Onset of Rising Pitch in Focused Words in Hindi : an Experimental Study

As supported by literature on Hindi Stress system, it is observed that low pitch signals prominence in a stressed word and that the focused word has an LH melody linked to it. Dyrud’s observation (2001) confirmed that pitch and duration are primary correlates of stress in Hindi-Urdu, where relatively low pitch is associated with the stressed syllable. Rami Nair (2001) also investigated into syllable and vowel duration which indicated that Hindi has lexical stress. Other Indian languages also show similar pitch pattern on stressed syllables; AshthaMurthy (2003) on Tamil and Malyalam. Also, in Punjabi, as was investigated by Vijayakrishnan (1999), in words with no lexical tone, stressed syllable elicits a low pitch. Whereas in non final stressed words, low pitch persists till the end of the stressed syllable and then rises on the immediately following syllable; in final stressed syllables, the H tone has no syllable to link to, therefore, low pitch remains till the end of the word.

 

In Hindi, the word pitch melody is LH. The hypothesis of this research is that the H pitch will be linked to the right of the stressed syllable. This linking of H pitch will cause the pitch to rise. The working hypothesis is that final stress will cause a delay in the onset of rise in the pitch contour.

 

 

L H L H

| | |

| | |

( σ) ` σ σ ( )` σ

 

Non final Stressed syllable Final stressed syllable

 

Experimental design

The data taken up for this experiment are declarative, non-derived words where the placement of stress is non-controversial. These words are placed in narrow and contrastive focus positions in sentences which are responses to specific questions. The responses are then segregated into phrase initial and phrase medial categories (that is, whether the focused word is phrase initial in the tone group or phrase medial). The position of stress in the focused word, considered a possible factor affecting the onset of rise in the pitch pattern of focused word, is categorized final stressed words and non-final stressed words. The significance of various categories is calculated by t-test to show an increase or decrease in the delay of the H pitch. The data is collected from three native speakers (two female and one male} of eastern Hindi, four iterations each. The analysis of the data is done on PRAAT software.

 

The question that we seek to answer is what factors affect the onset of rise in pitch contour of a focused word.

 

 

References:

1. Ashthamurthy K. 2003. The phonetics and phonology of Primary Prominence in Malyalam and Tamil: a Typological Investigation. M.Phil Dissertation. Submitted at CIEFL, Hyderabad.

 

2. Dyrud, Lars O. 2001 : Hindi-Urdu: Stress accent or non-stress accent? M.A Thesis. University of North Dakota.

 

3. Hayes, Bruce 1991 : Metrical Stress theory: Principles and case studies. MS. UCLA.

 

4. Nair, Rami. 2001. Acoustic Correlates of Lexical Stress in Hindi. Linguistic Structure and Language Dynamics in South Asia- papers from the proceedings of SALA XVIII roundtable. Ed. by Anvita Abbi, R.S. Gupta, Ayesha Kidwai.

 

5. Ohala, Majari. 1986. A search for the phonetic correlates of Hindi stress. South Asian Languages: structure, convergence, diglossia, ed. by Bh. Krishnamurthi, C. Masica, A. Sinha.

 

6. Pandey, Pramod Kumar.1989. Word Accentuation in Hindi. Lingua.77,37-73.

 

7. VijayaKrishnan, K.G. 1999. Stress in Punjabi. The international conference on stress and Rhythm.