Diphthongization in Azerbaijani Turkish Within Harmonic Serialism

In Azerbaijani Turkish, the glide consonants /j, w/ are deleted from the onset and coda position of the syllables. deleting from the coda leads to the compensatory lengthening process, but deleting from the onset in cv.cv(c) constructions causes the occurrence of vowel Hiatus. Due to the non-allowance of vowel Hiatus, this language uses the solution of combining two vowels and forming a diphthong to solve it. This research tries to explain the process of diphthong formation in order to solve vowel hiatus in the Azerbaijani Turkish language of Ardabili dialect in the framework of the Harmonic Serialism approach which is one of the derivational models of the Optimality theory and defined the constraints related to it, as well as the adequacy of the Harmonic Serialism approach evaluate in the explanation of this process. The method of this research is descriptive- analytical and the required data was collected by field method. The data analysis showed that the glidCOND constraint, which penalizes the presence of glid consonants at the onset of the second syllable, is active in this language and has a high rank. Also, the activation of the *HIATUS constraint, which penalizes the vowel hiatus, makes this language use diphthongization to satisfy it. The ranking of the restrictions involved in this process is as follows: glideCOND >> *HIATUS>> *DIPHTHONG.
Introduction
In Azerbaijani Turkish, the glide consonants /j/ and /w/ are deleted from the onset and coda positions of syllables. Deletion from the coda leads to the compensatory lengthening process, whereas deletion from the onset in CV.CV(C) constructions causes the occurrence of vowel hiatus. Due to the prohibition of vowel hiatus, this language resolves the issue by combining the two vowels to form a diphthong.
In addition to other strategies, the merging of two vowels to form a diphthong is a common solution used in Azerbaijani Turkish to avoid vowel hiatus.
This research aims to explain the process of diphthong formation used to resolve vowel hiatus in the Ardabili dialect of Azerbaijani Turkish, within the framework of Harmonic Serialism, which is one of the derivational models of Optimality Theory. The study defines the constraints related to this approach and evaluates the adequacy of Harmonic Serialism in explaining this process.
Literature Review
Sadeghi and Mahmoudi (2021) studied the vowels of Azerbaijani Turkish using acoustic phonetics. The phonological analysis of the data was conducted with Praat software. Alizadeh (2020) investigated the process of diphthong formation in Azerbaijani Turkish. His research shows that diphthongs are formed as a result of the deletion of glide consonants from the coda and onset positions.
Razi Nejad (2017) studied vowel hiatus in the Azerbaijani Turkish language.
Naji (2013) investigated the acoustic characteristics of simple and compound vowels in Azerbaijani Turkish. The evidence obtained from this research shows that, in addition to nine simple vowels, there are also seven diphthongs in this language, because in the spectrographic mapping of some vowels, the transition from one vowel to another can be clearly observed. Nevertheless, all these findings only confirm the existence of phonetic diphthongs, that is, sequences of two vowels in which the speech channel changes from one articulatory configuration to another during production. In other words, the results do not confirm the existence of phonological diphthongs in Azerbaijani Turkish.
Farzaneh (1979) recognized the existence of nine vowels in Azerbaijani Turkish and classified them according to height (open/closed) and backness (round/wide). According to this work, Azerbaijani vowels are short, and there are no long vowels in the language. Furthermore, there are no diphthongs in Azerbaijani Turkish.
Mehtod and Data Analysis
            This research is of a descriptive-analytical type, and linguistic data was collected through interviews with 30 randomly selected speakers (15 women and 15 men) residing in Ardabil city, aged between 35 and 65. The authors of this research are all native speakers of this dialect. The obtained data was analyzed within the framework of Harmonic Serialism, using the interaction of constraints and the construction of optimality tableaux. Additionally, the conditions for the occurrence of vowel hiatus in Azerbaijani Turkish were described, and the constraints related to this process, along with their ranking, were presented.
Within the framework of standard Optimality Theory, the generator (GEN) can apply several changes to the input simultaneously in order to produce the optimal candidate, and all of these candidates are evaluated at once. In contrast to standard Optimality Theory, in the Harmonic Serialism approach, the generator can only make one change to the input at a time, meaning that the input can violate faithfulness constraints gradually. This feature of the generator is referred to as “gradualness.”
The process of diphthong formation in Azerbaijani Turkish occurs in multiple stages. Therefore, to explain this process, standard Optimality Theory is neither sufficient nor efficient, because in this theory, all candidates are evaluated simultaneously at a single stage, and there is no mechanism to first remove the glide consonant and then, in the next step, allow vowel hiatus and form a diphthong. In contrast, in Harmonic Serialism, due to the gradual nature of evaluation, the output of one stage enters the next stage as input, and this sequence continues until the final optimal output is obtained.
Discussion and Conclusion
Summarizing the findings of the data analysis related to the elimination of the glide consonants /j/ and /w/ shows that the presence of these consonants in the onset of the second syllable following the vowels /o, u, ø/ is not allowed. Therefore, the GLIDE-COND constraint is active and highly ranked in this language. In CV.CV(V) constructions, where the left syllable has no coda, removing the glide consonant from the onset of the second syllable causes the right syllable to lose its onset, and the nuclei of the two syllables merge.
The HIATUS* constraint, which is active in Azerbaijani Turkish, penalizes the occurrence of adjacent vowels without an intervening consonant. To satisfy this constraint, the two vowels are merged to form a diphthong, reducing the number of syllables in the word from two to one. In other words, in such cases, Azerbaijani Turkish resolves the situation by converting two syllables with simple vowels into a single syllable containing a diphthong. Applying this strategy results in the formation of three diphthongs in Azerbaijani Turkish: /ou/, /ua/, and /øy/. These diphthongs do not have a phonological function, and no minimal pairs exist in which meaning is distinguished by the contrast between these diphthongs and simple vowels. Therefore, it can be concluded that the vowel system of Azerbaijani Turkish consists of nine simple vowels, with no phonological diphthongs. This research was also able to identify the constraints involved in the formation of diphthongs and rank them as follows:
**GLIDE-COND >> HIATUS >> DIPHTHONG
The study further showed that the Harmonic Serialism approach, due to its derivational nature and mechanisms, can effectively explain the diphthong formation process in Azerbaijani Turkish and clearly illustrate its derivational stages.
Ethical Considerations
Not applicable
Funding
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Conflict of interest
The authors declare no conflict of interest.