Assimilation of Final Low Back Vowel in Eghlidian Dialect

In this article, the low back vowel /?/ in word-final positions in Eghlidian dialect, one of Persian dialects, is studied. This vowel is represented phonetically as [?], [?] and [?] in different phonetic environments. Therefore many words were collected via interviewing ten native speakers so that these different alternant forms can be accounted for appropriately. Since one of the authors of this article is a native speaker of the dialect, the verity of the data is confirmed. In writing this article, the collected data were classified in terms of different alternations of the vowel /?/, then related contexts were analyzed. Analysis of data showed that, firstly, in individual words, the final vowel /?/ is pronounced as [o] when it is preceded by a non-glottal consonant; however, it is pronounced as [?] when preceded by a glottal consonant and, secondly, in continuous speech, as a result of an assimilation, the final position vowel /?/ is pronounced as [o] and [?], respectively according to the graveness and acuteness of its preceding consonant.