Hiatus and Consonantal Epenthesis in Persian

Abstract

The present study is a research about the hiatus of vowels and the epenthesis consonants in Persian language. Up to now, different linguistics such as Smamre (1998), Haghshenas (2001), Sadeghi (2002),Parmon (2002) and Kordzaferanloo Kambuzia (2003) and Kambuzia (2003). All except Parmoun (2002), studied the classical style. The results of these studies are different. In this study it is tried to deal with the issue from acoustic view. So the acoustic features of epenthesis consonants are studied. In this research 3 questions are mentioned: 1) is the consonant inserted in vowel combination (hiatus) in formal and non-formal dialects? 2) If yes, what is the acoustic feature of the inserted vowel in hiatus context? 3) If no, what is the role for constructing the Persian syllable? The related hypotheses include: 1) the consonant is inserted in formal and non-formal language, in hiatus context of the vowels, 2) in case of hiatus the inserted consonants show different acoustic features and 3) generally by inserting the consonant and preventing the hiatus, three patterns of Persian syllables are insured. PRAAT software is used in the present study. In each style, 36 words related to six contexts are selected. These words are read by a female narrator and recorded and analyzed by PRAAT software. Based on the study of Sadeghi (2002), four vowels of [w,ʔ,h,j] are studied as the epenthesis vowels. Two vowels of [j,w] are studied by inferential studies of Kent Varid (1996) and about [h,ʔ] it is concluded that changes in structure of epenthesis consonant and the vowels around it are studied. Generally, the following results are obtained : a) the consonant [j]: it is observable in formal style in context of [o-e [ ، ] i-e [ ، ] i-o ] and [i-a] and in informal style this consonant is inserted in all the contexts of the [i] vowel except in [i-i] context, b) the consonant [w] : in formal style it is not found in any context and in conversational style the consonant is inserted in the context of all the vowels of [o] and [u] except the context of [o-o]. c) the epenthesis [h] is not seen in formal style and in conversational style it is only seen in context [a-a] as voiced and in [e-e] an voiceless, d) the epenthesis [ʔ] is seen in all expected cases.