A contrastive analysis of English and Bangla phonemics (original) (raw)
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A Comparison Between English and Bangla Vowel Systems
Khulna University Studies
The vowel is an important type of speech sound. Different languages have different sets of vowels due to their genetic and typological profile. Though the languages in the world share some common features, they are governed by language specific properties. This paper aims at finding out the phonetic and phonemic similarities and dissimilarities between the vowels in English and those in Bangla. The findings show that the vowels in English and Bangla share some common characteristics on the one hand; they are distinct by some unique features on the other hand.
A Comparative Study between English and Bangla Vowel System
Bulletin of Adavanced English Studies (Refaad), 2018
This paper briefly investigates the vowel sounds of English and Bangla language. Keeping the supra-segmental features aside, it mainly focuses on the major segmental similarities and differences of the vowel sound system of these two languages. The paper explores the articulatory system in brief and reviews the vowels sounds of English. An effort has been made to pinpoint and enumerate the difficulties faced by the Bangladeshi learners of English. To do that a group of learners is interviewed giving them words in context and without. Interestingly, a considerable portion of the difficulties of the learners might be attributed to the differences of the vowel system of these two languages. Though not complete and detailed, the writing finally leaves some pedagogical suggestions hoping to contribute to the present teaching and learning of English in general and in Bangladesh in particular.
Base-Reduplicant correspondence in Bangla: An OT analysis
This study sought to propose the set of constraints that adequately account for the processes guiding three types of reduplications in the Bangla language. Bangla, an Indo-European language with approximately 210 millions native speakers, has a sophisticated system of reduplication. We analyzed phonological alternations in three (out of six) types of reduplicants in this paper: Total (having to alternations) , Echo-formation (having consonant alternation) , and Correlative (having multiple vowel alternations) type. Data were collected from a native speaker consultant, and from secondary sources (Das 2015, and Rana, 2010), and were analyzed primarily within the prosodic morphology framework, as proposed by McCarthy and Prince (1995). We primarily concluded that there are constraints forcing the dissimilation of the segments and restricting their choices based on the sonority hierarchy relations between the segments involved. We proposed constraints based on the notion of 'Sonority Jump' which would restrict the number of choices and direct towards the winning options. And, we assume our analysis was capable of explaining both the consonant and vowel alternations, with certain difference of the directionality of the 'jump.
Contrastive Study of English and Gwandara Phonemic Systems
published in The Journal of Communicative English, vol. 25, a publication of the English Language Unit, Department of Educational Foundations and General Studies, Federal University of Agriculture, Makurdi, Benue State); September 2020, pp. 86 113., 2020
African languages are on the verge of extinction because they are given less primacy as the foreign languages, and have not been standardised by developing their orthographies and phonemic systems. The need to arrest this drift is what has led to the emergence of this study. Given the fact that English is a major global language, comparing it with the Gwandara language enables the researchers to appreciate some striking similarities and, or differences capable of elevating the Gwandara language to a higher level. It is hoped that the reader will find this descriptive research work useful for its contribution to the development of one of the Nigeria’s local languages to a standard level.
PHONOLOGY TO MORPHO-PHONOLOGY: RE-ANALYZING BANGLA VERBS
EFL Journal 3, June, 2012
The empirical focus of this paper is on the distribution of vowels in monosyllabic verb roots in Bangla. While reiterating that these distributional restrictions are probably the result of diachronic changes in the language, the paper underlines the necessity to reanalyze these restrictions as components of its synchronic morpho-phonemics. The proposal, couched in the framework of optimality theory, argues that phonological assimilation in Bangla neutralizes [HIGH] and [ATR] distinctions between adjacent vowels. This results in the seven vowel repertoire of Bangla, surfacing as alternating sets of five vowels in monosyllabic verb roots. Further, in a bid to block homophony, the same alternation pattern is morphologically imposed on the verb roots. These appear to be cases of under-application on the surface. In the constraint based paradigm, these morphological restrictions, by virtue of their higher ranking, block the phonological assimilations.
Stamford Journal of English, 2013
Due to linguistic diversity, phonologies of the world are notably different from one another, leading the foreign language learners encounter varied phonetic and phonological problems. Bengali speaking EFL learners face problems especially in pronunciation owing to their lack of sound knowledge regarding the distinct positions of phonemes and other aspects of Bengali and English phonology. In this context, our attempt, particularly in this article, is to compare the positions of Bengali and English vowel phonemes and identify the distinctions existing between those in order to help the Bengali speaking EFL learners to improve their pronunciation. Mainly, English vowels (RP) Diagram, Bengali vowels diagram, Cardinal vowels diagram etc have been examined to identify the distinctions mentioned. This paper shows the applicability of our findings by presenting some survey results and suggests some measures to be followed by learners to improve their pronunciation.
A Comparative Study of the Morphophonemics of -ɪle Suffixation in Three Dialects of Bangla
International Journal of All Research Education and Scientific Methods (IJARESM), 2021
The infinitival inflectional suffix-ɪle undergoes various alterations in the three dialects of Banglaviz Noakhali Bangla (NKB), Tripura Bangla (TB) and Standard Colloquial Bangla (SCB). This is caused by the varied treatment the suffix initial high vowel ɪ receives in the respective dialects. Within the suffix, it forms a syllable, without an onset and coda. But universally a medial vowel without an onset cannot form a syllable by itself. Hence, it is either relocated to get an onset or else it is deleted. The former is the case in NKB and TB, while the latter is attested in SCB. In consequence, the entire affixed form including the verbal base undergoes multiple reconfigurations as dictated by the prosodic grammar of the dialect concerned. Investigation into these prosodic processes helps in a) determining the metrical pattern prevailing at the word level in each of these dialects, and b) unearthing the clandestine interaction between morphology and phonology active in each dialect. This paper attempts to project a comparative picture of these morphophonemic processes in the three dialects of Bangla under study.
An Acoustic Analysis of Sylheti Phonemes
This paper examines the acoustic properties of Sylheti phonemes. Sylheti is generally regarded as one of the varieties of Bangla. The historical development of this language witnessed significant reduction and reconstruction of its phoneme inventory. The phoneme inventory is considerably reduced due to the phonological process of deaspiration [+spread glottis], spirantization and deaffrication (Gope & Mahanta, 2014). We conducted an acoustic experiment and measured the voiced onset time (VOT) of all the voiced stops. The result of one-way ANOVA did not show any significant interaction among the obstruents in terms of aspiration (p > 0.05, [F (1, 359) = 0.095, p = 0.76)]. In a separate experiment, we examined the acoustic qualities of Sylheti vowels. Results confirm the presence of 5 vowels in Sylheti. A one way ANOVA confirmed significance effect on vowel quality in terms of duration [F (4, 600) = 57.77, p = 0.00] and (first three) formants values.
Phonemic Comparison of English and Punjabi
International Journal of English Linguistics, 2019
English and Punjabi are languages which do not belong to the same families of languages. English is one of the West Germanic languages whereas; Punjabi is a part of the Indo-Aryan family. Punjabi is spoken by various nations on the globe, especially Pakistan and its province Punjab as well as in Indian Panjab. Both English and Punjabi manifest themselves through various dialects on the basis of diversified geographical areas. English is used as the first language by 379,007,140 speakers and further 753,359,540 speakers use it as a second language in more than 104 nations. So, the total speakers of English around the globe are 1,132,366,680 (Ethnologue, 2019). The importance of Punjabi cannot be denied being the 10th most widely used language on the globe (Ghai & Singh, 2013). According to Ethnologue (2019), the total number of Punjabi speakers is 125,326,840. In Pakistan, it is the language of the majority of the people residing in the most populous province of Pakistan, Punjab. It is among twenty-two languages that have obtained official status. Unfortunately, no considerable work has been done on its phonology. This study is an attempt to describe the phonemic differences between English and Punjabi by using the theoretical framework of the Levenshtein algorithm. The index of differences and similarities is determined through the inventories of both languages. The inventories are used as data in this research paper. The Levenshtein algorithm (Levenshtein, 1965) is used to analyse the inventories to calculate the ratio of differences and similarities. The outcome of the current research shows that both English and Punjabi have a phonemic similarity level of 56.25% whereas the index of difference is 43.75%.