An Analytical Study on the Contraction of Voiceless Glottal Fricative Sound in Spoken Hindi: Rapid Speech Context

Abstract

Contraction is a phonological process by which a sequence of sounds that constitute one or more words is reduced or fused. This reduction may be accompanied by additional changes in the sound segments. In Hindi, /h/ is the voiceless glottal fricative, also called the voiceless glottal transition or the aspirate. Compared with the other sounds in Hindi, voiceless Glottal Fricative is used in various phonological environments. This variation is common in the Hindi language, either as a historical development or as a contemporary difference between dialects, sometimes as an allophone or hypercorrection in rapid speech, and as a spelling pronunciation or out of perceived etymological correctness. Accordingly, the main objective of this study is to analyse the features of the contraction of voiceless glottal fricative /h/ sound in spoken Hindi in the rapid speech context. Particularly, attention is given to finding out the reasons for the contraction of the sound /h/ in Hindi. The data were collected using video and audio materials of the native speakers and the collected data were analysed based on phonological theories such as assimilation, consonant cluster reduction, vowel reduction, and syllable deletion. Accordingly, the key findings are based on identifying several features of the sound/h/contraction in the spoken Hindi language. This paper emphasized that according to supra-segmental features, in the spoken Hindi language, the contraction of sound /ə/ frequently happens in language, while sound /h/contraction occurs between consonants of words. Furthermore, in the middle of a word and at the end of a word, the /h/ contraction often occurs, and the peculiarity found in Hindi is that the /h/ contraction occurs at the beginning of the word, and the remaining vowel joins with the end consonant of the previous word.