The Study of Lenition Process in Vocabularies from Middle Persian to Dari Persian in Generative Phonology Framework

The purpose of this article is to investigate the process of lenition in vocabularies from Middle Persian to Dari Persian based on generative phonology framework. The presented data of this article have been extracted from vocabularies of the middle-Persian Zoroastrian mentioned in Concise Pahlavi Dictionary from David Neil Mackenzie (1388), which have been found in Dari Persian , then their different forms have been found in the dictionaries of Dari Persian including: Dehkhoda (1388), Hassan Doost (1383), and Around Persian Dictionaries (1382-1388) , as well as in New Persian. In each of these languages, their phonological rules are extracted and listed. In the next step, the phonological analysis of the rules has been investigated based on the principles of generative phonology and the criteria of Jensen (2004: 117) in order to the discovering of natural rule. Three types of processes of lenition have been investigated in this paper. In this paper, authors have examined these three types of lenition. Some of the results are: (1) the most natural rule isn’t necessarily the most simple rule, on the other hand the simplicity is the necessary condition for be natural rules but it isn’t sufficient condition 2) According to the analyses, the lenition process has been seen in coda, final- word , intervocalic and postvocalic more than onset and initial- word. 3). Consonants which participate in this process in according to rules are obstruent consonants such as [p, b, f, k, g, w, t, d]. 4) Phonological rules usually act unidirectional.