14th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS-14) San Francisco, CA, USA August 1-7, 1999

A Spectral Analysis of Breathiness of Intervocalic Voiced Aspirated Plosives in Delhi Hindi

Kalika Bali

Dept. of Literature and Language, The University of the South Pacific, Fiji

Breathiness is used for phonological contrast in Hindi giving rise to two stop series, viz., Voiced Plosives (VP) and Voiced Aspirated Plosives (VAP). In Delhi Hindi, intervocalic VAP may be produced without a period of voiced aspiration after the release of the stop. A spectral analysis of the vowel following the three categories of stops, namely, VAP, VP and the non-aspirated tokens of VAP (NAVAP), indicates that they differ along several parameters like relative amplitude of the first harmonic, first formant bandwidth, spectral tilt and noise at higher frequencies. The spectral analysis also reveals a difference between male and female speakers. The results indicate that females are overall more breathy suggesting that female and male speakers employ different glottal mechanisms for the production of all three categories of stops.

Full Paper

Bibliographic reference.  Bali, Kalika (1999): "A spectral analysis of breathiness of intervocalic voiced aspirated plosives in Delhi Hindi", In ICPhS-14, 2033-2036.