AbstractThis study is a phonological analysis of the process of vowel shortening in Persian. The aim was to find out whether there are any rules governing the different cases of vowel shortening in simple and complex words of formal standard Persian, and to analyse the conditions under which the long vowels /a, i, u/ change into the corresponding short vowels /æ, e, o/. In doing so, data were gathered from a 75000-word contemporary dictionary of Persian, and all the instances undergoing vowel shortening were extracted. Analysing the data showed that the change of /a/ into [æ] is the most frequent type of vowel shortening in Persian. In addition, it turned out that vowel shortening rarely occurs inside simple words in the formal standard form of the language (only in 35 entries out of 519 words in total; i.e. 6.7%); while on the contrary, in complex words it happens quite frequently. Furthermore, regarding the phonemic environment in which vowels undergo shortening, it was found that vowel shortening is most frequent before the glottal consonant /h/, next frequent before nasals /n/ and /m/, and then before /r/. The process also occurs rather frequently in morpheme-final positions in affixation. Lastly, it turns out that another important factor in vowel shortening is the syllable structure of the word; as the super-heavy and ultra-heavy syllables of Persian tend to lose one mora and become lighter in certain positions in the word.

The present paper examines the process of loanword syllable adaptation in tetrasyllabic words in Persian, within an Optimalitytheoretic framework. In Persian, consonant clusters are avoided in onset position. As a result, the loanwords borrowed from other languages which have complex onsets, when introduced into Persian, are adapted to fit the syllable structure of the target language. When placed word-initially, the onset cluster is generally resolved by the insertion of an epenthetic vowel. However, this vowel epenthesis occurs in a split pattern, as it does in many other languages. In this study, following Gouskova's (2001) proposal, we argue that this split pattern in loanword syllabic adaptation can best be explained to be an effect of the Syllable Contact Law (SCL). That is, when the two segments in the onset cluster have a rising sonority sequence, the cluster is broken up by the process of anaptyxis; while in sequences of falling sonority, the cluster is resolved through the process of prothesis. It is argued that, this pattern uniformly holds true at least as far as the dictionary-derived data in the present study are concerned. For the exceptional cases of /SN/ and /SL/ clustersnot attested in our data set, but still present and frequently referred to in the literature-we propose the addition of two positional faithfulness constraints of the DEP-V/X_Y family (Fleischhacker 2001) to our set of universal constraints to account for all the possible cases of loanword syllabic adaptation in Persian.

This paper analyses the case of hiatus resolution in the /e-i/ and /e-ɑ/ environments in tetrasyllabic words in Persian, within an Optimality-theoretic framework. Hiatus is avoided in Persian by the insertion of an epenthetic consonant which varies considerably depending on the morpho-phonemic environment in which hiatus occurs. It is argued that the insertion of [ɟ] as a hiatus-resolving consonant in Persian is historically driven. We follow Naderi and van Oostendorp (2011) in assuming that the hiatus-resolving [ɟ] is actually a latent segment at the end of bases ending in /e/-in some words as a relic from the Middle (Pahlavi) Persian and in others as a matter of analogy-surfacing only in certain morpho-phonemic contexts. We argue that the two hiatus-resolving consonants realised in an /e-i/ environment in Persian-i.e., the phonetically-driven [ʔ] and the historically-driven [ɟ]-are in complementary distribution depending on the grammatical class of the output word. Within an OT framework, we aimed to achieve a unified explanation and a set order of constraints active for hiatus resolution in the /e-i/ and /e-ɑ/ environments.

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This study is a stylistic analysis of Pink Floyd's song lyrics Another Brick in the Wall (parts 1 and 2) and the interlude between them The Happiest Days of Our Lives. The aim was to explore various stylistic devices used in the verses to convey the main theme of the lyrics at different levels of language (phonetics/phonology, lexico-grammar, and semantics), and to see how all these stylistic features interact to make the lyrics mean what they do. The study covers different aspects of style including rhythm and rhyme patterns at the level of sounding, tense selection and transitivity structure at the level of wording and grammar, and the use of metaphor and irony at the level of meaning. The analysis shows that the verses make use of a variety of stylistic techniques to communicate the main theme of the lyrics, which is centred around the sense of isolation and abandonment, and to fit into the musical rhythm and feeling connected to it.