An Analysis of Vowel Raising in Sabzevari Persian within Generative Phonology

In this research, various types of vowel raising in Sabzevari dialect are analyzed in different contexts in the framework of Generative Phonology (Chomsky & Halle, 1968). The main concern in this paper is to investigate various phonological contexts in which vowel raising takes place in this dialect. The data of this research are collected via two sources: written sources about Sabzevari dialect and recorded speech of some Sabzevari speakers. To this end, the phonological and phonetic forms of the data were first compared to one another and analyzed afterwards. Standard Persian was taken as evidence in this research. The results of this research reveal that vowel raising applies in two different phonological contexts: when low or mid vowels are adjacent to high consonants, that is to say, alveo-palatal, palatal and velar consonants. and when mid or low vowels are adjacent to nasal consonants. Overall, nine types of vowel raising take place in Sabzevari dialect.                
 
1. Introduction
The aim of this paper is to analyze vowel raising as a phonological process in Sabzevari dialect of Iran within the frame work of Generative Phonology (Chomsky & Halle, 1968). Crystal (2003: 386) explains that Raising in phonetic and phonology is a vertical process that affects tongue height and is opposed to lowering; thus a vowel is raised in the context of a following high vowel. He also adds that as languages change in the course of time, vowels that were in a low position, might raise to a higher position in comparison with their original place in the mouth. Trusk (2006: 300) believes that any phonological process through which the place of a vowel is raised to a higher position in the mouth, is called Raising. He explains that many of the evolutions that took place during the Great Vowl Shift in English, included Raising. He then mentions change of [e:] to [i:]. Trusk declares that Raising can be a synchronic process as well. He mentions Raising of mid vowels before low vowels in Bask as an example for this shift. Two words that show this kind of Raising in Bask are exte 'house' and asto 'donkey'. When followed by the article- a, they will be pronounced as ext[i]a and ast[u]a. Analyzing Sabzevari data shows that Vowel Raising is a frequent phonological process in this dialect. Based on this fact, the main question of this paper is: in which phonological contexts does Vowel Raising take place in Sabzevari dialect?
 
2. Theoretical framework
Generative Phonology is a classical theoretical framework in phonology which is based on Generative Grammar; thus it has mechanical and mathematical type rules for describing and formulating phonological processes and alternations. This framework was first introduced by The Sound Pattern of English (Chomsky & Halle, 1968). Just like Generative Grammar, Generative Phonology tends to be a simple frame work for analyzing phonological processes. This simplicity manifests itself in the form of rules being used to describe phonological alternations. Generative Phonology is a linear theory due to the fact that its representations are written in the form of sequences of phonological units with boundaries between them. The aim of the theory is to analyze and describe syntactic structures in such a way that a relation is made between these two facets of language. In Generative phonology, phonological forms of words are considered as underlying structures that after applying phonological rules, turn into phonetic forms or surface structures; thus phonological rules show the relation between underlying structures and surface structures as well as describing the process of phonological alternations.
 
3. Methodology
This research is analytical - descriptive and its data are collected using two sources: written sources about Sabzevari dialect and recorded speech of some Sabzevari speakers. At first place, Sabzevari data were collected from the above-mentioned sources and after that were compared to standard Persian forms. This comparison revealed that Persian words are the underlying forms, whereas Sabzevari words are the surface forms. Analyzing the data shows that two main categories of Vowel Raising take place in Sabzevari Persian and within each of these main categories, three types of Raising are distinguished. Overall, six types and nine various instances of Vowel raising happen in this dialect for which suitable phonological rules are written to describe them properly.
 
4. Results & Discussion
The analysis of Sabzevari data reveals that overall, nine different instances of Vowel Raising has been found in this dialect; besides, Sabzevari shows two different phonological contexts and within each of these, three types of Raising take place. The first context is when low or mid vowels become adjacent to alveo-palatal, palatal and velar consonants (i.e. high consonants). In such a context, low or mid vowels raise to a higher position in the mouth due to the high position of their adjacent consonants. Overall, three types of Vowel Raising are distinguished in this context: 1) Raising of /e/, /o/ and /a/ to [i], 2) raising of /a/, /ɑ/,/e/ and /o/ to [u] , 3) raising of /a/ and /ɑ/ to [e]. The second context is when low or mid vowels become adjacent to nasal consonants: /n/ and /m/. In this context, three types of Raising are also evident: 1) Raising of /a/, /e/ and /o/ to [i], 2) Raising of /a/, /ɑ/, /e/ and /o/ to [u], 3) Raising of /a/ and /ɑ/ to [e].
 
5. Conclusions & suggestions
The results of this research show that Vowel Raising in Sabzevari Persian has two main phonological contexts, six main types and nine instances; thus considerable diversity is obvious in Sabzevari Vowel Raising. This research is the first step in the frame work of Generative Phonology that investigates the phenomenon of Vowel Raising in one of the dialects of Persian and can pave the way for other researchers in the field of phonology to focus on the issue and investigate its different features and facets in various theoretical frameworks, such as Natural Phonology, Historical Phonology, Cognitive Phonology and Optimality Theory among others. Researchers can also work on this phenomenon in other Iranian accents, dialects, and languages and explore the similarities and differences between them in this regard. In this way, typological investigations might be a new field of study and research in the future.
 
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