SOAS Research Online

Abstract

This thesis presents a phonetic and phonological description of the nominal piece in Standard Colloquial Persian. The phonetic description is given in articulatory feature analysis as briefly outlined in paragraph 0.5. The phonological description is in prosodic terms. Intonation has been excluded from this thesis as it is primarily a sentence prosody.1 In order to achieve maximum congruence between the phonological and grammatical levels, the phonological statements are given within a grammatical framework outlined in parts at the beginning of the relevant chapters. The introduction gives the necessary information about the data analysed, previous analyses and some justification for the choice of the theory. A general discussion on syllable, some existing phonetic definitions, and the need for syllable is presented in Chapter 1 where a definition of syllable in Persian is suggested together with its types. The phonetic features observed in the data are described in Chapters 2 and 3 in. terms of syllable features and syllable segments. The phonetic features observed between syllables at morpheme boundaries as well as some rules for syllable division are given in Chapter 4. Chapter 5 provides further description of glottal, pre-glottal and long contoids. 1. For a description of intonation in Persian see J. Towhidi's "A Study of Intonation and Related Features of Persian ...", research for Ph.D. thesis, London University, S.O.A.S. In Chapter 6 the phonological structure of syllable is given and the syllable prosodies are stated. In Chapter 7 different phonematic systems are set up for different places in the syllable. The syllable structure of nominal words is set up in Chapter 8, and various prosodies of nominal words are described. Chapter 9 deals with the description of the nominal piece and junction prosodies which express the relation between the components of nominal piece. Chapter 10 provides a brief summary of some interesting experimental findings obtained with the help of the techniques of palatography, mingography and spectrography. Most of the descriptions based on perceptual analysis of the data are found to be supported by instrumental evidence.