Investigating Phonological Processes in Russian and their Comparison with Phonological Processes in Persian

In this research, based on a descriptive-analytical method, some quasi-frequency phonological processes in Russian are investigated and compared with what is happening in Persian. Phonological processes are the effects of neighboring phonemes in words of a language, although these processes can occur in unpolluted phonemes and sometimes between the two words. One of the most important and complex topics studied in phonology is phonological processes. Each of these processes may be more frequent in one language than another, or, depending on the particular phonetic features of a language, it may not be possible a phonological process or particular type of a phonological process. These processes occur in fewer or more frequencies depending on their specific phonetic features in all languages ​​of the world. The questions we are looking for in this article are: What are the phonological processes of Russian and Persian languages? Despite the phonetic differences between the Russian and Persian languages, are there similarities between the phonological processes of these two languages? What are the differences between the phonological processes of these two languages? The research hypothesis is that phonological processes in Russian and Persian languages are not fully compatible. In this article, first, some of the phonological processes are described in Russian, and then the same process is examined in Persian language. The purpose of this analysis is to answer the research question that finds similarities and differences in phonological processes in two languages ​​by studying and comparing the exact phonological processes of the two languages. Many phonological processes, such as the “assimilation”, the “metathesis”, “dissimilation” in the Russian and Persian languages, are similar, but some of them, like “assimilation of soft consonants” and “dieresis” in Persian due to its specific phonetic features can’t be occur. The phonological process of “vowel and Consonant harmony with manner of articulation” in Persian is examined in the section “assimilation” and is known as “consonant assimilation” and “vowel assimilation” in the Persian language, whereas in Russian since vowels and consonants refer to sounds of different types and to the end, as a rule, they cannot be assimilated to each other and the term “assimilation” cannot be applied to them. The phonological process of “regressive assimilation of soft consonants” that occurs in Russian is not possible in Persian because there are fifteen pairs of hard and soft consonants in Russian (thirty consonants in total) and some paired hard consonants become soft in specific situations; but in Persian, there is no paired soft consonant with their hard counterparts.