Abstract:This study explored whether the sound structure of Indian English (IE) varies with the divergent native languages of its speakers or whether it is similar regardless of speakers' native languages. Native Hindi (Indo-Aryan) and Telugu (Dravidian) speakers produced comparable phrases in IE and in their native languages. Naïve and experienced IE listeners were then asked to judge whether different sentences had been spoken by speakers with the same or different native language backgrounds. The findings were an in… Show more
“…Kalashnik and Fletcher (2007) and provided acoustic evidence suggesting that IndE speakers with L1 Hindi do not consistently use duration to mark the tense-lax contrast. While there might be stronger differences with respect to L1 between speakers of IndE who have attended so-called regionalmedium (or vernacular-medium) schools, Sirsa and Redford (2013) found very small differences between the IndE of graduates of English-medium schools with four different L1s. Together these results suggest that a considerable number of IndE speakers do not mark the tense-lax contrast consistently, particularly since no acoustic studies with speakers of IndE with L1 Bengali have been conducted.…”
Section: Vowelsmentioning
confidence: 75%
“…There is conflicting evidence on whether most speakers of IndE maintain the distinction and if so what its phonetic correlates are. However, the sometimes conflicting findings of studies on the phonology of IndE might, as Sirsa and Redford (2013) argued, be due to varying education levels of the speakers. However, L1 Gujarati and Telugu speakers did make some length distinctions; the tense vowels belonging to the FLEECE and FACE sets were on average pronounced twice as long as their lax counterparts in the KIT and DRESS sets, but the difference between the durations of the GOOSE -FOOT and START -STRUT vowels was smaller.…”
Section: Vowelsmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…The third study (Sirsa and Redford 2013), based on the reading of a story by seven speakers with L1 Hindi and seven speakers with L1 Telugu who had attended English-medium schools, reported a proportion of vocalic durations over a total utterance duration (%V) of 46.8 %. This is higher than the 41.1 % that reported for BrE and thus supports the description of IndE as more syllable-timed than BrE.…”
Section: Speech Rhythmmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…Furthermore, with the exception of Sirsa and Redford (2013), the empirical measures of speech rhythm employed in these studies have not been used by other authors in the rhythm literature or differ in other ways from accepted methods, which makes comparisons with other varieties (such as BrE) difficult. In order to achieve a more reliable description of the rhythm of IndE, a greater number of speakers, different L1 backgrounds and different speaking styles need to be taken into account.…”
The series will publish studies in the general area of Speech Prosody with a particular (but non-exclusive) focus on the importance of phonetics and phonology in this field. The topic of speech prosody is today a far larger area of research than is often realised. The number of papers on the topic presented at large international conferences such as Interspeech and ICPhS is considerable and regularly increasing. The proposed book series would be the natural place to publish extended versions of papers presented at the Speech Prosody Conferences, in particular the papers presented in Special Sessions at the conference. This could potentially involve the publication of 3 or 4 volumes every two years ensuring a stable future for the book series. If such publications are produced fairly rapidly, they will in turn provide a strong incentive for the organisation of other special sessions at future Speech Prosody conferences.More information about this series at
“…Kalashnik and Fletcher (2007) and provided acoustic evidence suggesting that IndE speakers with L1 Hindi do not consistently use duration to mark the tense-lax contrast. While there might be stronger differences with respect to L1 between speakers of IndE who have attended so-called regionalmedium (or vernacular-medium) schools, Sirsa and Redford (2013) found very small differences between the IndE of graduates of English-medium schools with four different L1s. Together these results suggest that a considerable number of IndE speakers do not mark the tense-lax contrast consistently, particularly since no acoustic studies with speakers of IndE with L1 Bengali have been conducted.…”
Section: Vowelsmentioning
confidence: 75%
“…There is conflicting evidence on whether most speakers of IndE maintain the distinction and if so what its phonetic correlates are. However, the sometimes conflicting findings of studies on the phonology of IndE might, as Sirsa and Redford (2013) argued, be due to varying education levels of the speakers. However, L1 Gujarati and Telugu speakers did make some length distinctions; the tense vowels belonging to the FLEECE and FACE sets were on average pronounced twice as long as their lax counterparts in the KIT and DRESS sets, but the difference between the durations of the GOOSE -FOOT and START -STRUT vowels was smaller.…”
Section: Vowelsmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…The third study (Sirsa and Redford 2013), based on the reading of a story by seven speakers with L1 Hindi and seven speakers with L1 Telugu who had attended English-medium schools, reported a proportion of vocalic durations over a total utterance duration (%V) of 46.8 %. This is higher than the 41.1 % that reported for BrE and thus supports the description of IndE as more syllable-timed than BrE.…”
Section: Speech Rhythmmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…Furthermore, with the exception of Sirsa and Redford (2013), the empirical measures of speech rhythm employed in these studies have not been used by other authors in the rhythm literature or differ in other ways from accepted methods, which makes comparisons with other varieties (such as BrE) difficult. In order to achieve a more reliable description of the rhythm of IndE, a greater number of speakers, different L1 backgrounds and different speaking styles need to be taken into account.…”
The series will publish studies in the general area of Speech Prosody with a particular (but non-exclusive) focus on the importance of phonetics and phonology in this field. The topic of speech prosody is today a far larger area of research than is often realised. The number of papers on the topic presented at large international conferences such as Interspeech and ICPhS is considerable and regularly increasing. The proposed book series would be the natural place to publish extended versions of papers presented at the Speech Prosody Conferences, in particular the papers presented in Special Sessions at the conference. This could potentially involve the publication of 3 or 4 volumes every two years ensuring a stable future for the book series. If such publications are produced fairly rapidly, they will in turn provide a strong incentive for the organisation of other special sessions at future Speech Prosody conferences.More information about this series at
“…Many second language learners produce L2 pronunciations that are notably unlike those of native speakers, often showing a heavy influence of L1 sound inventory and sound patterning (e.g., Best, McRoberts, & Goodell, 2001;Brannen, 2002;Clements, 2001;Eckman & Iverson, 2013;Flege & Eefting, 1987;Hancin-Bhatt, 1994;Sirsa & Redford, 2013;White & Mattys, 2007). Our experimental design took advantage of the fact that ambiguities arise when non-native speakers fail to make necessary contrasts in the target language.…”
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