Vowel Reduction in Kermanian Accent

The purpose of this paper is investigating vowel reduction in Kermanian accent. Vowel reduction is a process which occurs in an unstressed syllable. It leads to change unstressed vowels and tend them to other vowels. In order to investigate vowel reduction in Kermanian accent, 6 male native speakers of Persian are participating which 3 of them are native speakers of Kerman and 3 others, speakers of standard Persian accent. The data included 12 words were recorded by a Shure microphone in the acoustic room of the linguistic department of Sharif University of Technology. Then duration, intensity, F1, F2, COG and f0 of the vowels were measured. The results show that duration, intensity and fundamental frequency of the vowels are less in Kermanian accent than in standard Persian accent. Also, the results of studying F1 and F2 of [æ, i, o] prove that these vowels in Kermanian accent are tending to center. So, this kind of vowel reduction in Kermanian accent is called centripetal.