Phonemic Study of Sarbazi Variant of Makorani Balochi Language

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

1 English Dep., Faculty of Literature, Univ, of Zabol

2 English Dep., Faculty of Literature, Univ. of Sistan and Baluchestan

3 MA in Linguistics, Univ. of Sistan and Baluchestan

Abstract

Historical changes and geographical dispersion make languages have different dialects and accents, and their linguistic study is one of the needs of today's human knowledge. Makorani Balochi, which is spoken in south of Sistan and Baluchistan and east of Hormozgan provinces in the south-east of Iran, belongs to the Western Iranian Languages. This research investigates the sound inventory of Makorani Balochi of Sarbazi in the Generative Phonology based on Burquest’s (2006) model of extracting phonemes. Language corpus was obtained from 40 illiterate participants with average of 30 to 80 years old, from three villages of Sarbaz County namely: Garag, Machhan and Bandigan. The data was recorded with WAV format. Having analyzed the intended speech sound by the use of sound analyzing programs of Praat and Excel, the data were transcribed in IPA alphabet 2020. The Source/Filter model was also used for some scientific explanations. Findings of this research indicate that: 1- There are 21 consonants, 6 simple vowels and 2 diphthongs in the sound inventory of this dialect. 2-There are two retroflexes among the plosives. 3- The length of vowels, dissimilar to the other Balochi dialects is not phonemic and has allophonic role. 4- Unlike from cardinal vowels, the vowels quality figure of this dialect shows the tendency of [u] towards fronting process as well as highly probable neutralization of [i] /[e] and [u] /[o] in the future. The findings report course of vowel changes and moving towards having a more economical phonemic system for this variant.

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Main Subjects

References

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Journal of Iranian Dialects & Linguistics
Volume 7, Issue 1
September 2022
Pages 261-291

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History

  • Receive Date: 24 May 1401
  • Revise Date: 12 June 1401
  • Accept Date: 16 June 1401

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