PHONOLOGICAL PROCESSES OF DELFAN LAKI DIALECT: AN OPTIMALITY APPROACH

The present research is aimed to analyze the phonological processes of the western Iranian dialect, Delfan Laki (D.Laki). The theoretical framework of the research is on the basis of an optimality approach (OT; Prince & Smolensky, 1993), and the dialectal data gathering has been via recording four hours of speech together with the researcher’s intuition as a native speaker. Accordingly, the phonological processes and types of assimilation (assimilations of: /n/ in its place of articulation; of voiced stop coronal with coronal nasal; Bi- directional assimilation of nasals and stops; and vowel harmony /a/ with ???), dissimilation (dissimilation in voiced feature; and in continuant feature), insertion, deletion (deletion of consonants /t/, /d/ as a second member of a consonant cluster or succession of consonants; deletion of /n/ at the end of the word; deletion of /d/ in consonant cluster; deletion of coda voiced consonant after long vowels), lenition and fortition (change of /?/ to /?/; conversion of /f/ to /b/ and /p/) have been exemplified within the tables and analyzed in tableaus by the use of the constraint rankings in OT. The optimalitic analysis of the dialect processes has been illustrated together with their frequency of occurrence. The results depict lenision and insertion as the highest and lowest frequent processes, respectively.