions of suffixes in Tabriz dialect. In the present paper, the independence and meaningfulness of the forms are the criteria for determining the type of a form in the explanation of the morphological and syntactic functions of the simple suffixes. The result of the study shows that, in Azeri Turkic, a suffix helps a verb to change into a non-verb word and extends its own function. Moreover, a suffix helps non-verb words conjugate like verbs. This helps verbs and other words to be so various and numerous that they can express meanings, concepts, and emotions with delicate and elaborate differences. 80 suffixes out of 196 suffixes found inAzeri Turkic are simple. A word can take up to 7 suffixes. Some of the suffixes determine the morphological nature of a word and some others determine its syntactic functions. Morphological suffixes immediately follow a stem while the syntactic suffixes occur in the final position. The suffixes have different phonetic realizations on the basis of vowel harmony rules.

Gilaki is a member of the northwestern Iranian language branch, spoken in Gilan Province.  In this article, the sonority sequencing principle is described in Eastern Gilaki syllables. The sonority sequencing principle (SSP) states that the syllable nucleus constitutes a sonority peak that is preceded or followed by a sequence of consonants with progressively decreasing sonority values. The vowels are the most sonorous segments and form the peak or nucleus of each syllable.  The more sonorous segments are closer to the peak and the less sonorous ones are further away from it.  In this research 980 CVCC lexical items were obtained among 23,660 words. The sequence of coda clusters was presented in separate tables based on the syllable's vowels. The results showed that the syllable structure in Gilaki is CV(C)(C) in which the presence of one consonant in the onset position and a vowel in the nucleus is obligatory, and having one or two consonants in coda position is optional. Also, the consonant expression in the syllable-final cluster shows that the principle of the sequencing sonority is confirmed in some data, and in some others, it has been violated. In most syllables where the CC cluster is closed by glides [l, r], nasals [n, m], and fricatives [s, z, f], the reproduction principle has been violated.

Homonymy is a phenomenon in which different linguistic categories have the same phonological and orthographic form. This study aims to investigate different functions of “-æ “in Malekshahi Kurdish. The data is collected from native speakers of Malekshahi Kurdish. Hopper (1996) and Heine and et. al.  (1991) as theoretical frameworks are used to examine the reasons for different functions of morpheme “-æ “and also the reasons for the homonymy of morpheme “-æ”. The findings show that different linguistic categories are represented by the bound morpheme “-æ “. It may be used in various contexts as a proclitic, inflectional or derivational affix. As an inflectional affix, it is suffixed to nouns and noun phrases to signal definiteness in Malekshahi Kurdish. As a proclitic, “-æ” is suffixed to verbs to function as an auxiliary or linking verb to represent perfect aspect. It is also used as an applicative form of two prepositions “to” and “in” which are attached to some given verbs. “-æ” is, also, used to represent two derivational affixes to make onomatopoeias and some nouns. Each manifestation of “-æ” has undergone some phonological, morphological, and syntactic changes due to grammaticalization which is the underlying reason for this homonymy.

The present study investigates and explains the consonants and vowels, the syllable structure, and also the consonantal clusters in the Laki dialect of Kouhdasht. The research method is analytic–descriptive. The data in this study was collected through field study by recording the speech of speakers with an average age of 30-70 years. In addition, we have used one of the writer's linguistic intuition who is the native speaker of this dialect as well as the written sources in this connection.  The data has been transcribed according to the International Phonetic Alphabet "IPA". The results of the research indicate that the phonological system of this dialect has 27 consonants. The dialect list of vowels also consists of nine simple vowels and six compound vowels. The syllable structure in this dialect is C (C) V (C) (C). Also, in this dialect, there are no more than two consonant clusters, either at the beginning or at the end of the syllable. The research results show that in the mentioned dialect in syllable structures with one consonant in their onset, the consonants /L, ŋ, r/ cannot occur at the onset of a syllable, and in syllable constructions with two consonants at the beginning, the second consonant can only be /w/ or /y/ and no other consonant can be.

Vagueness is an intrinsic feature of natural languages. A noticeable number of linguistic terms and variables are not clear, accurate, and certain. Although employing uncertain terms such as accent, dialect, and language variety imply a clear-cut linguistic area, our experience leads us toward a fuzzy division of linguistic area without definite boundaries; these terms are vague. To make the ambiguity of these terms clear, therefore, current study applied fuzzy logic in clustering language varieties and illustrating their linguistic interrelationship. It shows that a variety can belong in one or multiple sets of language varieties simultaneously, to some specific but different values. Truth value or the degree of membership may be any real number between 0 and 1 which accurately represents the relation in the cluster. Therefore, there is no need to accept the integrity of clustering and vagueness implied in terms like language, dialect, and accent in their traditional definition.