Syllabic Structure of Sistani Dialect (Rule-based Approach)

Abstract

Sistan is one of the eastern cities of Iran. It has local people with local dialect. The dialect has specific characteristics in phonology, phonetics, morphology and etc. The unique characteristic of Sistani dialect is its initially consonant cluster that makes this dialect different from the standard Persian, so vowels are placed in a different ordering. It is affected by two phonological processes and in a specific situation. Generative phonology will help us understand the underlying level of language in Sistani dialect and can discover the reason of the existent consonant clusters. This study is an attempt to discover the phonological processes which might occur in the beginning of words and make initially consonant clusters. The first one found is the centralization process, and the second one, the syncope process. These processes act as consecutives. Consequently, short vowels are converted to /«/, then /«/ is converted to /O/ and two consonant remain in line with each other and make different syllabic structures. The results revealed that in addition to CV(C)(C), C(C)V(C)(C) syllabic structure also exists in Sistani dialect. It is worth mentioning that C(C)V(C)(C) syllabic structure is just found in surface structure of Sistani dialect. Its deep structure is different: CV(C)(C), as it is in Persian dialect.