Metathesis Phonological Process in Kalhori Kurdish within Optimality Theory

Abstract

Metathesis is one of the phonological processes that serves thephonotactic rules of the language to improve the phonologicalstructures of the language. Marked structures are not regularly preferredin the languages, so, in trying to force the marked structures of thelanguage toward nonmarkedness, phonotactic rules of the language also monitor all thestructures that enter the language and change the dispreferred structures in accordancewith the universal principles and especially languages parameter. This paper explainedthe diachronic performance of metathesis process in Kalhori Kurdish. Four differentkinds of this process have been investigated, three of them have been explained based onthe Optimality Theory approach, and the last one has been presented and described, but athorough explanation will require more time and studies to the rareness of the samples ofits occurrence and consequently poorness of the understanding and generalizations, whichcan be drawn from them.