“Examination of Vowel Lengthening in Sistani Dialect within the Framework of Standard Generative Phonology”
Somaye Falahi Rad

Abstract
Vowel lengthening is a process that is designed in relation to Sistani dialect vowels. In this dialect, the vowels can be lengthened under some certain conditions. With a little care in gathered information, this point is specified that the structural description is different for lengthening of long and short vowels. The short vowels aren’t lengthened naturally. It only occurs when we have omission of a consonant in a word (compensatory lengthening). For example, it can be referred to deletion of (glottal) consonant and compensatory lengthening of preceding vowel. But the long vowels work differently which is discussed in this paper and this dialect, vowel lengthening cannot work meaningfully. In fact, in this dialect, all the vowel lengthening is environmental. That is, it will be produced as a result of elision of consonant (compensatory lengthening) or because of syllable structure.

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