A synchronic analysis of Indian English

The present paper aims at exploring the impact that linguistic background can have on individual speech. After a brief review on how English became an official language in the republic of India, I will concentrate on the phonological aspect of Indian English. I will, firstly, procure a framework that ensures a baseline for a standard form of Indian English. Secondly, I will analyse an authentic speech sample and will discuss a number of factors that account for the adherence/deviation from the standard and which depict the phonological identity of this particular speaker

A phonetic comparison between indian english and british english

Treballs Finals del Grau d'Estudis Anglesos, Facultat de Filologia, Universitat de Barcelona, Curs: 2019-2020, Tutora: Emilia Castaño[eng] India was ruled by the British Empire for almost two hundred years and as a consequence, the Indians were much more exposed to English than to any other foreign language. English acquired the status of an associate language in India since it functions as a language that unites different states and cultures in that area. The fact that there are many regional varieties of Indian English, Standard Indian English Pronunciation (SIEP) took place which derived from Standard British English. Despite this, there still exist phonemic differences that reflect in the SIEP. From the phonological perspective, Standard British English and Indian English show some dissimilarities, so attention will be paid to the consonantal and vocalic sounds. To reflect these differences between both varieties when it comes to phonetics, an Indian movie containing English dialogues will be analysed.[spa] India estuvo gobernada por el Imperio Británico durante unos doscientos años y, como consecuencia, los indios estuvieron mucho más expuestos al inglés que a cualquier otro idioma extranjero. El inglés adquirió el estatus de una lengua asociada en la India, ya que es un idioma que une diferentes estados y culturas en esa área. El hecho de que haya muchas variedades regionales de inglés indio, se produjo la pronunciación estándar del inglés indio (SIEP) derivada del inglés británico estándar. A pesar de esto, todavía existen diferencias fonémicas que se reflejan en el SIEP. Desde la perspectiva fonológica, el inglés británico estándar y el inglés indio muestran algunas diferencias, por lo que se prestará atención a los sonidos consonánticos y vocálicos. Para reflejar estas diferencias entre ambas variedades cuando se trata de fonética, se analizará una película india que contiene diálogos en inglés

A synchronic analysis of Indian English

The present paper aims at exploring the impact that linguistic background can have on individual speech. After a brief review on how English became an official language in the republic of India, I will concentrate on the phonological aspect of Indian English. I will, firstly, procure a framework that ensures a baseline for a standard form of Indian English. Secondly, I will analyse an authentic speech sample and will discuss a number of factors that account for the adherence/deviation from the standard and which depict the phonological identity of this particular speaker

A Comparative Study of English and Gujarati Phonological Systems

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The influence of Gujarati on the VOT of English stops

This thesis is an acoustic study of three generations of women from the Gujarati-English community in Batley, West Yorkshire (United Kingdom). The literature pertaining to Gujarati is very limited, hence this thesis aims to solve some unanswered queries regarding our understanding of the influence of Gujarati on English stop productions. Research was gathered from three generations of women to judge whether there is an influence of Gujarati on English speech. The first generation was born in India and migrated to the UK during their childhood, whereas the second and third generation were born in the UK. In order to assess this influence, the acoustic attribute of voice onset time (VOT) was studied for all stops /p b t d k g/ at word-initial level. Participants were recorded reading out pre-arranged flashcards, generating eight hundred and forty-four tokens of data, all of which were later analysed in Praat. A further objective of this research was to examine whether there are variances of VOT at different positions of an utterance. Previous studies in the acoustic literature have studied VOT interference in bilinguals of various languages, which have yielded mixed results, including L1 influence, L2 influence, as well as no interference whatsoever. The primary results demonstrated that there is an influence of Gujarati (the L1) on English speech (the L2) in the first generation, which reduces for the second and third generation. Furthermore, a second significant finding was that there appears to be a high usage of Gujarati-like negative VOT at utterance-initial position for all three generations. Several explanations are proposed to explain the two aforementioned findings. The main argument put forth is that the participants’ VOT values mirrored the values of their dominant language. Secondly, there is perhaps a sociolinguistic change occurring in the Batley community in which negative VOT has ethnic connotations and is being used by the British-born generations as a marker of identity

The phonetics and phonology of retroflexes : Fonetiek en fonologie van retroflexen (met een samenvatting in het Nederlands)

At the outset of this dissertation one might pose the question why retroflex consonants should still be of interest for phonetics and for phonological theory since ample work on this segmental class already exists. Bhat (1973) conducted a quite extensive study on retroflexion that treated the geographical spread of this class, some phonological processes its members can undergo, and the phonetic motivation for these processes. Furthermore, several phonological representations of retroflexes have been proposed in the framework of Feature Geometry, as in work by Sagey (1986), Pulleyblank (1989), Gnanadesikan (1993), and Clements (2001). Most recently, Steriade (1995, 2001) has discussed the perceptual cues of retroflexes and has argued that the distribution of these cues can account for the phonotactic restrictions on retroflexes and their assimilatory behaviour. Purely phonetically oriented studies such as Dixit (1990) and Simonsen, Moen & Cowen (2000) have shown the large articulatory variation that can be found for retroflexes and hint at the insufficiency of existing definitions

Critical Studies in the Phonetic Observations of Indian Grammarians.

The treatise is an attempt, for the first time in a modern language, to give a general conspectus of Indian phonetic literature. The introduction (pp. 1-91) gives a chronological survey of Indian works on phonetics, 55 of which have been examined (cf. p.49). of these, 16 are absolutely new, being MS works. The main body of the treatise (pp. 92-306) is a critical examination of some of the phonetic opinions expressed in Indian phonetic literature and in the works of Panini, Patanjali etc. The treatise consists of eleven chapters (for detailed plan of these chapters see pp. 30-32). Of these, the first four deal with the ayllabication of sound-groups. Chap. V. examines the opinions of doubling. Chap. VI. On the pronunciation of Y and V in different positions. Chap. VII. On svarabhakti and its bearing on the deilects. Chap. VIII. Examines the fundamental basis of the Indian theory of syllabication, viz. Abhinidhana or incomplete articulation. Chap. IX. Deals with nasalization a striking fact in the living languages. Chap. X. discusses the opinions on the nature of accent. Chap. XI. Describes the various views on quantity. It has been shown that these opinions were on the whole sound, and that some of them may be helpful to modern linguistics (cf. pp. 32-33)