Comparing the Pronunciation of Third Person Singular Ending in Standard Colloquial and Esfahani Persian in the framework of Optimality Theory

Third person singular ending -ad is pronounced [e] in standard colloquial Persian but [ed] in Esfahani Persian. This is due to the changing of /a/ to [e] in both accents as well as the deletion of /d/ in the standard colloquial accent rather than Esfahani accent. Furthermore, -ad is pronounced [d] in both accents in the case the last phoneme of the verb to which it is added is /A/. This is due to the deletion of /a/ and not /d/. This research aimed at coming up with inclusive rankings of constraints to explain these three different pronunciations of the third person singular ending within Optimality Theory (Prince and Smolensky, 1993/2004). In this paper, it is argued that /d/ deletion feeds the changing of /a/ to [e] in the standard colloquial accent. It is also argued that the markedness constraint that causes the changing of /a/ to [e] in the standard colloquial accent is different from the one that causes the same process in Esfahani accent.