Aspects of Hindi syllable structure.

Abstract

This dissertation offers a comprehensive description and theoretical analysis of the Hindi syllable structure and phonotactics. The four sources that are used as the corpus for the present study are---(1) An online English-Hindi dictionary published at http://sanskrit.gde.to/hindi/dict/eng-hin-itrans.html; (2) <italic>Godan</italic>, a Hindi novel written by Premchand (1880--1936); (3) Arun's (1961) cluster and word list; (4) M. Ohala's (1983) cluster and word list. Using these four sources as the corpus, I offer an exhaustive description of the patterns of consonant clusters in word initial, word medial, and word final environments. I then compare three approaches to the phonotactic patterns: the sonority-based approach, the word-edge based approach, and the CVX (X could be a consonant or a vowel) approach. I also discuss various mechanisms involved in these approaches, such as extrametricality, resyllabification, sonority, articulator-based feature theory, and the notion of complex sounds. It is argued in this study that the CVX theory offers a simpler analysis of the overall phonotactic patterns observed in Hindi. In particular, the CVX theory assumes that the maximal syllable in Hindi is CVX. In contrast, other theories must assume bigger syllable structures and predict more complex medial syllable structure.