Diphthongization in Five Iranian Balochi Dialects

This paper deals with the phenomenon of diphthongization, eː> ie and oː > ue, in different varieties of Iranian Balochi dialects spoken in the five regions of Sistan, Saravan, Khash, Iranshahr and Chabahar in the southeast corner of Iran. The study reveals that diphthongized production of these vowels is predominant in the Khash dialect, suggesting that they should be represented as the diphthongs ie and ue in the vowel inventory of this dialect. In the Iranshahr and Chabahar dialects, which show the second and third highest degrees of diphthongization among the dialects under study, the data indicate a diphthongization tendency rather than a shift to predominantly diphthongized productions. Sistan and Saravan show only sporadic tendencies toward diphthongization. Balochi, in general, has eight vowels i, i:, u, u:, a, a:, e:, o: (also called the Common Balochi vowel system), as well as the speech sounds ay and aw, which are referred to as diphthongs by some scholars and are believed to be sequences of V+C by others. The occurrence of diphthongization in the dialects under study seems to be system-internal rather than due to external influence. Factors such as age, education, or language contact with surrounding languages such as Persian, do not appear to contribute to the occurrence of diphthongized vowel production