This paper aims to analyze the relation between a linguistic behavior, namely interactional metasdicourse, and a non-linguistic variable, namely, gender in thesis defenses of Persian speakers. Based on the model of community of practice, a qualitative and quantitative analysis of the metadiscourse markers employed by male and female candidates in thesis defenses have been carried out. The data include eighteen thesis defenses of nine males and nine females in humanities and social sciences. The quantitative analysis represents a statistically significant difference in the use of interactional metadiscourse markers by male and female candidates. The qualitative analysis, however, indicates the existence of some similarities among these two social groups in using the types of metadiscourse markers in the defense seminars of Persian speakers.

The aim of this article is to study Sanandaji consonant clusters in relation with their conformity to the principle of sonority sequencing. Analyzing the data provided in this paper, we found out that, of the three kinds of consonant clusters existing in all languages, only core clusters-clusters that conform to the sonority sequencing principle (SSP)-are found in Sanandaji, and therefore the arrangement and combination of segments to make syllables in this dialect of Kurdish is absolutely governed by the SSP. Applying principles of Optimality Theory on the data, the relative ranking of syllable structure constraints is determined, the outcome of which is deriving surface phonotactic patterns through the interaction of markedness and faithfulness constraints.

Abstract-This article aims to develop an acoustic vowel space in Persian speech. There are several aspects in this survey which make it different from what has been done before. The first is related to the issue of speech material. The need for more natural choice in voice qualities in recent years exhort us not relying on citation form or artificial sound produced in laboratories. Furthermore, the formant frequencies were not extracted from specified vowels, in specified context. In contrast, we are interested in the shape of vowel space determined by extremely large collections of vowel tokens, with whatever distribution of categories and context they may have in the read text. Thirdly, the vowels selected in the database for calculation of the area of vowel space are being stratified for locating in stressed or unstressed syllables, or being uttered by male or female speakers. So, we are simultaneously dealing with four groups. But the most important aspect is related to the methodology used for better plotting of vowels. Either F 1 *F 2 or F 1 *F 2 -F 1 is leaded to better vowel classification is a matter being evaluated by two parameters: (a) linear discriminant analysis and (b) scatter reduction.

Nowadays the main stream in the most fields of linguistics including phonology is minimalism and redundancy removing, which derives from the principle of the economy of language. The advent of under specification theory in the late 19th century can be considered as the beginning of redundancy removing in the domain of phonology. During recent decades different versions of under specification such as Radical Under specification, Contrastive Specification and Modified Contrastive Specification (MCS) have been presented. Modified Contrastive Specification (MCS), which is the finding of Toronto Phonology School is based on Contrastive Hypothesis in which a contrastive hierarchy is applied to specify the contrastive features. It is believed that only contrastive features are specified in phonological representations and redundant values never exist in underlying representations. This paper aims to present a novel analysis of total assimilation process in terms of the manner of articulation in consonant clusters having the structures of –st and –zd in Persian which is an active process in phonology of Persian. Working within the framework of the MCS, through drawing a contrastive hierarchy for phonological features, this paper leads to this conclusion that the feature [continuant] in Persian consonants is a contrastive feature so by spreading this feature, the coronal stops /t/, /d/ assimilate to fricatives /s/ and /z/ respectively. To represent contrast and markedness in this system, we have proposed a contrastive hierarchy of [son] > [lab] > [cont]> [voiced] for consonants involved in the process of total assimilation in Persian.

This paper aims to investigate the stress patterns of Ilami Kurdish, a southern variety of Kurdish language, based on the criteria proposed by Kager (1995) and also Hayes (1995) regarding the stress patterns of human languages, including 'boundedness', 'quantity sensitivity', 'word headedness', 'foot headedness' and 'directionality'. After analyzing Ilami Kurdish data and specifying the stress patterns of this dialect of Kurdish, we adopt Optimality Theory framework, which is a modern perspective towards phonology, to show how the optimal candidates are in conformity with the universal phonological constraints in Ilami dialect. All in all, it can be said that Ilami is a right-bounded quantity-sensitive variety as far as monomorphemic words are considered.The next part of the research is devoted to the study of the stress pattern of compound words in Ilami Kurdish. In order to evaluate the stress pattern of these constructions, we use PRAAT software program to analyze the data collected from native speakers of Ilami. Concerning the stress pattern of compounds, it was observed that this is always the rightmost syllable of the final morpheme that bears the strong stress, regardless of the length of word and the number of morphemes. Actually, this tendency always violates the main-left (C) universal constraint according to which a clitic group (c) is left-headed.