Hindi Speech Rate Effects and the Phonology of Voiced Aspirates

The University of Iowa

Fall 2014

4:00pm

The current study is the first to examine speaking rate effects in a language with a four-way stop contrast, Hindi, and the first investigation of rate effects on breathy voiced stops (voiced aspirates). I examine how speech rate affects stop cues in Hindi, and then bring these phonetic data to bear on previous phonological accounts of voiced aspirates, for which authors have posited a range of features, varying both in number and type (Chomsky & Halle 1968, Ladefoged 1971, Davis 1994). I recorded 5 native speakers at different speaking rates, including data for the full four-way stop paradigm. Results show that for plain voiced stops and voiceless aspirated stops, both prevoicing and aspiration increase as a function of speech rate, respectively. The voiceless unaspirated stops show no changes in their VOT values. Crucially, both the prevoicing and breathy voice of voiced aspirates increase as speakers slow down. These results provide empirical support for a privative [voice, spread glottis] analysis of voiced aspirates, which naturally explains why the speech rate effects on the production of the post-release noisy period (breathy voice) of these stops are parallel to the changes found for aspiration of voiceless aspirated stops (e.g., English, German, Swedish). Moreover, such a phonological representation serves to form a natural class of aspirates, which is desirable based on phonological data from closely related Indic languages with four-way stop contrasts.