Analysis of Phonological Processes in Gilaki Dialect based on a Linguistic Atlas

In this study، we attempt to develop a linguistic atlas for Gilan province، Iran، and answer three major research questions: (1) what phonological processes occur in Gilan and in Gilaki dialect? (2) Does the traditional demarcation of Gilaki into Bie Pas in western areas and Bie Pish in Eastern parts of the province have a phonological base? (3) Are the phonological processes that occur in central cities of the province different from those that occur in the non-central areas? To answer the questions، first one hundred words from different lexical categories، i. e. nouns، verbs، adjectives، pronouns، etc. were selected and native speakers’ pronunciations were recorded by a voice recorder and interviews were conducted The findings indicate that throughout Gilan، eighteen phonological processes occur from which centralization، raising، elision، and spirantization are the most frequent processes respectively. With respect to the second question، it was revealed that there is a correlation between phonological variation and the geographical area، giving weight to the traditional boundary so-called Bie Pas and Pie Pish. Likewise، it was shown that the frequency of phonological processes in non-central areas، especially in Rudsar، is much higher than those in the central areas.