AN ACOUSTIC ANALYSIS OF SPEECH SOUNDS: A CASE STUDY OF THE KOKBOROK LANGUAGE A Thesis Submitted to the Aligarh Muslim University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the award of the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN LINGUISTICS BY FAIJUL HOQUE Under the Supervision of Dr. K.S. Mustafa Mohammad Ansari (Supervisor) (Co-supervisor) Professor, Associate Professor, Chairman and BoS Department of Linguistics Centre of Advanced Study in Linguistics Aligarh Muslim University Osmania University Aligarh - 202002 Hyderabad – 500 007 Department of Linguistics Aligarh Muslim University Aligarh (UP) India 2016 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I cannot begin to say how grateful I am to each one of the following for their support and encouragement. Without them, I could never have made it this far…… This work remains in memory of Late Sir Syed Ahmed Khan . I thank…… My research Supervisors Professor K.S. Mustafa and Mohammad Ansari for their valuable guidance, insights and meticulous editing. Lieutenant General (rtd) Mr. Zameer Uddin Shah, Vice-Chancellor of Aligarh Muslim University for giving me an opportunity to pursue research in Acoustic Phonetics. Prof. Sayed Kafeel Ahmad Qasmi, Dean Faculty of arts, AMU, for his moral support. Prof. Shabana Hameed, Chairman, Department of Linguistics, AMU, for her consistent support and suggestions. Dr. Nazrin. B. Laskar of the department of Linguistics, AMU, for her advice, encouragement and consistent support at every stage of my work. My teachers Prof. S.Imtiaz Hasnain, Prof. A.R.Fatihi, Mr. Masood Ali Beg, Dr. Samina A.A. Surti, Dr. Sadia. H. Husain, Dr. Abdul Aziz Khan of the department of Linguistics, AMU. xi Prof. Paroo Nihlani who was the inspirational and an integral part of my learning process of acoustic analysis of speech and also choosing the software suitable for my research. Prof . Shreesh Choudhury of IIT Madras for his apt comments and suggestions. Mr. Binoy Debbarma, Linguistics officer, TTAADC, Tripura, for granting me permission to collect research materials on Kokborok from the Tribal Research Institute. All of my informants who readily and patiently let me record all the token of their speech. Without them, this thesis would have been utterly impossible. Mr. Asad, research scholar, JNU, Mr.Aktar Hussain, research scholar, JMI and Mr. Shamsudheen MK, research scholar, AMU, for their encouragement and consistent support. Mr. Ali Hussan for his relentless support at every stage of my research and Mr. Antai Kumar Kaipang for his help, support and company at all stage of recording and collection of the data. Mr. Najeebul Hasan Khan, Seminar incharge and all the office staff of the department of Linguistics, AMU, for their consistent support. This task would have been incomplete without the unfailing love and support of my parents, my sister and brothers, who helped keep life priorities straight. All the collaborative efforts made this thesis more than just a part of its sum. Faijul Hoque ****** xii AN ACOUSTIC ANALYSIS OF SPEECH SOUNDS: A CASE STUDY OF THE KOKBOROK LANGUAGE An Abstract Submitted to the Aligarh Muslim University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the award of the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN LINGUISTICS BY FAIJUL HOQUE Under the Supervision of Dr. K.S. Mustafa Mohammad Ansari (Supervisor) (Co-supervisor) Professor, Associate Professor, Chairman and BoS Department of Linguistics Centre of Advanced Study in Linguistics Aligarh Muslim University Osmania University Aligarh - 202002 Hyderabad – 500 007 Department of Linguistics Aligarh Muslim University Aligarh (UP) India 2016 ABSTRACT ABSTRACT ________________________________________________ Kokborok is spoken by more than 15 lakh people in Indian state of Tripura in North East India and the adjacent regions of Bangladesh mainly in Chittagong Hill Tracts. It belongs to Bodo-Garo group of Tibeto- Burman branch of Sino-Tibetan family. The present study is an effort to investigate into the acoustic aspects of the Kokborok speech sounds. For the acoustic analysis of the Kokborok speech sounds, a list of Kokborok words was prepared and recorded from forty (40) Kokborok speaking informants. They comprise of fifteen (15) men, fifteen (15) women and ten (10) twelve to fifteen years old children (5 boys and 5 girls). The word list prepared for the purpose consisted of sounds in isolation, in words (monosyllabic and polysyllabic) and in simple sentences. The informants were made to record atleast three readings of each word on a digital audio recorder. The first part and the last part of each of the recording were ignored but the middle part was used for the acoustic analysis. The entire speech of every informant and each and every sound articulated by them was phonetically transcribed using IPA. For the acoustic analysis, speech analysis software called ‘Praat’ was used to generate waveforms as well as spectrograms. The spectrograms and the waveforms were examined very carefully on personal computer (PC) and acoustic analysis of the Kokborok speech sounds was done within the parameters of duration, formant frequency and formant transition. The duration measurements of the Kokborok speech sounds were done in milliseconds. The formant frequencies and formant transitions were measured in hertz. Speech sounds were analysed in terms of numbers and the mean value of the numbers of the sounds were taken and represented graphically. 2 Abstract The acoustic analysis of the Kokborok speech sounds in terms of individual speaker variations, gender variations and variations in isolation, different word positions as well as in connected speech was done. Based on this analysis the Kokborok speech sounds were described. For the sake of convenience, the contents of the whole study are divided into five chapters. The first chapter of the study is ‘Introduction ’. Several aspects are taken up in this chapter. It begins with the introduction and some background notes of the Kokborok language, its speaker and linguistic boundaries. A survey on the Kokborok linguistic and phonetic studies and also a review on the acoustic theory of speech and the acoustic dimensions of speech are presented. The objective here is to test the theory and see whether the precise results come up after the data analysis. The chapter also discusses the aims and objectives, scope, hypotheses, informants’ details, data, methodology and software adopted for the research. As the present study focuses on acoustic analysis of speech sounds, a brief account of the acoustic phonetics and acoustic analytic technique of speech sounds are also discussed. In the second chapter viz., ‘Phonological Sketch of the Kokborok Language ’ a phonemic analysis of the Kokborok phonemes is done as this analysis is the basis for the acoustic analysis of Kokborok speech sounds. The chapter underscores the need for studying phonemic analysis because there is little information available pertaining to phonemic analysis of sound system of Kokborok till date. For the sake of convenience, this chapter is divided into two parts. Part one deals with the Kokborok vowels. This part presents a phonemic inventory of vowels of Kokborok. The phonemic inventory shows that the Kokborok language has the eight (8) phonetically distinctive vowel phonemes, four (4) phonologically distinctive diphthongs and a triphthong. The following table lists the Kokborok vowels, diphthongs and triphthong. 3 Abstract Table . The Kokborok vowel phonemes. This part also gives the classification, description, distribution of each vowel phoneme and also shows contrast between them. Further it also presents spectrographic sketches of all the Kokborok vowel phonemes and describes each one of them on the basis of the acoustic cues. The eight vowel phonemes and four diphthongs and a triphthong exist in word initial, medial and final positions except the vowel /ə/ and /o/ . The vowel /ə/ occurs only in word medial position. The vowel /o/ occurs only in word medial and final positions. All the eight Kokborok vowels have the contrast in word initial, medial and final positions except the vowel /ə/ and /o/ . The vowel /ə/ shows contrast only in medial position. The vowel /o/ exhibits contrast only in word medial and final positions. Part two deals with the Kokborok consonants phonemes. It presents a phonemic inventory of consonants of Kokborok. The phonemic inventory shows that the Kokborok language has nineteen (19) consonant phonemes. They are articulated from five (5) different places of articulation: bilabial, alveolar, palatal, velar and glottal and from four (4) different manners of articulation: stop, fricative, nasal and approximant. The following table lists the Kokborok consonants. 4 Abstract Labial Coronal Dorsal Places of articulation → Glottal Bilabial Alveolar Palatal Velar Manners of articulation ↓ Unaspirated p t k Voiceless Aspirated ph th čh kh Stops Voiced Unaspirated b d ǰ ɡ Obstruents Fricatives Voiceless s h Nasals Voiced m n ŋ Lateral l Approxi Voiced Sonorants Sonorants mants Central r j Table . The Kokborok consonant phonemes. The study classifies the Kokborok stops into three sets: (i) the voiceless unaspirated stops, (ii) the voiceless aspirated stops and (iii) the voiced stops. The voiceless unaspirated stops have aspirated counterparts but voiced aspirated counterparts are non-existent in Kokborok. The voiceless palatal aspirated stop - /čh/ has no unaspirated counterpart in the language. All the nineteen consonant phonemes occur in word initial, medial and final positions except the aspirated stop consonants [/ ph, th, čh, kh /] and the consonants [/b, d, ǰ, ŋ and j /]. The occurrence of consonant phonemes [/ ph, th, čh, kh /] and [/ b, d, ǰ, j, /] is limited to the word initial and medial positions. However the phoneme / ŋ/ occurs in the word medial and final positions. All the Kokborok homorganic and heterorganic consonant phonemes show contrast in word medial position but a few have contrast in the initial position and still a few have contrast in the word final position. It also gives the classification, description, distribution of each phoneme. Further it also presents spectrographic sketches of all the Kokborok consonant phonemes and describes each phoneme on the basis of the acoustic cues.