Papers by Rajesh Khatiwada
Salentinian cacuminals / retroflexes ( Apulia, southern Italy): a preliminary articulatory study
Aspects of Nepalese phonetics and phonology : Retroflexion and the double correlation of voicing and aspiration
Notre thèse traite de la rétroflexion et de la corrélation double de voisement et d’aspiration ta... more Notre thèse traite de la rétroflexion et de la corrélation double de voisement et d’aspiration tant du point de vue phonétique que phonologique. En utilisant la palatographie et la linguographie directes, nous avons montré que les coronales simples sont produites majoritairement comme des lamino-dento-alvéolaires, les affriquées comme des lamino-alvéolaires, et enfin que les rétroflexes varient entre le type cacuminal et le type rétroflexe. Les différentes modélisations phonologiques des segments coronaux ont été examinées et confrontées à nos résultats dans une perspective de phonologie de laboratoire. Renvoyant principalement au mouvement vertical de la pointe de langue, nous avons proposé un trait [rétroflexe], en tant que trait de manière rattaché au noeud coronal. L’étude de la corrélation de voisement et d’aspiration a d’abord été menée au niveau acoustique. Le modèle ACT (Mikuteit & Reetz 2007) que nous avons utilisé, nous a permis de décrire acoustiquement les quatre types d...
Gipan, 2019
Nepali, an Indo-Aryan language spoken in Nepal along with India and Bhutan, and some parts of Bur... more Nepali, an Indo-Aryan language spoken in Nepal along with India and Bhutan, and some parts of Burma, possesses three coronal stops (2 plosives and 1 affricate). Retroflexion is traditionally considered as the distinctive feature between two different types of plosives. Though retroflexion in Nepali is considered- like in the case of other Indo-Aryan languages- a fundamental distinctive articulatory parameter (Bhat 1973, Ladefoged and Bhaskararao 1983, Ladefoged and Maddieson 1996), Pokharel (1989), however, claims that there is no retroflex category in Nepali, because the “so-called” (sic.) Nepali retroflex stops are not produced with the “tongue tip curling back” as it is described in the traditional grammar. In this work, I have tried to show that this claim is just one side of the story and that the “retroflex” as a phonetic and phonological category “does exist” in Nepali. Based on two different palatographic and linguographic studies (of 9 speakers – four females and five males...
Histoire de l'âne de Nasreddin Hodja en népalais
Interactions de base en népalais
The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 2008
In terms of laryngeal setting, most languages have only two types of stops. In the Nepalese sound... more In terms of laryngeal setting, most languages have only two types of stops. In the Nepalese sound inventory there are four types of stops: voiceless unaspirated, voiced unaspirated, voiceless aspirated and voiced aspirated (or breathy voiced). The main objective of this paper is to present the prominent and consistent acoustic cues that differentiate the aspirated segments from their unaspirated counterparts of the Nepalese coronals-the dental-alveolar (t,th,d,dh), retroflex (T,Th,D,Dh) and affricates (ts,tsh,dz,dzh). VOT (Voice Onset Time) (Lisker & Abramson 1964) is the familiar model used to characterize three of these phonation types-voiced, voiceless and aspiration stops. Some authors have pointed out that this method is not able to distinguish the plain voiced and voiced aspirated stops. An alternative segmentation model proposed by Mikuteit and Reetz (2007) is adopted here. Beside the analysis of the closure duration of segments, measuring the beginning of the burst or its release, we use other acoustic cues to characterize Nepalese aspiration such as F0 lowering, the structure of the lower harmonics and spectral tilt (Hanson 1997, Stevens 1998). This experimental work is based on the corpus based on four native speakers of Nepali.
Journal of the International Phonetic Association, 2009
Nepali, a language of the Indo-Aryan family, is the official language of Nepal. According to the ... more Nepali, a language of the Indo-Aryan family, is the official language of Nepal. According to the 2001 population census of Nepal, more than 11 million Nepalese (48.61% of the total population) claim this language as their mother tongue. It is also spoken in other countries of South Asia, such as India and Bhutan, as well as by members of the Nepalese Diaspora around the world. The population census of India of 1991 reported that more than two million Indians use Nepali as their mother tongue. Within Nepal, Nepali shows some dialectal variation mainly linked to geographical and socio-cultural factors. Nevertheless, the dialect called the ‘eastern’ dialect spoken by a majority of Nepali speakers shows rather little variation (Bandhu et al. 1971).
International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, 2015
Ejective consonants are not very common crosslinguistically. Even less common is the occurrence o... more Ejective consonants are not very common crosslinguistically. Even less common is the occurrence of ejective fricatives. This infrequency is generally attributed to the incompatibility of two aerodynamic requirements: a continuing flow of air to create noise frication and an increasing intraoral air pressure to implement ejectivity. This study reports on an acoustic investigation of initial and intervocalic ejective fricatives in Mehri, a Modern South Arabian language spoken in Oman, and seeks to determine how this incompatibility is solved by the 5 subjects recorded. The analysis of different temporal and non-temporal parameters shows a high degree of variability in the way this contrast is implemented. Much of this variability is shaped by the position of the fricatives within the word.
Salentinian cacuminals / retroflexes ( Apulia, southern Italy): a preliminary articulatory study
This paper investigates the phonetic realization of the contrastively aspirated affricates /tsh/ ... more This paper investigates the phonetic realization of the contrastively aspirated affricates /tsh/ and /dzh/ in Nepali. Static palatography reveals no consistent articulatory difference between these sounds and their nonaspirated counterparts /ts/ and /dz/. However, acoustic examination shows that /tsh/ and /dzh/ differ from /ts/ and /dz/ in several ways depending on the identity of the following vowel (open /a/ vs. palatal /i/). The most prominent and consistent cue to the aspirates, voiceless as well as voiced, is breathy or muffled voice and lowered F0 on the following vowel.
Description et analyse des coronales occlusives népalaises
Questions de phonologie et phonétique en népalais : la rétroflexion et la double corrélation de voisement et d'aspiration
Notre these traite de la retroflexion et de la correlation double de voisement et d’aspiration ta... more Notre these traite de la retroflexion et de la correlation double de voisement et d’aspiration tant du point de vue phonetique que phonologique. En utilisant la palatographie et la linguographie directes, nous avons montre que les coronales simples sont produites majoritairement comme des lamino-dento-alveolaires, les affriquees comme des lamino-alveolaires, et enfin que les retroflexes varient entre le type cacuminal et le type retroflexe. Les differentes modelisations phonologiques des segments coronaux ont ete examinees et confrontees a nos resultats dans une perspective de phonologie de laboratoire. Renvoyant principalement au mouvement vertical de la pointe de langue, nous avons propose un trait [retroflexe], en tant que trait de maniere rattache au noeud coronal. L’etude de la correlation de voisement et d’aspiration a d’abord ete menee au niveau acoustique. Le modele ACT (Mikuteit & Reetz 2007) que nous avons utilise, nous a permis de decrire acoustiquement les quatre types d...
Variation in Nepali aspirated stops. Indian Language Review
In spite of the fundamental role that phonological features play in current linguistics, current ... more In spite of the fundamental role that phonological features play in current linguistics, current research continues to raise many basic questions concerning the relation these representational categories of phonology have to measurable physical properties. This paper addresses the question of how [spread glottis] segments are phonetically implemented and proposes a language-independent definition of this feature. Language-independent feature definitions specify both articulatory and acoustic definitions. We show that the definition of [spread glottis] in terms of a single common glottal configuration or gesture would be insufficient to account for the full range of speech sounds characterized by this feature. For a feature to be present at the phonetic level, its defining acoustic attribute, or failing that its enhancing attributes, must also be present in the signal. Studies like this one lay the groundwork for future investigations that will make the study of features more concrete, by associating them with specific articulatory states and gestures and with equally specific acoustic cues.
Ejective consonants are not very common cross-linguistically. Even less common is the occurrence ... more Ejective consonants are not very common cross-linguistically. Even less common is the occurrence of ejective fricatives. This infrequency is generally attributed to the incompatibility of two aerodynamic requirements: a continuing flow of air to create noise frication and an increasing intraoral air pressure to implement ejectivity. This study reports on an acoustic investigation of initial and intervocalic ejective fricatives in Mehri, a Modern South Arabian language spoken in Oman, and seeks to determine how this incompatibility is solved by the 5 subjects recorded. The analysis of different temporal and non-temporal parameters shows a high degree of variability in the way this contrast is implemented. Much of this variability is shaped by the position of the fricatives within the word.
Retroflex sounds are classically defined as produced with the tongue tip curled backward and ofte... more Retroflex sounds are classically defined as produced with the tongue tip curled backward and often in contact behind the alveolar ridge ([1], [2], [3]). The sounds, however, present a great inter-language, inter- and intra-speaker articulatory variation. Retroflex stops in Nepali, an Indo-Aryan language spoken in Nepal, are produced with the tongue tip with no backward curling movement at the alveolar ridge ([4],[5]). For Pokharel [5], this is not a real type of retroflexion, but rather is apico-alveolar with no backward curling of the tongue tip. The aim of this study is to experimentally verify Pokharel’s statement and the originality is to go beyond this claim. We wish to verify whether there is any co-articulation effect while producing the retroflex in different vocalic contexts. We use the direct palatography method to determine the place of articulation. Our articulatory data reveal an important articulatory inter and intra speaker variability. The majority of the retroflex s...
Cooccurrence constraints on aspirates in Nepali
Posthumous Writings by Nick Clements and Coauthors, 2015
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Papers by Rajesh Khatiwada