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Article published In:
Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism
Vol. 8:3 (2018) ► pp.343–371

Focus in Indian English and Hindi late and simultaneous bilinguals

| Ocean County College

The main objective of this study is to investigate the acoustic correlates of focus in late and simultaneous bilinguals of Hindi and Indian English (IE). The main acoustic correlates of focus in American/British English are duration, amplitude and F0 and in Hindi are duration, F0 excursion and post-focal pitch compression. In the present study, I look at duration, RMS amplitude and F0 excursion in broad focus, narrow focus and post-focus declarative present tense, past tense and perfect aspect (both transitive and intransitive verbs) Hindi and IE sentences, to explore if there are any differences in the two bilingual groups and to understand the acoustic correlates of focus in IE and Hindi.

Keywords: Focus, simultaneous, late bilinguals
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
    • 1.1Background Information
      • 1.1.1Focus
      • 1.1.2Focus in Hindi
      • 1.1.3Indian English intonation and focus
      • 1.1.4Language interaction in bilinguals
  • 2.Methods
    • 2.1Recordings
    • 2.2Speakers
    • 2.3Speech material
    • 2.4Measurements
  • 3.Results
    • 3.1Indian English: duration
    • 3.2Indian English: RMS amplitude
    • 3.3Indian English: F0 excursion
    • 3.4Hindi: duration
    • 3.5Hindi: RMS amplitude
    • 3.6Hindi: F0 excursion
  • 4.Discussion
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Note
  • References
Published online: 26 July 2016
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/lab.15009.pur
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