Neutralization of underlying laryngeal feature in Persian obstruents based on laryngeal phonology

The aim of this study is to determine the underlying laryngeal feature of Persian obstruents in final position and their neutralizations based on the concepts of Laryngeal Phonology and acoustic measurements. Four female speakers read the words inserted in three carrier sentences. Hence the effect of three environments on neutralization phenomenon has been investigated: pre-silence word final position, pre-vowel word final position, pre-obstruent word final position. Applying Praat software (version 5315) seven acoustic correlates of voicing distinction have been extracted from the data: vowel duration, consonant duration, voice bar duration, voice rate, voice onset time, burst duration and intensity of burst. After statistical analysis, underlying laryngeal feature has been specified based on the concepts of laryngeal phonology. The findings show that the distinctive dimension in Persian obstruents is GW which is not neutralized in final position. Furthermore, Persian unmarked phonemes are passively voiced in inter-sonorant position. Thus Persian, like other Germanic languages, is an aspiration language in which GW is phonologically specified.