Metathesis in Persian and Some Iranian Dialects

This article deals with the phonological phenomenon of metathesis in Farsi. In order to carry out this research, about 2000 words from standard Farsi and its several dialects were studied, and 60 words were extracted, in which metathesis in two adjacent phonemes had occurred. After classifying these words according to their number and frequency of syllables, their syllabifications were checked according Sonority Sequence Principle (SSP) and Syllable Contact Law (SCL). Among the three major phonological approaches (the rule-based approach, the non-linear phonology, and the Optimality Theory), the third one turned out to be more efficient in the study of metathesis, and revealed that this phonological process may also be accounted for a synchronic phenomenon in Farsi. The results of this research show that in New Persian, the words entering this process should have three syllables at most and those with two syllables are the most frequent. It was also shown that all the words which undergo this process are loan words, and do not have Farsi roots.