Document Type : Research

Authors

• Masoud Moshayedi
• Batool Alinezhad

University of Isfahan

Abstract

Conspiracy of some phonological processes in Persian in Optimality Theory
Masoud Moshayedi , Batool Alinezhad

Received: 07/09/2022
Accepted: 14/02/2023
1. Introduction
Conspiracy as one of the outstanding phonological features in Optimality Theory (OT) refers to the conditions in which, in some cases, some independent phonological processes in a language can pursue a specific common goal, and that goal can be the obedience to, or the avoidance of a specific phonetic structure in the output. This concept was first proposed by Kisseberth in 1970, then McCarthy (2002) referred to it as "homogeneity of the target" and "heterogeneity of the process". The purpose of this study is to investigate this concept in some areas of Persian phonology. In this regard, in the present study, four questions are examined as:
I. Can derivative rules show the conspiracy (functional unity) of phonological processes?
II. In the framework of OT, which phonological processes can conspire to reduce final /t/ and /d/ in Persian consonant clusters?
III. In the framework of OT, which phonological processes can conspire to preserve OCP in Persian phonology?
IV. In the framework of OT, which phonological processes can conspire to minimize articulatory effort?

2. Materials and methods
This is a descriptive, analytic research in which three sets of data have been employed to show "consonant cluster reduction", "preserving OCP" and "minimizing articulatory effort". Some parts of the data were collected from M.A. and Ph.D dissertations, books and essays related to these issues and some other parts were the recorded speech of Persian native speakers.
The study applies OT (Prince & Smolensky, 2004) in analyzing different pronunciations of the data but before applying OT, at first the derivative phonological rules leading to different pronunciations are explained, then in the framework of OT, it is shown that how these different rules, in some specific cases, work together towards achieving one common goal in Persian phonology.
3. Results and discussion
In this study, the issues "consonant cluster reduction", "preserving OCP" and "minimizing articulatory effort" were regarded as goals which can be achievable by means of conspiracy among some different phonological processes.
The first issue (consonant cluster reduction) was proven to be as the conspiracy of deletion, insertion and resyllabification. For example, in some Persian words like /rɒst/, /dozd/, /saχtpu:st/ and /tʃandbɑr/ , the final coronals /t/ and /d/ will be omitted as the result of deletion, but in some other words such as /goft + mɑ:n/ and /sɑ:χt + mɑ:n/, coronals won't be removed but by virtue of vowel insertion, they make an extra syllable (resyllabification), i.e. [gof.te.mɑ:n] and [sɑ:χ.te.mɑ:n]. Moreover, in another group of words like /goft + ɑ:r/ and /dozd + ɑ:n/ only resyllabification happens to transfer final coronals from the first morpheme to the second one. It seems that in these instances, the phonological processes of deletion, insertion and resyllabification conspire to help prevent the emergence of coronals in final position of codas. In OT tableaus, by employing *FricDentPlosive constraint, the correct pronunciations of these words are justifiable.

The second issue (preserving OCP) was testified to be as the conspiracy of deletion, insertion and dissimilation. OCP forbids representations in which identical elements are adjacent. This principle has been employed as a general constraint in this study. Preserving this general constraint requires the application of a variety of different phonological processes including degemination via deletion or movement of an identical element to the second syllable, insertion of a different element between two identical elements and dissimilation. It seems that all of these processes conspire to fulfil one general goal i.e. a relevant OCP constraint. For each of these processes, some examples with relevant constraints were mentioned in OT tableaus.

The third issue (minimizing articulatory effort) was verified to be as the conspiracy of all the processes that lead to lenition. Kirchner (2006) lists all the processes contributing to lenition as flapping, approximantization, debuccalisation, spirantisation, degemination, vocalization and deletion. Kirchner (ibid) in the light of OT, believes that all of these processes originate from one common constraint and he calls it LAZY. By LAZY he means that people usually minimize the articulatory effort while uttering words. Accordingly, in this study, LAZY was regarded as a general constraint with some minor modifications for each specific phonological process in Persian.

4. Conclusion
In this study, it was firstly illustrated that derivative rules cannot show the conspiracy (functional unity) of phonological processes. Then in the framework of OT, it was claimed that, in some cases, some seemingly unrelated phonological processes could conspire towards some common goals. To verify this, three issues ("consonant cluster reduction", "preserving OCP" and "minimizing articulatory effort") were chosen. Then, the different phonological processes leading to each one of these issues were examined and finally one single constraint replacing these phonological processes was proposed for each issue to show their conspiracy.

Keywords: Cluster Reduction, Conspiracy, Minimizing Articulatory Effort, Obligatory Contour Principle, Optimality Theory

Keywords

• Cluster Reduction
• Conspiracy
• Minimizing Articulatory Effort
• Obligatory Contour Principle
• Optimality Theory