Punjabi Speakers Research Articles

A Sociolinguistic Study on the Diminishing Features of the Punjabi Lexicon

This sociolinguistic study strives to bring to light the linguistic changes that seem to have occurred over a few decades in the Punjabi lexicon in Pakistan. The researchers have adopted two research strategies for underlining the assumed changes. This study has tried to get insight into the diminishing features of Punjabi lexicon by juxtaposing the current Punjabi lexicon with the lexicon used in the old Punjabi movies and songs. This has involved gleaning lexical items which are no longer used in the current public discourses from the old and famous Punjabi movies (Heer & MirzaSahiba) and their songs. To further substantiate the findings of the study, the researchers got a questionnaire filled by 110 educated Punjabi speakers who aged 40-50. In the questionnaire, the respondents were asked about their opinion regarding the perceived changes in Punjabi lexicon of public discourses that have occurred over the past few decades. The findings of the study reveal that there have occurred noticeable changes due to social, educational, industrial and technological advancement, and particularly the spread of electronic media in the Punjabi community in Pakistan.

Temporal characteristics of Punjabi word-medial singletons and geminates.

Many studies have investigated the temporal characteristics of the word-medial singletons and geminates in Indo-Aryan languages. However, little is known about the acoustic cues distinguishing between the word-medial singletons and geminates of Punjabi. The present study examines the temporal characteristics of Punjabi word-medial singleton and geminate stops in a C1V1C2V2 template. The results from five Punjabi speakers showed that, unlike previous studies of Indo-Aryan languages, the durations of C2 and V2 are the most important acoustic correlates of singleton and geminate stops in Punjabi. These findings therefore point towards the cross-linguistic differences in the acoustic correlates of singletons and geminates.

Language, Power and Gender: A Case Study of Code Switching by Less Educated People In Pakistan

The purpose of this study is to investigate the relation between language, power and gender among less educated people. Less educated people here mean those who passed only middle class examination. Foucault’s theory of power and discourse gave new dimensions to languages. Language is used to exert power (Foucault, 1998). Due to this relationship of language and power, the speakers try to use that language as is enjoying power and high status in their speech community. Those of high status enjoying language is very much seen in the process of code switching where the speakers do code switching from low status enjoying language to high status enjoying language.The major aims of this research were to find out the relation between language and power and how speakers’ use of powerful language varied across gender. This study was quantitative. Data collection was done through questionnaire comprising of two sections. The first section was consisted of 10 close ended questions to know the relation between language and power. The second section of the questionnaire comprising of 10 close ended questions measured the status of Punjabi and Urdu. After careful inquires 30 less educated L1 Punjabi speakers were randomly selected from the city Sheikhupura. Among these 30 participants 15 were male and 15 were female. Audio recording was taken from 14 participants, 7 males and 7 females who had also took part in survey questionnaire to get the data about Urdu code switching. The results collected through the gathered data revealed the L1 Punjabi speakers regarded Urdu as powerful language and they asserted that language and power are closely related with each other. Further women used more powerful language and for this purpose they did more Urdu code switching as compared to men.

Compliment Responses of Thai and Punjabi Speakers of English in Thailand

Compliment Responses of Thai and Punjabi Speakers of English in Thailand

Language Shift – The Case of Punjabi in Sargodha Region of Pakistan

This paper examines the linguistic scenario of Punjabi (second major language in Pakistan after Urdu) in Sargodha and the social mechanism which poses threat to the sustainability of Punjabi on a broader scale. It deals with the attitudes, causes and effects of the language shift from Punjabi to other languages due to prestige, modernity and social mobility issues. Triangulation (Questionnaires from n=80 and In-depth interviews from n=3) was used in order to observe the trends of shift. The findings exhibit that Punjabi speakers are not so loyal to their language, Punjabi language shift is a real not perceived phenomenon and a day may not be far away when Punjabi will be considered endangered language in Pakistan.

The acoustic characteristics of diphthongs in Indian English

ABSTRACT: This paper presents the results of an acoustic analysis of English diphthongs produced by three L1 speakers of Hindi and four L1 speakers of Punjabi. Formant trajectories of rising and falling diphthongs (i.e., vowels where there is a clear rising or falling trajectory through the F1/F2 vowel space) were analysed in a corpus of citation‐form words. In line with previous research, the diphthong inventory included six different diphthongs and a long monophthongal vowel [o?] in place of /??/ in GOAT; however, none of the speakers produced a full set of diphthong vowels. In addition, the /e?/ diphthong, as in FACE, and the /??/ diphthong, as in TOUR, had both monophthongal and diphthongal realizations depending on the speaker. Overall, there was a great deal of variation in diphthong realization across the corpus but L1 appeared to be a relevant factor. Punjabi speakers showed a wider range of phonetic realizations for some of the vowels, and were more likely to produce long monophthongs rather than diphthongs. The results also highlight differences in the phonetic characteristics of several diphthongs between the speakers of two language backgrounds. The results of this study therefore contribute to the debate on the phonemic representation of IE vowels by taking into account different L1 influence (i.e., Hindi or Punjabi).

The interaction of linguistic and affective prosody in a tone language

To address how a common set of acoustic properties of speech prosody modulate to convey linguistic and affective meanings concurrently, this study investigated the influence of phonemic tones on the expression of emotion (happy, sad, angry) and linguistic modality (declarative, interrogative) in a tone language, Punjabi. Base stimuli consisted of neutral sentences with either of the three contrastive tones in Punjabi (falling, level, high-rising) varying at the object position of the sentence only. Each of these sentences was elicited as a statement or a question for each of the three emotions by 6 native Punjabi speakers. Utterances were validated for adequate representation of the target emotion, and reliable exemplars for each of the emotions and linguistic modality were subjected to detailed acoustic analysis. Fundamental frequency and duration measures were analyzed for the stressed vowel of the keywords (subject, object, verb) and the whole utterance for each of the tokens. Results demonstrated ways that the acoustic correlates of tone at the word level interact with that of the intonation and emotion at the sentence level, which were further compared with previous results on the effect of focus on intonation and emotional prosody [M. D. Pell, J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 109, 1668–1680 (2001)].

Body part categorisation in Punjabi

A key question in categorisation is to what extent people categorise in the same way, or differently. This paper examines categorisation of the body in Punjabi, an Indo-European language spoken in Pakistan and India. First, an inventory of body part terms is presented, illustrating how Punjabi speakers segment and categorise the body. There are some noteworthy terms in the inventory, which illustrate categories in Punjabi that are unusual when compared to other languages presented in this volume. Second, Punjabi speakers’ conceptualisation of the relationship between body parts is explored. While some body part terms are viewed as being partonomically related, others are viewed as being in a locative relationship. It is suggested that there may be key ways in which languages differ in both the categorisation of the body into parts, and in how these parts are related to one another.