Acoustic analysis of Liquid sounds in Standard Persian

The present paper studies the acoustic-phonetic characteristics of liquids ([r] and [l]) in Standard Persian. The study used 19 male and female speakers, who articulated 204 samples of each consonant in various phonetic contexts in initial, medial and final positions. In different languages, the nature of the liquids and rhotics in particular, has a great amount of variability in different phonetic contexts and may easily be affected and changed by the surrounding sounds or due to various non-phonetic reasons. Persian phoneticians have always known [r] in this language to be an apical trill that has some allophones like the tap and voiceless [r] which occurs in some specific contexts. However, the results of this study showed that Persian [r] is not a trill, but on the contrary, this manner of articulation is limited to one specific context with a very low frequency. In fact the manner of articulation of this consonant in Persian language is approximant. The other liquid ([l]) was also studied in different phonetic contexts. Formants frequencies of these two liquid sounds were analyzed and measured in initial position only.