A study of foot, secondary stress and alternating stress in Persian

This research aimed at studying “foot”, “secondary stress” and “alternating stress” in prosodic phonology. These three notions are mainly ignored in phonetic and phonological studies of Persian. Characterizing the features and limits of foot in every language is carried out according to the stress pattern of that language and therefore it is relevant to the suprasegmental units and specifically to prosodic phonology. In fact, the prerequisite of characterizing foot in every language including Persian is to determine secondary and alternating stress. In this research we have analyzed stress system and feet in Persian and their boundedness or unboundedness separately. Considering that there is no alternating stress in Persian, we have unbounded stress system regardless of having or not having secondary stress. The results of this research deny the existence of a level named foot as a place for determining stress in the prosodic hierarchy of Persian. In addition to that, considering foot as a level adds complexity to the investigation of stress in Persian. The pattern of stress in Persian can simply be described using the interplay between phonology and morphology and principles which are driven from this interplay.