MELODIC PECULIARITIES OF INDIAN SEAFARERS’ SPEECH BEHAVIOR

Abstract

The article deals with melodic peculiarities of speech behavior of Indian seafarers. In the focus of the given article are prosodic parameters and their definition. The analysis of the English language showed that English is the most widely spread language due to the policy of British empire in the nineteenth century. There are three stages of development of the English language in India. The first stage occupies the epoch of active missionary activity of protestant British church in the seventeenth century. The second stage is closely connected to the first one, but it depended on inner factors. It was very honorable to study English in the eighteenth century, because English became the language of nobility. The third stage referred to the influence of British East Indian company. Colonizers’ language became the official one very fast. Nowadays Indian English is spoken by 350 million people. In this investigation there was an attempt to analyze the Indian seamen’s speech and define prosodic markers of their speech behavior. The purpose and the main task of the investigation was the implementation of auditory analysis, which consisted of three stages. The first stage was to define the frequency usage of intonation scales in seafarers’ speech. The results of this stage showed that the most frequently used scale was the Rising one. The second stage of the research was to identify the dominant terminal tones. The results of the analysis indicate that Rising and Falling terminal tones prevail mostly. The results of the speech tempo of Indian seamen prove the frequent usage of rapid and slow speech rate. Experimentally obtained results state that speech behavior of Indian seamen has a variable character, which makes the speech emotionally colored.