Analogical Sound Changes in Persian Verbs: An Optimality Theoretic Account

In this study, 7 kinds of Persian analogical sound changes have been detected and classified in 12 analogical patterns in a set of 80 simple verbs. Those changes then have been analyzed based on two different but related optimality theoretic approaches including constraints reranking and input restructuring. It is shown that the analogical changes have basically occurred in the past stems and in a proportional inter-paradigmatic or intra-paradigmatic leveling pattern which is based on present stems. The phonetic similarity between the present stems, is the prerequisite of the analogy and achieving similarity in the past stems. Both kinds of the analogical sound changes are explainable through IDENT-INPUTOUTPUT constraints being dominated by parochial IDENT-OUTPUTOUTPUT ones in the former approach, and relying on Lexical Optimization concept in the latter.