Prof.
Bhat attempted to demonstrate that despite the presence of different language
families which causes multiplicity and diversity in Indian linguistic
situation, there is a high degree of commonality in their phonological
features. He also claimed that International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) chart is
Anglo centric. Despite the fact Chinese does not allow retroflection and
several other main stream languages (major languages) lack this feature of
retroflection, the British phoneticians include it in IPA.
In
Phonetics and Phonology, ə (schwa /ʃwɑː/) is considered as the Mid-Central
Vowel sound whereas according to Prof. Bhat, /ə/ is simply the variant of /a/
in Indic languages. Long, Short and Nasalised Vowels are considered as the pan
Indic language features, however it is not always the case, exceptionally and
interestingly Bangla does not share this feature. Vowel lengthening, for
instance, /kal/ and /ka:l/ both are considered as simply the variants of the
same form.
Within
the lecture Prof. Bhat also proposed that we should change our Vowel
Chart of four layers because all Indic languages do not use
vowels at four ‘tongue heights’, most of the languages use only three i.e.
High, Mid and Low.
He
continued further that Secondary articulation is very common
in the North, for example in Kashmiri, and in some other languages of
North-east. In Kashmiri Secondary articulation comes along with palatalization whereas labialization is
noticeable in a few languages of the North-east e.g. Monsang. Palatalization is
also an important feature of Konkani which is spoken in western part of
India. Rhotacism is noticed in a few instances in the
North-east (Mao-Naga). Pharyngealisation of the nasals m and n
is noticed in a couple of north-eastern languages.
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© 2017 by Masud Husain Khan Linguistic Society. All rights reserved.
