The Comparison of word stress in Persian and Arabic

Document Type : .

Author
Omid Tabibzadeh
10.30465/lsi.2025.52016.1816
Abstract
In this article, we examine the typological differences in the position of the word stress in two languages of Standard Spoken Persian and Modern Standard Arabic. First, based on typological studies, we show that both Persian and Arabic are among the languages in which the stress position of a word can be predicted based on phonological considerations - in contrast to languages such as English and Russian, in which the stress position of a word cannot be predicted based solely on phonological considerations, and in order to determine the stress position, morphological, lexical, and historical information is also needed. We then argue that in languages where the position of the word stress is predictable, stress cannot be contrastive, meaning that in these languages, simply changing the stress position in a word does not change the meaning of the word and minimal stress pairs do not arise; in this sense, stress in a word is non-contrastive in both Persian and Arabic. We then show that although both Persian and Arabic languages have predictable and non-contrastive word stress, there is a huge difference between them, namely that the location of the stressed syllable in Persian is always on the final syllable of the word and the weight or quantity of the syllables of the word has no effect on the location of the stress, but the location of the stressed syllable in modern standard Arabic words varies depending on the weight or quantity of the syllables of the word. In this sense, Persian is a quantity-insensitive language with a fixed stress system, but Arabic is a quantity-sensitive language with a free stress system. In this article, after introducing the above-mentioned typological features, I examine and introduce these features in the two languages, of Standard Spoken Persian and Modern Standard Arabic
Keywords
typology of word stress
word stress in Standard Spoken Persian
word stress in New Standard Arabic
اسلامی، محرم (1379). واج‌شناسی؛ تحلیل نظام آهنگ زبان فارسی. تهران: سمت.
بی‌جن‌خان، محمود (1392). نظام آوایی زبان فارسی. تهران: سمت.
ثمره، یدالله (1364) [ویرایش دوم: 1381]. آواشناسی زبان فارسی؛ آواها و ساخت آوایی هجا. تهران: مرکز نشر دانشگاهی.
ثمره، یدالله (1378). آواشناسی زبان فارسی: آواها و ساخت آوایی هجا. ویرایش دوم، تهران: مرکز نشر دانشگاهی.
شقاقی، ویدا (1374). «واژه‌بست چیست؟ آیا در زبان فارسی چنین مفهومی کاربرد دارد؟» در: مجموعه مقالات دانشگاه علامه طباطبایی مجموعه مقاله های سومین کنفرانس زیان شناسی. 141-158.
صادقی، وحید (1397). ساخت نوایی زبان فارسی؛ تکیۀ واژگانی و آهنگ. تهران: سمت.
طبیب‌زاده، آریا (1403). «یک الگوی تکیۀ نامعمول در سنت عروض فارسی». در: مجلۀ پژوهش‌های زبان‌شناسی تطبیقی. س14، ش27، 183-191.
طبیب‌زاده، امید (1404). «دو نظام تکیه‌ای و ساخت وزنی متفاوت در زبان فارسی: پدیده‌ای ناشی از دوزبان‌گونگی». در: نامۀ فرهنگستان؛ زبان‌ها و گویش‌های ایرانی (15)- ویژه‌نامۀ آواشناسی و واج‌شناسی زبان‌های ایرانی. دورۀ 24. شمارۀ دوم. خرداد و تیر. 51-74.
مدرسی قوامی، گلناز (1392). «تأثیر تکیۀ واژگانی بر ویژگی‌های کیفی واکه‌های سادۀ زبان فارسی». در: علم زبان. س1، ش1، زمستان، 41-56.
مدرسی قوامی، گلناز (1394). فرهنگ توصیفی آواشناسی و واج‌شناسی. تهران: انتشارات علمی.
موسوی، ندا (1386). «بررسی هم‌بسته‌های آکوستیکی تکیه در زبان فارسی». مجموعه مقالات دانشگاه علامه طباطبایی در هفتمین همایش زبان‌شناسی ایران. 455-465.
نجفی، ابوالحسن (1396). وزن شعر فارسی (درس‌نامه). به همت امید طبیب‌زاده، تهران: نیلوفر.
Abolhasanizadeh, V., Gussenhoven, C., & Bijankhan, M. (2012). "A pitch accent position contrast in Persian", In: Proceedings of the International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, edited by W. Lee and E. Zee, Hong Kong, ICPhS XVII, 188-191.
Bakovic, E. (1998). "Unbounded Stress and Factorial Typology. In Ruling Papers I", Working Papers from Rutgers University, Edited by Ron Artstein and Madeline Holler, 15-28.
Ferguson Ch. (1972). Diglossia. In: Language and social context; Selected readings. Harmondsworth: 232-251.
Gordon, M. K. (2016). Phonological Typology; Oxford surveys in phonological and phonetics, United Kingdom, Oxford University Press,
Handbook of the International Phonetic Association; A Guide to the Use of the International Phonetic Association, 2007, Cambridge University Press.
Hayes, B. (1981) A Metrical Theory of Stress Rules, PhD. MIT Distributed by Indiana University Linguistics Club.
Hayes, B. (1995). Metrical Stress Theory: Principles and Case Studies, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Hellmuth, S. (2013). “Phonology”, In: The Oxford Handbook of Arabic Linguistics, Jonathan Owens (ed.), Oxford University Press, p. 45-70.
Kager, R. (1995). The metrical theory of word stress. In The handbook of phonology, Goldsmith, J (ed.) (pp. 367-402) Blackwell Publishing: Cambridge.
Kahnemuyipour, A. (2003) "Syntactic Categories and Persian Stress", in: Natural Language and Linguistic Theory, 21: 337-379.
Kahnemuyipour, A. (2018). "Prosody", in: The Oxford Handbook of Persian Linguistics, Ed. By Anousha Sedighi and Pouneh Shabani-Jadidi, Oxford University Press, 2018, xxii + 573.
Ladefoged, P. & Maddieson, I. (1996). Sounds of the World’s Languages. Oxford. Blackwell.
Sadat-Tehrani, N. (2007). The Intonational Grammar of Persian, Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Dissertation.
Tabibzadeh, Arya (2025), "'Masʾalatun or mas'ʾalatun? That Is the Question! The Implications of Traditional Persian Metrics for Classical Arabic Stress", Al-ʿUṣūr al-Wusṭā: The Journal of Middle East Medievalists, 33, p. 139-148
Versteegh, K. (1997). The Arabic Language, Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press.
Watson, J. (1999). "The Directionality of Emphasis Spread in Arabic", in: Linguistic Inquiry, vol. 30, n. 2, 289–300.
Watson, J. (2002). The Phonology and Morphology of Arabic, New York: Oxford University Press.
Watson, J. (2011). "Word Stress in Arabic", in: The Blackwell Companion to Phonology, ed. by Marc van Oostendorp et al., Oxford, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 5, p. 2990-3019.
 
Language and Linguistics
Volume 20, Issue 40
March 2025
Pages 1-24