Document Type : Research

Authors

• farnaz ebadi ¹
• Mohammad Reza Oroji ²
• Sakine Jafari ³
• Mehri Talkhabi ¹

¹ Department of English and Linguistics, Zanjan Branch, Islamic Azad University, Zanjan, Iran

² department of linguistics, Zanjan Branch, Islamic Azad University, Zanjan, Iran

³ Department of English, Zanjan Branch, Islamic Azad University, Zanjan, Iran.

Abstract

At the present study, the morpho-phonological processes in Azeri Turkish, Zanjani Dialect were studied based on Optimality Theory (Prince & Smolenski, 1993). This was a descriptive-analytical study and was based on interviews with native speakers of Zanjan, Iran. Azeri Turkish is an agglutinative language in which prepositions (better to say post-positions) are added to the noun roots as suffixes. Morpho-phonological processes are those phonological processes that occur in the boundaries between morphemes (between roots and suffixes). In this study, constraints were identified and ranked. Those constraints which were of two kinds ( markedness and faithfulness constraints) compete against one another so as to select the optimal candidate. Results showed that ONSET and HARMONY constraints were considered as high-ranked constraints, whereas IDENT-IO constraint was regarded as low-ranked constraint. in Azeri Turkish Language. These two constraints (DEP and MAX) are employed in order to prohibit HIAITUS in Azeri Turkish which is strictly forbidden. In addition, in assimilation, two constraints of AGREE (feature) and IDENT-IO (feature) compete against each other to mark the optimal candidate.

Keywords

• Faithfulness constraints
• Morpho-phonological processes
• Optimality Theory
• Markedness constraints
• Zanjani Turkish language