A comparison of suprasegmentals and segmentals in Indian English, Hindi, and Telugu.

Abstract

Indian English (IE), an official language of India, differs suprasegmentally and segmentally from other English dialects. This study explores whether IE sound structure varies with the divergent L1s of its speakers, as suggested by Wiltshire and Harnsberger (2006), or whether its sound structure is similar regardless of speakers L1. To investigate this question, measures of rate, rhythm, and final lengthening were taken in Hindi (Indo‐Aryan), Telugu (Dravidian), and in IE, which was produced with native fluency by the same five Hindi and five Telugu speakers. Vowel and obstruent segments, common to all languages, were also extracted from the 13 stimulus phrases and acoustically analyzed. The results indicate some influence of the different L1s on IE rhythm structure and VOT, but none on IE speech rate, final lengthening, or vowel and /s/ production. Mostly, the results indicated that when language differences did exist (and there were many similarities across the languages), these were more likely to be between Hindi and IE or between Telugu and IE or between Hindi and Telugu than between the IE produced by speakers of different L1s. Such results suggest that IE is a pan‐India dialect of English, not merely an L1 influenced L2 for Indians.