Elsevier

Lingua

Volume 250, January 2021, 102994
Lingua

An optimality theoretic account of word stress in Hindi

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lingua.2020.102994Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Standard Hindi has two main registers – Literary and Formal.

  • The core Hindi foot is a bounded, quantity and rhythm-sensitive syllabic trochee.

  • The syllabic trochee is placed within a window of three syllables from the right.

  • The strong syllable is either equal to or greater in weight than the weak syllable.

  • Rhythm and quantity are in conflict in LH words giving rise to variation.

Abstract

In this paper, I present a new account of word stress in Hindi. I begin with the attempt to show that the apparently different patterns of Hindi stress described in the literature are in fact bound by one core pattern. The core pattern crucially involves an interdependence between rhythm and quantity in the placement of stress within a window of three syllables from the right. The Hindi data pose the following challenge to metrical stress theory and OT: ternary feet arise not from Extrametricality or Nonfinality but from a weight and rhythm-based foot structure in which both the factors are integrated. The new analysis presented in this paper meets the challenge in terms of the constraints Window (Kager, 2012), PERFECTGRID and PG – FORWARDPULL. The latter constraints are proposed following the insights in Prince (1983) and Hayes (1995).

Introduction

Word stress in Hindi has received diverse treatments in studies such as Kelkar (1968), Sharma (1969), Ohala (1977), Fairbanks (1981), Author (1989), Hayes (1995) and Pierrehumbert and Nair (1996). The descriptions of Hindi stress based on these studies convey the impression (see e.g. Hayes, 1995) that the accounts are heterogeneous and the system is complex.

The present paper has two goals: first, to take a close look at the system as presented in the various studies and address the issue of complexity in it, and, second, to propose a new analysis of the metrical system within the framework of Optimality Theory (OT).

The paper will show that instead of the stress patterns in the various studies critically varying from one another, they are, in fact, bound by one core pattern. The heterogeneity of the system stems from three main factors. One, the difference of registers of Standard Hindi may be ignored in the descriptions. It will be shown that Standard Hindi has two registers – Standard Literary Hindi and Standard Nonliterary or Formal Hindi. The two registers are very similar to each other in their stress rules or constraint hierarchies, but they differ in the underlying length of the word-final vowel: in Formal Hindi, the final vowels are always long. Two, the interpretations of the sources vary. For instance, Fairbanks’ (1981) description is based on the literary/orthographic representation, used for Literary Hindi, in which the word-final vowel length distinction is intact, but the stress pattern is as in Nonliterary or Formal Hindi. This lends complexity to the description of the system in the Formal register. Three, a description may not cover all the crucial data. For instance, Kelkar (1968) lacks in a certain structure – HLLH – found in Hayes (1995).

The paper will present evidence for a unified account of Hindi stress that brings out the core stress system as a bounded, quantity and rhythm-sensitive system. Hindi stress is placed within a window of three syllables from the right. The default place is the second syllable from the right, that is, a syllabic trochee foot. The paper shows that the quantity and rhythm-sensitive system of Hindi stress is novel in the typological literature. There are many weight sensitive languages that have rhythmic stress (in words with light syllables), but in the presence of a heavy syllable, rhythmicity is disrupted. In Hindi, however, weight and rhythm are integrated in the placement of a trochee within the window. This is achieved by requiring the head of the trochee to be equal or greater in weight than the tail within the scope of a trisyllabic window. A conflict within the factors of weight and rhythm arises only in the situation when the full window is not available. This happens in disyllabic words with the left syllable less in weight (i.e. light) than the right syllable (i.e. heavy). In such a situation, disyllabic words yield variable stress, with one of the factors – rhythm or weight- winning.

The Hindi data pose the following challenges to metrical stress theory and OT. One, ternary feet arise not from Extrametricality or Nonfinality but from a weight and rhythm-based foot structure in which both the factors are integrated. Two, sequences of light syllables and of heavy syllables show identical behaviour in their stress pattern – L ˈL L and H ˈH H. If Nonfinality is not relevant to the explication of Hindi stress, then how is the identical pattern in the parallel sequences of light and heavy syllables to be explained?

The analysis presented in this paper meets these challenges thus. One, the new type of foot structure, which integrates rhythm and quantity, is accounted for by means of new metrical constraints PerfectGrid and PG-ForPull, following the insights in Prince (1983) and Hayes (1995). These constraints crucially interact with the constraint window, discussed at length in Kager (2012). Two, diverging from the general assumption about bounded feet in quantity-sensitive languages (including Hindi) being Moraic Trochee (e.g. Hayes, 1995), it is proposed here that the system is Syllabic Trochee in Hindi.

The paper is organized as follows. I first discuss the core stress pattern in Hindi. Next, I present the main argument of the paper for treating Hindi stress as a type of stress system that is not just a Quantity-Sensititve (QS) system, in which quantity interferes with rhythm, but, a Quantity and Rhythm-Sensititve (QRS) system, in which quantity and rhythm are integrated. I then present an OT account of the core stress pattern in the light of given and new metrical constraints. In the end, I briefly take up the exceptional case of disyllabic words for explanation before stating the conclusions.

Section snippets

Hindi word-stress pattern

In this section, we are concerned with the core word-stress pattern in Standard Hindi. Towards this end, it is necessary to recognize the presence of two main varieties of standard Hindi – Standard Formal Hindi and Standard Literary Hindi.

Previous analyses of Hindi stress

As2 pointed out at the beginning, Hindi stress has been analyzed in various studies. The most important are Kelkar (1968), and Sharma (1969), on the one hand, and Hayes (1995) and Author (1989), on the other. The former are presented in the structural phonological framework, and the latter in metrical phonological framework. These analyses fail empirically, as they do not take into account

An OT Account of Standard Hindi Core Stress Pattern

In order to see the preliminary metrical constraints at work, it is useful to begin with the foot parsing of words with different syllable structures in the light of the discussion in the preceding section.

Summary and conclusion

The present paper adopts a granular approach to the analysis of word-stress in Hindi. The new analysis is aimed at solving the problems relating to previous existing accounts. I have attempted to show that Standard Hindi has a core pattern realized in two registers – Standard Literary Hindi and Standard Formal Hindi. The core pattern revolves around three degrees of weight – Light, heavy and Superheavy. The quantity-sensitivity of stress is integrated with rhythm in a syllabic trochee foot, so

References in the paper

Pandey, P. K., 1989. Word Accentuation in Hindi. Lingua. 77, 37–73.

Pandey, P. K., 1990. Hindi schwa deletion. Lingua 82, 277–311.

Pandey, P., 2007. Phonology-orthography interface in Devanagari for Hindi. Written Language and Literacy, 10(2), 139–156.

Pandey, P., 2014. Akshara-to-Sound rules in Hindi. Writing Systems Research: Special Issue on the Writing Systems of South and South-East Asia.Vol. 6, No. 1, 54–72. (http://dx.doi.o1Wl0.1080/17586801.2013.855622).

Pandey, P., Mahesh, M. and Dutta, H.

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