Namaeh Farhangistan

Namaeh Farhangistan

Hiatus Resolution in Prayer/Curse Verbs in the Standard Persian and Dezfouli/Shoushtari Dialects

Document Type : Original Article

Author
Bashir Jam
Associate Professor of Linguistics, Department of English, Shahrekord University, Shahrekord, Iran
10.22034/nf.2026.532512.1421
Abstract
Prayer words are uttered to praise God and people, to ask for happiness, serenity, health, longevity, and overcoming the enemies, whereas curse words are uttered to ask for harming the enemies and the ill-willed people, complaining as well as expressing surprise, frustration and humor. In the standard Persian these expressions include: a prayer/curse verb stem+the suffix /-A/+the attached third person subject pronoun /-ad/. However, Dezfouli and Shoushtari, as two dialects which are spoken in the Khouzestan province, are different as they use object pronouns. The present paper aimed at analysing the hiatus and how it is resolved in these verbs. Hiatus is a situation in which there is no consonant between the nuclei of two adjacent syllables. It occurs when the left syllable lacks a coda and the right one lacks an onset. According to the findings of this research conducted within Optimality Theory (Prince and Smolensky, 1993/2004) hiatus in prayer and curse verbs is resolved using vowel deletion as well as intervocalic consonant insertion. In so doing, the constraints and their rankings that cause all these hiatus resolving strategies in these verbs are introduced. The results of the present paper explain some important facts regarding hiatus and its resolution strategies in the Standard Persian as well as Dezfouli and Shoushtari dialects.
Keywords
prayer and curse verb
hiatus
intervocalic consonant insertion
vowel deletion
Dezfouli dialect
Shoushtari dialect
Subjects
References
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Namaeh Farhangistan
Volume 25, Issue 3 - Serial Number 103
Nameh Farhangestan (Phonetics and phonology of Iranian languages ​​2)
July and August 2026
Pages 89-104

  • Receive Date 14 July 2025
  • Revise Date 07 August 2025
  • Accept Date 08 December 2025