Low vowel dissimilation in Mazandarani

Abstract

Similar patterns of vowel change in loanword adaptation have been documented for several Iranian languages and language varieties including Mazandarani. However, no convincing accounts of the nature of these processes in Mazandarani have been presented in the literature. We argue that for this language, these vowel alternations are best explained as low vowel dissimilation, a process affecting adjacent syllables with low vowels whereby one of the vowels is raised. Low vowel dissimilation is typologically rare, with the overwhelming majority of the cases identified belonging to the Oceanic family. To show that the vowel changes in question are indeed cases of low vowel dissimilation, we invoke evidence from the language’s verbal morphophonology where vowel changes show a more regular behavior and then expand the analysis to loanword adaptation. The dialects discussed in the articles are those of Amol, Reineh, and Babol. The two vowels that trigger the process in Mazandarani are the low vowels /æ/ and /ɑ/, but only the former can undergo change. We show that unlike almost all other known cases of this phenomenon, it is the second vowel that undergoes raising in the Mazandarani case in many situations, with this seemingly being the preferred way in the dialect of Babol. We end the paper with a discussion of why the two low vowels behave differently, suggesting that /ɑ/’s resistance to change is due to the fact that it is a long vowel phonologically, even if not phonetically.