Intonation in Indian English and Hindi late and simultaneous bilinguals

Intonation;Prosody;Bilingualism;Hindi;Indian English

Puri, Vandana

关键词: Intonation;    Prosody;    Bilingualism;    Hindi;    Indian English;   

Others  :  https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/bitstream/handle/2142/45457/Vandana_Puri.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y

美国|英语

来源: The Illinois Digital Environment for Access to Learning and Scholarship

【 摘 要 】

Very little has been said about the intonation system of Hindi and Indian English. This studyaims to contribute to the field of intonation studies by bridging the gaps in the understanding ofintonation patterns of Hindi and Indian English. By analyzing the speech of both late andsimultaneous bilinguals, this study aims to give a broader prospective about the speech of IndianEnglish-Hindi bilinguals. The main objectives of this study are to understand the intonationsystem of Indian English and Hindi spoken in Delhi, India; to explore if simultaneous bilingualsof Indian English and Hindi have two different systems of intonation; and to explore if theintonation system of simultaneous bilinguals is different from late bilinguals. Three experimentswere 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 twodifferent systems of intonation. They have a merged system probably because they acquired anativized variety of English; however, there are some subtle features that mark their identity asseparate from the late bilinguals (e.g. the use of H*/H*L pitch accent). With respect to thequestion 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; inPBL, both late and simultaneous bilinguals have the same domains of PBL and in the focusexperiment, we find that there are statistically significant differences between late andsimultaneous bilinguals in RMS amplitude and F0 excursion in Hindi and duration in IE. Herethe late bilinguals express focus with higher amplitude, a bigger F0 excursion and longerduration than those of simultaneous bilinguals.The results of the PBL experiment show that Hindi and Indian English have pre-boundarylengthening 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. Stressseems 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 getsPBL when the final syllable has a non-expandable vowel, in this study in spite all the stressediifinal 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 inboth their L1s, however, there doesn’t seem to be any difference in the domain of pre-boundarylengthening between simultaneous and late bilinguals. Also, Simultaneous bilinguals have thesame domains of pre-boundary lengthening in both their languages.The results of the pitch accent experiment show that the main pitch contour used by latebilinguals in Hindi and Indian English is a LH contour on every non-final content word. Like latebilinguals, simultaneous bilinguals use this LH pitch contour in Hindi as well. However, inIndian English the simultaneous bilinguals use two types of pitch contours: the Hindi LH and theAmerican/British English H*/H*L. Thus, simultaneous bilinguals use a fusion system of pitchaccents in their use of English, but not in Hindi.The results of the focus experiment show that in Indian English, the main acoustic correlates offocal prominence are a bigger pitch excursion on the focus element and post-focal reduction induration, RMS amplitude and pitch excursion. Hindi differs in that the main acoustic correlatesof focus include increased duration as well as a pitch excursion on the focused element and postfocalreduction in duration, RMS amplitude and pitch excursion. Since in both Indian Englishand Hindi there is a post-focal reduction in pitch range, duration and RMS amplitude, thisindicates that there is post-focal compression. There is a difference between late andsimultaneous bilinguals in duration in Indian English and RMS amplitude and pitch excursion inHindi.With respect to the question of these bilinguals having one or two systems of intonation, it seemsthat understanding language interference in the speech of late and simultaneous bilinguals of aNew English like Indian English is not straightforward. It cannot be categorized into simplystatic and dynamic interference, substratum interference or simply fusion alone. A combinationof all these concepts is needed to explain the language interaction in New Englishes. In the pitchaccents experiment simultaneous bilinguals display a fusion system of intonation i.e. having boththe Hindi and the British English pitch accents in their IE. The speech of late bilinguals in thisstudy shows that there is static interference (L1 L2). For instance, they use only the Hindi LHiiipitch contour in both Hindi and IE. Similarly, in the focus experiment we see both simultaneousand late bilinguals use a bigger F0 excursion in narrow focus when compared to broad and postfocusand both groups have post focal deaccenting by having lower duration, RMS amplitudeand F0 range than narrow focus in both Hindi and IE. We also see that both groups don’t have adifference between narrow and broad focus in terms of RMS amplitude. The presence of higheramplitude, duration and F0 in British/American English, but the absence of increase in amplitudefrom broad focus to narrow focus in IE shows that this has not come from British/AmericanEnglish into IE but rather from Hindi to IE. All these factors show that there are similarstrategies used by both groups in terms of expression of focus. Similarly, in PBL, thesebilinguals use the same domains of PBL. For simultaneous bilinguals, this could be a facet of thelanguage that they have acquired from the nativized variety of English that they acquired as anL1. In the context of simultaneous bilinguals of New Englishes, I propose the term inheritedinfluence to explain this.