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Sara Hedayat
Phonological Alternations in Persian and Dari
When a language develops in two different dialects across time and space, they vary from
each in different ways, the difference can be pragmatic, sociolinguistic, syntactic, and lexical and
etc. Among all these differences that distinguish Persian from Dari are the phonological
alternations. The proposed study will focus on analyzing the phonological alternations in two
different dialects of Persian (Dari and Persian). Although the written form of Persian and Dari is
the same as there has been no study claiming any difference, there are phonological,
morphological and syntactical differences between them. In recent years, there have been few
studies, which have studied the differences in vowel systems (Miller 2012). However, to my
knowledge there has been almost no study targeting the phonological variation between these
two languages. Being mutually intelligible and having the same written form it is often mistaken
that these two are two similar languages. To avoid this confusion and for better understanding
these languages a study is needed to present some of these differences. Therefore, the proposed
study will focus on the phonological alternations in these two languages. Both Persian and Dari
exhibit divergence between its written form and the spoken. For instance, while in both
languages’ written form a village is written as deh-e but in spoken form the glide [j] is inserted
between two vowels for ease articulation.
Written form
dIh-e
Spoken
dIje
In contrast, in another instance, while the form in both languages are the same for the word to
read [xandan], in spoken Dari it remains the same, however, in spoken Persian the vowel [a] is
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pronounced [u] when occurs between nasals [m] and [n].
Written from
xandan
Spoken Dari
xandan
Spoken Persian
xundan
As there are many different kinds of phonological alternations, the present study will
focus only on fortition and lenition, epenthesis and deletion and vowel harmony.
The result of this study will be presented in three chapters; first the alternations of written Dari
form and spoken Dari, second the phonological alternations in written and spoken Persian,
finally the last chapter will compare the differences and similarities of phonological processes in
these two languages.
Research Questions
The present study will focus on phonological alternations according to the theoretical
framework of generative phonology to answer the following questions:
1) How the mentioned processes are applied in Persian and Dari? In other words, how do
the data support the application of above processes in Persian and Dari?
2) In which contexts do the processes apply in Persian and Dari?
3) How the application of these processes differs from each other in Persian and Dari?
Specifics of the project
The history of Persian, a south-western Iranian language, is generally divided into three
major periods: Old Persian, the language of the Achaemenids (558–330 BC), Middle Persian, the
language of the Sassanids (224–651 AD), and New Persian, beginning in the seventh century
AD, following the Arab Conquest. According to different studies, the baseline from which the
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dialects, now official languages of two different countries are attributed to the Early New
Persian, which dates 1100 to 11300 AD (Windfuhr 2009:445 as cited in Miller, 2012). The
language spoken in Iran kept the name Persian and the language spoken in Afghanistan, Dari
refers to a modern dialect form of Persian that is the standard language used in administration,
government, radio, television, and print media. “Because of a preponderance of Dari native
speakers, who normally refer to the language as Fārsi” (as cited in Wikipedia), it is also known
as Afghan Persian in some Western sources. The native-speakers of Dari usually call their
language Farsi. However, the term Dari has been officially promoted by the government of
Afghanistan for political reasons, and has equal official status alongside Pashto in Afghanistan
(As cited in Wikipedia). The local name for Persian language was officially changed from Farsi
to Dari in 1964. Some people think that the difference between Persian and Dari lies in prestige,
as they perceive Persian as having more prestige than Dari, while some other think that the
difference is that Persian is the formal form and Dari is the colloquial. To really understand that
these two languages have their own formal and informal forms, research is needed to be done
from different perspectives, one of which is from phonological point of view. The participants
of the proposed study will be native speakers of Dari and Persian studying in the United States.
The project is estimated to take one year, with 20 participants.
The limitation
As the participants of the study will be 20 students, 10 native speakers of each language,
and the scripted interview will be 10 minutes for each participant; one of the limitations of the
study will be that the data will not be sufficient enough to show all alternations and phonological
processes in both languages.
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Literature review
As mentioned above there have not been any research studying the phonological
alternations in these two languages, however, there are few studies that separately study the
alternations in Dari and Persian. One of the studies conducted by Handerson (1975) explains the
alternations among three forms of Dari (called Kabul Persian in the study). The study explains
the phonological process between, formal, deliberate and colloquial forms of Dari in
Afghanistan. The study explains fourteen phonological rules, which derives the informal styles
from the formal form. Studies focusing on Persian alternations have focused separately on
different processes, for instance Mobaraki (2013) aims to study fortitions in standard Persian and
four other dialects spoken in Iran. The study focuses on diphthongization, epenthesis, vowel
insertion, lengthening, strengthening: stopping, aspiration, devoicing in the process of fortitions.
In a similar attempt, Kambuzia and Mobaraki (2013) studied lenition in Persian and four
different spoken dialects of Iran. They studied the processes of deletion, voicing, centralization,
degemination, debuccalization, flapping, and hiatus avoidance, gliding and shortening. Their
conclusion and the collected data from Standard Persian and some of its dialects support the
lenition processes in Persian as eleven processes. Rahbar (2012) in his dissertation studied aspect
of Persian phonology and morpho-phonolgy. Although his study does not focus on alternations,
he examines suffixation process in Persian, which sheds light on the alternations that the sounds
undergo while taking a suffix in Persian. He also studies the vowel harmony in middle Persian
and the modern Persian. As explained above, Middle Persian is the dialect, which has been
developed differently as Dari and Persian. According to Beeman (2005), Dari kept most of the
sounds of the Middle Persian while modern Persian experienced some changes through these
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years. Therefore, the study comparing middle Persian and modern Persian will be a great asset
for the present study.
The data and methodology
The data in the present study will be collected from both, 20 native speakers of Dari and
Persian between the ages of 20 to 40 years old. The participants will be students of the university
and they will be given money per hour that they spend for the interview. The participants will be
asked to participate in a scripted interview, which will be written in the same way for both Dari
and Persian speakers. The data will be collected and the recoded data will be transcribed using
the international IPA alphabet by research assistants. First, the Dari speakers responses will be
analyzed, and will be studied form the point of view of the process that the project aims to study,
second the Persian speakers’ responses will be analyzed. Finally, the analyzed data will be
compared and contrasted to see how similar the phonological processes are from written to
spoken form in these two languages. The text used in the data will be controlled for lexical and
morphological variations.
The Timeline
The project will begin on June 1st 2014 and will finish May 31 2015.
Months
Activities
First week of June
Interviews for hiring research assistants and 4 will be hired for
interviews and transcribing data
Second week June
The study will be announced for volunteer participants
Third week of June
The Participants will be chosen from volunteers
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The schedules for the interviews will be sent out to the
Fourth week of June
participants
July
The data will be collected from Persian native speakers
August
The data will be collected from Dari native Speakers
September and October
The data will be transcribed into IPA alphabets by the research
assistants
November
The Persian data will be analyzed by the researcher
December
The Dari data Will be analyzed by the researcher
January and February
The researcher will complete writing the paper with possible
comparisons and analysis
March
The first reviewer will review the paper
April
The second reviewer will read the paper
By May 31
The paper will be edited and revised if needed and will be
ready to sent out for publish
The budget
Budget item
Amount
a) Personal and Direct Expenses
Research assistants (for each approximately $40 per interview) $ 800
and ($ 80 for transcribing each interview)
$ 1600
Participants ($ 40 for the approximately 20 minutes they spend $ 800
and for the transportation)
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For using the lab and equipment for recording $ 100 hourly, $ 1000
Estimated 10 hours
Total personal expenses
b) Estimated transportation, food, printing
For Reviewers each $100
$ 4,200
$ 6000
$ 200
$ 20,400
Conclusion
The proposed study will not only shed light on the differences between Persian and Dari
phonological processes, but also it will explain the diglossia that Dari and Persian languages
exhibit. It will reveal how people talk differently from how they write in these two communities.
The study will also provide support for understanding the difference between these two
languages, instead of just estimating that they are different because they are spoken in to
different places, or saying one has prestige and one has not. This study will also be a base for
further studies in the field. It is worthy to mention that the alternations presented will not be the
only processes in these languages as it focuses only when phonological rules explain the change
from formal to informal forms of the language.
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References
Beeman, W. O. (2005). Persian, Dari and Tajik in Central Asia. National Council for Eurasian
and East European Research.
Henderson, M. M. (1975). Diglossia in Kabul Persian Phonology. Journal of the American
Oriental Society, 651-654.
Kambuziya, A., & Mobaraki, M. (2013). Lenition in Persian Phonological System. Research on
Humanities and Social Sciences, 3(17), 83-91.
Miller, C. (2013). Variation in Persian Vowel Systems. Orientalia Suecana, 61, 156-169.
Mobaraki, M. (2013). Fortition in Persian Phonological System. Journal of Education and
Practice, 4(23), 110-118.
Rahbar, E.R. (2012). Aspects of Persian phonology and morph-phonology (Unpublished doctoral
dissertation).University of Toronto, Canada.
Dari (Persian Dialect). (n.d.). Retrieved May 3, 2014 from the
Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dari_(Persian_dialect)