Postvocalic (r) in urban Indian English

Abstract

Native varieties of World Englishes can shed light on competing local and international language ideologies and alignments with different standards, while quantitative variationist methods permit dialect internal analysis of structural variation without direct reference to external standards, by focusing on internal linguistic and social constraints. Contributing to these endeavors, this study examines variation in postvocalic (r) deletion in Indian English (IndE), uncovering rhotic patterns which are significantly influenced by, and illuminate, distinct urban Indian sociolinguistic alignments. The results also demonstrate that IndE is diverging from both its British colonially influenced past, and from modern internationally prestigious English varieties, through real and apparent time analysis. This analysis focuses on the larger sociolinguistic milieu of IndE emergence and evolution, offering a nuanced response to superficial and oftentimes categorical IndE grammars. Further, studying native speakers offers a counterpoint to L1 contact explanations for IndE stabilization and evolution in the postcolonial context.

Speech Rhythm in Varieties of English

“…However, (Agnihotri and Sahgal 1985;Chand 2010;Sharma 2005a) showed rhoticity to be variable across and within subjects, and Bansal (1990: 222) and Sailaja ( : 19, 2010 suggested that educated or standard IndE is non-rhotic, while many non-standard varieties of IndE are rhotic. Similar results were presented more recently by Wiltshire and Harnsberger (2006: 99-100) and Chand (2010), although Chand's data also suggested an increase in rhoticity across the board since the 1980s. Similar results were presented more recently by Wiltshire and Harnsberger (2006: 99-100) and Chand (2010), although Chand's data also suggested an increase in rhoticity across the board since the 1980s.…”

“…This conclusion was based on Agnihotri and Sahgal (1985) and analysis of 1980s Delhi IndE, where a higher rate of rhotic pronunciations was found among less educated speakers, among men and in casual speech, compared to a lower rate among women and in educated and formal speech. Trudgill and Hannah (2002: 130) Chand (2010) approximants, trills and flaps. Regardless of whether /r/ is pronounced in post-vocalic position, there are different phonetic variants.…”

“…Educated IndE is characterised by variable rhoticity, which means that postvocalic /r/ in words such as < car > is sometimes pronounced and sometimes not (Agnihotri and Sahgal 1985;Wiltshire and Harnsberger 2006: 99-100;Chand 2010). Educated IndE is characterised by variable rhoticity, which means that postvocalic /r/ in words such as < car > is sometimes pronounced and sometimes not (Agnihotri and Sahgal 1985;Wiltshire and Harnsberger 2006: 99-100;Chand 2010).…”

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“…Apart from place of origin, we identified 9 other potential demographic and speaker-specific variables: age, gender, language attitude, target norm, L1 Mandarin rhoticity, speech style, media exposure, additional language(s) spoken by the informants, and experience abroad and tested whether they determine postvocalic /r/ presence in Chinese English. It should be noted that since age and gender differences in rhoticity may be more directly related to the sociohistorical sphere surrounding ESL contexts and the sociolinguistic identities and ideologies therein, these factors are more likely to play a role in Outer Circle Englishes (e.g., Chand, 2010 for Indian English, Hartmann and Zerbian 2010 for Black South African English) than in Expanding Circle Englishes. 5 However, we expected speech style to be a more conspicuous predictor of /r/ presence in Chinese English especially given that both studies on Korean English (Kang, 2013) and Yunnan English (Sundkvist and Gao, 2016) have shown that different speech contexts would trigger various levels of attention, thus resulting in variation in rhoticity in Expanding Circle Englishes.…”

Rhoticity in Chinese English: An experimental investigation on the realization of the variant (r) in an Expanding Circle variety

“…For instance, Chand's (2010) research on the usage of (r) in urban Indian English illustrated a diachronic change in the degree of rhoticity across three generations. Despite earlier claims that Indian English is a rhotic dialect (Wells, 1982: 629), only the oldest generation in Chand's data was found to be mostly rhotic.…”