Document Type : Research

Authors

• Shahin Shikh Sang Tajan ¹
• Mahmood Bijankhan ²

¹ Payam Noor University

² department of general linguistics, faculty of humanities, university of Tehran, Tehran, Iran

Abstract

This paper reports on the study of Persian vowels in CV syllable based on the acoustic elements: first and second formant frequencies (F1, F2), fundamental frequency (F0), intensity and duration. Five men were selected from t-farsdat who pronounced twenty three consonants with six vowels of Persian in a constant speed. Six hundred and ninety data were collected and examined. The mean average of F1, F2, F0, intensity and duration was measured. F1 has an opposite relationship with the height of vowels. Persian vowel space was presented with regard to F1 and F2-F1. According to the amounts of F1, F2 and duration, it was revealed that some phonological processes like; vowel harmony could be the result of the adjacency of the amounts of some of these acoustic elements. For instance; /a/ tends to change into /a/ in an open syllable followed by /ha/ or /? a/ in CVC syllables, because the amounts of F1, F2 and intensity in these two vowels are adjacent to each other. Also with regard to the mean average of F0 and intensity, it was revealed that the preceding consonants do not affect these elements in the vowels.

Keywords

• Persian language
• vowels
• formant frequencies
• fundamental frequency
• intensity
• duration and preceding consonants