Epenthesis in Persian Language: Phonetic Context or Morphological Conditions

This paper deals with the study of epenthesis in Persian language. Epenthesis is an intrusion process in which a phoneme is added to a word. Epenthesis has two types in Persian language: excrescence and anaptyxis. This article talks about both types of epenthesis. By examining the data and proposing two hypotheses، it is concluded that excrescence is an obligatory process in Persian language for changing an unacceptable syllable structure into an acceptable one. In this process، ten consonants appear between two vowels under morphological، syntactic and phonetic conditions. But anaptyxis in original Persian words is an arbitrary and stylistic process، which is used to ease the pronunciation and to melodize the words. The anaptyxis in loan words is used to break the consonant cluster in the beginning of the word، so that the word formation becomes in accordance with the syllabification rules.