Intonation in Indian English and Hindi late and simultaneous bilinguals
Very little has been said about the intonation system of Hindi and Indian English. This study aims to contribute to the field of intonation studies by bridging the gaps in the understanding of intonation patterns of Hindi and Indian English. By analyzing the speech of both late and simultaneous bilinguals, this study aims to give a broader prospective about the speech of Indian English-Hindi bilinguals. The main objectives of this study are to understand the intonation system of Indian English and Hindi spoken in Delhi, India; to explore if simultaneous bilinguals of Indian English and Hindi have two different systems of intonation; and to explore if the intonation system of simultaneous bilinguals is different from late bilinguals. Three experiments were conducted in both Indian English and Hindi investigating pre-boundary lengthening (PBL), pitch accents and focus. This study shows that simultaneous bilinguals of Hindi and Indian English don’t have two different systems of intonation. They have a merged system probably because they acquired a nativized variety of English; however, there are some subtle features that mark their identity as separate from the late bilinguals (e.g. the use of H*/H*L pitch accent). With respect to the question of the difference between late and simultaneous bilinguals, we find that in pitch accents, late and simultaneous bilinguals have the same system in Hindi but different systems in IE; in PBL, both late and simultaneous bilinguals have the same domains of PBL and in the focus experiment, we find that there are statistically significant differences between late and simultaneous bilinguals in RMS amplitude and F0 excursion in Hindi and duration in IE. Here the late bilinguals express focus with higher amplitude, a bigger F0 excursion and longer duration than those of simultaneous bilinguals. The results of the PBL experiment show that Hindi and Indian English have pre-boundary lengthening and that the PBL effects can be seen both on the final and the penultimate syllable. The highest effects of pre-boundary lengthening can be seen on the final stressed syllable. Stress seems to significantly increase the effects of lengthening on rhyme and syllable but not vowel. Also, unlike Cambier-Langeveld, Nespor and Heuven (1997) where the non-final syllables gets PBL when the final syllable has a non-expandable vowel, in this study in spite all the stressed ii final vowels being expandable, PBL effects can be observed on the penultimate syllables. Simultaneous bilinguals and late bilinguals don’t have the same kind of lengthening effects in both their L1s, however, there doesn’t seem to be any difference in the domain of pre-boundary lengthening between simultaneous and late bilinguals. Also, Simultaneous bilinguals have the same domains of pre-boundary lengthening in both their languages. The results of the pitch accent experiment show that the main pitch contour used by late bilinguals in Hindi and Indian English is a LH contour on every non-final content word. Like late bilinguals, simultaneous bilinguals use this LH pitch contour in Hindi as well. However, in Indian English the simultaneous bilinguals use two types of pitch contours: the Hindi LH and the American/British English H*/H*L. Thus, simultaneous bilinguals use a fusion system of pitch accents in their use of English, but not in Hindi. The results of the focus experiment show that in Indian English, the main acoustic correlates of focal prominence are a bigger pitch excursion on the focus element and post-focal reduction in duration, RMS amplitude and pitch excursion. Hindi differs in that the main acoustic correlates of focus include increased duration as well as a pitch excursion on the focused element and postfocal reduction in duration, RMS amplitude and pitch excursion. Since in both Indian English and Hindi there is a post-focal reduction in pitch range, duration and RMS amplitude, this indicates that there is post-focal compression. There is a difference between late and simultaneous bilinguals in duration in Indian English and RMS amplitude and pitch excursion in Hindi. With respect to the question of these bilinguals having one or two systems of intonation, it seems that understanding language interference in the speech of late and simultaneous bilinguals of a New English like Indian English is not straightforward. It cannot be categorized into simply static and dynamic interference, substratum interference or simply fusion alone. A combination of all these concepts is needed to explain the language interaction in New Englishes. In the pitch accents experiment simultaneous bilinguals display a fusion system of intonation i.e. having both the Hindi and the British English pitch accents in their IE. The speech of late bilinguals in this study shows that there is static interference (L1 L2). For instance, they use only the Hindi LH iii pitch contour in both Hindi and IE. Similarly, in the focus experiment we see both simultaneous and late bilinguals use a bigger F0 excursion in narrow focus when compared to broad and postfocus and both groups have post focal deaccenting by having lower duration, RMS amplitude and F0 range than narrow focus in both Hindi and IE. We also see that both groups don’t have a difference between narrow and broad focus in terms of RMS amplitude. The presence of higher amplitude, duration and F0 in British/American English, but the absence of increase in amplitude from broad focus to narrow focus in IE shows that this has not come from British/American English into IE but rather from Hindi to IE. All these factors show that there are similar strategies used by both groups in terms of expression of focus. Similarly, in PBL, these bilinguals use the same domains of PBL. For simultaneous bilinguals, this could be a facet of the language that they have acquired from the nativized variety of English that they acquired as an L1. In the context of simultaneous bilinguals of New Englishes, I propose the term inherited influence to explain this.
Intonation, Prosody, Bilingualism, Hindi, Indian English
University of Illinois - Urbana-Champaign
Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign