The intonational phonology of Indian English: an autosegmental-metrical analysis based on Bengali and Kannada English

© 2014 Dr. Olga MaxwellIndian English (IndE) is one of the varieties of world Englishes. Despite its phonological system being a subject of ongoing interest, only a limited number of studies have examined IndE intonational features. This study presents the first detailed description of the intonational and prosodic features of the speech of eight educated IndE speakers from Bengali (Indo-Aryan) and Kannada (Dravidian) L1 backgrounds. Through a series of four experiments, prominence, phrasing, tune-text alignment and pitch range were investigated within an Autosegmental-Metrical framework of intonation analysis. The similarities found between Bengali English (BE) and Kannada English (KE) confirm previous claims that IndE has developed its own phonology and show that its intonation bears certain resemblances to other well-established Englishes. IndE exhibits similarities with other Englishes in its prosodic structure, boundary tones inventory, accentual and focal prominence levels, presence of rising accent/s and a wide range of nuclear tunes. The findings of the research also reveal that IndE has a somewhat ‘hybrid’ system of intonation, most likely as a result of its development and use, and the influence of indigenous languages upon it. It was found that duration, amplitude and f0 are reliable cues to post-lexical prominence while vowel quality plays only a marginal role. Similarly, deaccenting is used alongside other focus marking strategies that are not typical for English intonation. The findings also support previous experimental research that IndE is not uniform. Greater accentual density, a smaller pitch accent inventory, frequent use of nuclear falls and narrower pitch range are characteristic of KE, while a wide use of nuclear and prenuclear rising accents and an L*+H pitch accent in narrow focus are part of BE intonation. The differences within IndE as well as between IndE and well-established Englishes are exhibited in the use of phonological categories, their phonetic realisation and function