Generalized Alignment and Prosody-Morphology Interfacein Persian Present Stems

ABSTRACT: Since the coalescence of the immediate adjacency of vocalic syllable peaks cannot be tolerated in Persian, syllable structures have to be adjusted to resolve the problem of *HIATUS in the present simple stems. This article provides an account of the strategies employed by Persian speakers to ward off hiatus avoidance. As syllable structure affects many phonological processes, alignment is motivated for the sake of preserving syllable pattern in a sense that the morphological edge as a grammatical category (i.e. present stem) and phonological edge as a prosodic category (i.e.syllable) coincide to adjust the syllable template. Actually, the ultimate aim of this research study is to find proper rankings to avoid onset-fewer syllables in terms of conflicting among relative constraints; namely, Markedness, Faithfulness, and Generalized Alignment constraints.