A Phonological Analysis of the Past Stem Of Persian Verbs

Variation of past stem of Persian verbs has been explored by traditional grammarians as well as modern linguists. The present study is an investigation of phonological changes among past verbs traditionally known as regular versus irregular verbs. The study classifies the Persian past stem into five categories based on the number of rules applied to it. The first category refers to verbs like “kosht” (killed) formed from “present stem” (kos) + past maker (t). the second refers to verbs like ”xord”(ate) formed from “present stem” (xor), a morphological rule (past marker) and a phonological one. The third category of verbs described in this study need two phonological rules to alter present into past. The 4^th category needs three phonological rules to be applied to in addition to a morphological one. The last one refers to the verbs which need four phonological changes in addition to a past marker. The study shows that the only form of past marker is /t/. it has been also argued that some past stems are influenced by some phonological constraints like consonants appearing as final clusters as well as vowels appearing as a nucleus. Moreover the study indicates that morphological aspects of verbs should be regarded as an important factor in phonological structure of past stem of Persian verbs. In this way the study has provided evidence to support interference of phonology and morphology. The study has provided evidence to show that classifying verbs into regular and irregular is not plausible. It has been argued that all verbs are formed regularly.