This study investigates the production and perception of prosodic cues to realize narrow and corrective focus in Urdu/Hindi. We recorded SOV sentences with the target constituents at the preverbal position. Our results show that correctively focused nouns have longer syllable duration, wider F0 range, early alignment of F0 peaks, variant production of downtrend, and less steep post-focal compression as compared to narrowly focused nouns. We further set up a perception experiment to investigate if the difference in syllable duration of narrowly and correctively focused constituents is perceptible to Urdu/Hindi speakers. We manipulated syllable duration of the target constituents and presented them in contexts via a webbased interface. Twenty-nine respondents rated the naturalness of manipulated sentences in the given contexts. The analysis of respondents' ratings indicated that while they accepted both long and short durations in narrow focus, they rated long duration significantly better in corrective focus. Our results lend support to earlier claims about the prosodic cues of corrective focus in Urdu/Hindi [1, 2] and bring new evidence regarding the perceptual relevance of duration to cue corrective focus.
This production study investigates the interaction of prosody, word order and information structure with respect to whconstituents in Urdu. We contrasted immediately preverbal wh-constituents with immediately postverbal ones. The preverbal position is the default focus position in Urdu; the appearance of wh-constituents in the immediately postverbal position within the verbal complex is not well understood. In order to test various possible factors governing the appearance of immediately postverbal wh-constituents, target sentences with wh-constituents in both pre-and postverbal positions were presented in different pragmatic contexts and given to native speakers to pronounce. The results show a clear difference in prosodic realization between the pre-and the postverbal position. The preverbal position is consistent with focus prosody, the postverbal wh-phrases appear to occur when the verb is in focus.
In Urdu/Hindi, the intonation of a sentence consists of a sequence of rising F0 contours (LH). These LH contours are the default intonation pattern associated with a basic prosodic unit which is analyzed either as a foot [1] or as a phonological phrase [2]. [1] , however, reported that a tonal pattern with two F0 rises (LHLH) was observed in morphologically complex words and syntactic phrases, but he did not provide an analysis to predict the occurrence of these double rises. The phonological status of these rises is not clear either. The current research addresses this issue and investigates the contexts in which the realization of double rises is observed. Using data from production experiments and speech corpus, we show that the LHLH pattern is not related to morphological complexity or morpheme type as these rises occur in monomorphemic words as well as in words with inflectional and derivational morphemes. We thus argue that the occurrence of these two rises is rhythmically constrained. Tonal alignment confirms such an analysis in which the first L and the last H tones are regular AP boundary tones, whereas the additional H and L tones are inserted for rhythmic reasons.
The current study was conducted from March 2021 to February 2022 in Thal desert and Trimmu barrage of District Jhang located in Punjab province of Pakistan to find out the diversity, abundance and distribution of birds. Point count method was used for Trimmu barrage and line transect method was used for the collection of data in Thal desert area. We recorded 31696 individuals belonging to 67 species of birds from two distinct types of habitat (Thal desert and Trimmu barrage) of District Jhang. Among all these species, 39 species were resident, 18 species were winter visitors, 9 species were summer breeder and single species (Terek sandpiper) was passage migrant. Highly significant differences (X2 = 14979.7, df = 11, P<0.01) were observed in the abundance of birds between both habitats on monthly basis. From Thal desert area, 12905 individuals of 45 species were identified while 18791 individual from 58 bird species were observed from Trimmu barrage. Among 67 bird species, 36 species were common at both types of habitats. The most dominant species of Trimmu barrage were Common pochard, Little grebe, Common coot, Cattle egret, Gadwall, Little egret, Red wattled lapwing and Common teal. The most common species of Thal desert were Indian roller, Common quail, Cattle egret, Common myna and Indian kite. The most notable feature of the present study is the identification of Xenus cinereus (Terak sandpiper) and Ammomanes phoenicura (Rofous tail lark) in district Jhang as both species have no previous record in the study area.
This paper aims at discovering the nature and extent of deviation in the articulation of consonants in Pakistani English due to the impact of mother tongue. A detailed experiment has been carried out with the help of Praat to analyze the acoustic properties of /θ/ and /ð/ sounds spoken by Pakistani speakers. The research reveals that Pakistani English has a distinct pronunciation pattern of /θ/ and /ð/ sounds. This research is an attempt to provide a scientific justification to establish Pakistani English as an independent variety.
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