Persian
- Language Family
- Indo-European
- Subgroup
- Iranian
- Area
- —
Summary
An obstruent or nasal metathesize with a following liquid in word-final position.
Type(s) of metathesis
| Type | Status | Optionality | Position | Location | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| a. CC | Diachronic | Obligatory | Adjacent | Root-final |
Case types and qualities
-
- CC
-
- C1:
- Labio-dental fricative
- C1:
- Alveolar fricative
- C1:
- Velar fricative
- C1:
- Bilabial nasal
- C2:
- Rhotic
Examples
caxr (a) >carx'wheel'
vafr(a) >barf 'snow, ice'
asr(u) >ars 'tear'
vafr(a) >barf 'snow, ice'
asr(u) >ars 'tear'
Conditions
The loss of a word-final vowel creates the context for metathesis. The deleted vowel is included in parentheses in the examples above.
Motivations
Sonority Contour Constraint (Hock 1985): Metathesis serves to eliminate clusters which do not conform to the language's prefered syllable structure: sonority increases in the onset and decreases in the coda.
Symbols
Comments
Bibliography
- Hock, Hans Henrich. 1985. Regular metathesis. Linguistics 23. 529-546.