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Engineering, Technology & Applied Science Research Vol. 12, No. 6, 2022, 9487-9490 9487
www.etasr.com Pasha et al.: Epenthesis: The Movement of the Urdu Alveolar-Fricative Sound into the Punjabi Palatal-…
Epenthesis: The Movement of the Urdu Alveolar-
Fricative Sound into the Punjabi Palatal-Affricate
Sound
Ali Rizwan Pasha
Riphah Institute of Language and Literature
Riphah International University
Lahore, Pakistan
alirizwanpaxa@gmail.com
Nadeem Abbas
Department of English Linguistics
Government College University
Faisalabad, Pakistan
nadeemnadi57@gmail.com
Hafiz Nauman Ahmed
Riphah Institute of Language and Literature
Riphah International University
Lahore, Pakistan
nauman.ahmed@riphah.edu.pk
Received: 29 August 2022 | Revised: 9 September 2022 | Accepted: 11 September 2022
Abstract-Pakistan is a multilingual country where the Urdu
language serves as lingua franca. Although Urdu is the national
and official language of Pakistan, it bears the status of the second
language (L2) in most of the regions due to the dominance of
regional languages. The Punjabi language is the first language
(L1) of the people of Punjab. This study intends to investigate the
interlanguage influence and extralinguistic factors of
phonological variants produced in the process of epenthesis of
Punjabi palatal-affricate (/dʒ/) with the deletion of Urdu alveolar-
fricative (/z/). The analysis of this study has been conducted using
PRAAT software which proved that the native Punjabi speakers
replace the /z/ sound with the /dʒ/ sound no matter if it occurs at
the start, middle, or the end of a word. Moreover, this process of
epenthesis is the result of the influence of the native language, i.e.
Punjabi. The outcome of the analysis indicates that the gender
and dwelling (urban or rural) of the participants have nothing to
do with epenthesis. However, the education of the participants is
the main reason for epenthesis.
Keywords-epenthesis; phonological variant; interlanguage
influences; extralinguistic factors
I. INTRODUCTION
Being the national language of Pakistan, Urdu serves as
lingua franca for all the regions of the country, where regional
languages are spoken as the first language (L1), i.e. Punjabi in
Punjab, Pashto in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, and Sindhi in Sindh.
The relationship of influence between Urdu and regional
languages is reciprocal, as the medium of instructions at
educational institutions of Pakistan is Urdu [1-3]. As far as
Punjabi is concerned, it shares a lot of its diction with Urdu due
to their cultural similarities. In other words, variants of various
Urdu words are found in Punjabi. Since several words are the
same in Urdu and Punjabi, the Punjabi speakers pronounce
these (Urdu origin) words with phonological variations due to
the influence of their first language. Similar to Urdu and
Punjabi, several other languages have influenced each other in
many ways, e.g. phonological, orthographic, and accentual
variations [4-7]. Therefore, many research works have been
conducted to analyze the influence of one language on another.
Authors in [8] investigated the process of phonological
variations and the way laterals have been developed in the last
three generations of Punjabi-English bilinguals residing in the
United Kingdom. The findings of the study conclude that the
speakers of the third generation still have high phonetic
distinctions among their Punjabi and English as compared to
the first and second generation. Moreover, the accent of
younger speakers (third generation) does not match with the
native English speakers, although they have developed a
unique accent which is similar to British Asian English.
Authors in [9] analyzed prevocalic /r/ in the non-rhotic
expression of English speakers of the UK through articulatory
and acoustic data. The data obtained from 24 speakers show
that the patterns of lingual variation of rhotic expression is
similar to the non-rhotic expression of the English speakers.
Moreover, the authors suggested that a specific lip posture of
Anglo-English /r/ is different from /w/ due to their exposure of
labiodental variants and the stream of air that maintains a
contrast between /r/ and /w/.
Authors in [10] analyzed the cues which are important to
contrast between Urdu and Hindi laryngeal stops. They argue
that murmured and breathy voices are the key features to
differentiate among the voiced aspirates in the process of sound
production. In other words, the authors found that aspirated
sound (breathy voice quality) is sufficient for the identification
Corresponding author: Ali Rizwan Pasha
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www.etasr.com Pasha et al.: Epenthesis: The Movement of the Urdu Alveolar-Fricative Sound into the Punjabi Palatal-…
of voiced aspirates even if one of the other two key features
(prevoicing and aspiration) is missing. Authors in [11] argue
that the phonemic realization of /r/ in two Scottish towns is
variable due to various linguistic and sociolinguistic factors
[11]. Their findings show that the realization of /r/ bears a
change from the alveolar tap to the approximant in one of the
selected towns whereas the other town shows no variation and
thus can be considered as linguistically orthodox. Moreover,
the variation in the realization of the same phoneme /r/ largely
depends upon the phonological environment of the area in
which it is spoken.
It is evident from the existing literature that few studies
draw the comparison of various linguistic and non-linguistic
factors of Urdu and Punjabi. Therefore, the current research
work analyzes the movement of the Urdu alveolar-fricative
phoneme (/z/) into the Punjabi palatal-affricate phoneme (/dʒ/)
using PRAAT software. Four different but mutual tokens of
Urdu and Punjabi have been selected for this study to analyze
the reciprocal influence of both languages. To ensure the
phonological variations, samples have been collected on the
basis of literacy, living style, and gender.
II. METHODOLOGY
In this section, the methodology for analyzing the
movement of the Urdu alveolar-fricative into the Punjabi
palatal-affricate has been provided in detail. Data collection is
outlined in subsection A while the detail of the analysis process
using PRAAT software is presented in subsection B.
A. Data Collection
To investigate interlanguage phonological variation through
epenthesis of the Punjabi palatal-affricate phoneme (/dʒ/) with
the deletion of the Urdu alveolar-fricative phoneme (/z/)
semantic fields were made for the collection of data from the
native Punjabi speakers. Eight Punjabi native speakers have
been selected as sample for the purpose of analysis. Among the
selected Punjabi native speakers, 4 were educated and 4 were
uneducated. Data were recorded using voice recorder without
telling the subjects so that the responses may be recorded in
natural frequency. The subjects have been kept anonymous.
B. Analysis Process
The PRAAT is open-source software that has been widely
used by the research community to perform speech analysis in
various disciplines [12]. To perform the analysis, the PRAAT
software converts the sound file into frames and calculates
multiple pitch values within the frame length [13]. Therefore,
PRAAT has been used to analyze the phonemic movement
from alveolar-fricative to palatal-affricate. The key steps we
took for the analysis process using PRAAT have been
mentioned as follows:
Step 1: Record the selected words for 4 seconds or longer.
Step 2: Open the selected sound files in PRAAT and chose
"Edit" from the main menu.
Step 3: Select the stable part of the file from the sound
editor and extract the stable part to focus on the targeted
phonemes.
Step 4: Activate the pitch, energy, and spectrum functions
to complete voice analysis.
Step 5: Repeat the above-mentioned steps until achieving
satisfactory results to perform analysis as fair as possible.
In PRAAT, the length of the time interval is measured from
the pitch value of a sound when the sound signal is higher than
the average sound signal. The range of the pitch is defined
between maximum and minimum values of the intensity of the
sound signal.
III. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
The simulation results of this study are discussed in this
section. The analysis is conducted through different samples
and analysis process using PRAAT. The samples include 8
different Punjabi native speakers, namely an educated adult
male, an uneducated adult male, an educated adult female, an
uneducated adult female, an uneducated rural male, an
uneducated urban male, an educated rural male, and an
educated urban male.
z l i: l
(a)
dʒ l i: l
(b)
Fig. 1. Comparison of the pronunciation of the word "Zaleel"
(dishonored): (a) educated male, (b) uneducated male.
The speech samples consist of 4 lexemes, i.e. Zaleel
(dishonored), Namaz (prayer), Roza (observing fast), and Raza
(name). Figures 1-4 illustrate the speech analysis of the
selected lexemes with the chosen Punjabi native speakers. The
speech analysis results of "Zaleel" and "Namaz" are presented
in Figures 1-2. The comparison of the word "Zaleel" in terms
of pronunciation by educated and uneducated males has been
drawn in Figure 1.
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n m a: z
(a)
n m a: dʒ
(b)
Fig. 2. Comparison of the pronunciation of the word "Namaz" (prayer):
(a) educated female, (b) uneducated female.
r ɔ: dʒ a:
(a)
r ɔ: dʒ a:
(b)
Fig. 3. Comparison of the pronunciation of the word "Roza" (observing
fast): (a) uneducated rural male, (b) uneducated urban male.
Figure 2 shows the comparison of pronunciation of the
word "Namaz" by educated and uneducated females. Figure
1(a) shows that the /z/ phoneme, at the initial position of the
word /zli:l/, has been pronounced by an educated male as
alveolar-fricative /z/, whereas an uneducated male pronounced
the same phoneme as palatal-affricate /dʒ/, as shown in Figure
1(b). On the other hand, Figure 2 shows the same phoneme at
the ending position of the word "Namaz" which has been
pronounced as alveolar-fricative /z/ by an educated female in
Figure 2(a) whereas an uneducated female pronounced the
same phoneme as palatal-affricate /dʒ/ in Figure 2(b).
r z a:
(a)
r z a:
(b)
Fig. 4. Comparison of the pronunciation of the word "Raza" (name): (a)
educated rural male, (b) educated urban male.
Figures 3-4 present the speech analysis results of the words
"Roza" and "Raza". Figure 3 reflects the comparison of the
pronunciation of "Roza" between uneducated rural and
uneducated urban males. Figure 3(a) shows that the /z/
phoneme, in the middle of the word /rɔ:za:/, has been
pronounced as alveolar-fricative /z/ by an uneducated rural
male. On the other hand, an uneducated urban male pronounces
the same phoneme as palatal-affricate /dʒ/ as shown in Figure
3(b). Figure 4 showcases the pronunciation comparison of
"Raza" between an educated rural male and an educated urban
male. The phoneme /z/ is in the middle of the word /rza:/ and
has been pronounced by both the participants as a palatal-
affricate /z/.
Pitch is a fundamental acoustic feature for the analysis of
the speech process. The pitch of the phoneme /z/ is higher than
that of /dʒ/ as shown in Figure 1, although both are voiced
phonemes. Similarly, phoneme /z/ has higher pitch than /dʒ/ as
shown in Figure 2. The results indicate that the epenthesis of
/dʒ/ at the place of /z/ depends on the premise of being
educated or not. However, gender is not a decisive factor for
this epenthesis. The pitch of the phoneme /dʒ/ in Figure 3(a)
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and (b) remained almost unchanged, whereas the pitch of
phoneme /z/ is higher in Figure 4(a) than (b). It can be deduced
from the results that the urban or rural setting of the
participants has nothing to do with the replacement of /z/ with
/dʒ/, but the factor whether the participant is educated or not is
the major reason for epenthesis. The educated participants are
less likely to accept the influence of native Punjabi language,
as the medium of instructions at educational institutions is
Urdu. The spectrograms in Figures 1-4 show a very slight
difference as alveolar-fricative and palatal-affricate are both
voiced phonemes and create more vibration in vocal cords than
the voiceless phonemes.
IV. CONCLUSION AND FUTURE WORK
Epenthesis is a prominent feature of interlanguage
variations. It has been observed from the analysis that the
initial, middle, and final position of the Urdu alveolar-fricative
phoneme (/z/) is always epenthesized by the Punjabi palatal-
affricate phoneme (/dʒ/), a permanent feature of the
phenomenon having only one variable of orthographic
knowledge of Urdu language. This interlanguage influence of
the second language has been developed in the educated native
Punjabi speakers permanently. Therefore, they pronounce /z/,
not /dʒ/, however, uneducated native Punjabi speakers
pronounce it as /dʒ/ because they did not acquire the influence
of Urdu.
In future work, we intend to extend our analysis to the
influence of Punjabi language on English and Arabic using
PRAAT and machine learning algorithms. The reciprocal
influence of Punjabi and Urdu can be analyzed at phrase or
sentence level. In this way, we plan to analyze the impact of the
native language on the national language in terms of
phonological variations along with syntactic variations.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors would like to express their gratitude to the
Riphah Institute of Language and Literature for providing
access to their language lab.
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AUTHORS PROFILE
Ali Rizwan Pasha received the MA ELTL (English Language Teaching &
Linguistics) from the Punjab University Lahore, Pakistan and the MPhil
English Linguistics from the Riphah International University, Pakistan. His
main research interests are Phonetics and Phonology, Second Language
Acquisition and Discourse Studies.
Nadeem Abbas received the MA English from the University of Sargodha,
Pakistan and the MPhil English Linguistics from the Government College
University Faisalabad, Pakistan. His main research interests are Cognitive
Linguistics, Corpus-bases Studies and Phonotactics.
Hafiz Nauman Ahmed received the MA ELTL from the Punjab University
Lahore, Pakistan and MPhil Applied Linguistics from the University of
Lahore, Pakistan. He has more than six years research experience in Discourse
Studies, Second Language Acquisition, Task-based Language Teaching,
Phonology and Syntax. He is currently working at Riphah International
University, Pakistan as a Senior Lecturer.