Overarching consonant alternations
A case study of an unbalanced trilingual situation Bundeli – Hindi – English
This pilot research project addresses the interlanguage transfer of phonetic-phonemic phenomena in a trilingual situation: Bundeli-Hindi (L1-L2, not standard – standard) bidialectism extended by L3 English. The audio data analysis focuses on semantically and grammatically empty cross-phonemic consonant alternations that are not conditioned by phonotactics. Their transfer points to a specific transfer type, involving systemic relations. I introduce an alternation rate index as a tool to assess the dependence of cross-phonemic interlanguage alternations on linguistic and sociolinguistic parameters. The results of the analysis indicate that cross-phonemic alternations are unilaterally transferred from Bundeli to Hindi and English and that the alternation rate is inversely related to the socio-educational level and language proficiency as well as to the level of language standardisation.
Article outline
- Introduction
- Interrelations between Bundeli, Hindi and Indian English
- Interrelation between Bundeli and Hindi
- Bundeli – Hindi cross-phonemic alternations
- Phonological adaptation of English
- Accommodation of Standard English (RP) consonants in Hindi, Bundeli and Indian English
- Data analysis and methodology
- Audio data
- Data collection
- Types of school
- Data collection procedure
- Selection of data for analysis
- Subjects
- Data on the subjects’ language use
- Audio data processing
- Alternation rate
- Discussion of the results
- Summary of the data analysis
- Alternations in the data elicited from KP
- Alternations in the data elicited from DM
- Alternations in the data elicited from CK
- Linguistic perspective
- Sociolinguistic perspective
- Limitations of the analysis
- Conclusions
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Notes
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Abbreviations
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References