Phonological Behavior of Multiple Aspirated Consonants in Urdu

ules are better explained in other than one e.g. assimilationis better described in linear phonology while dissimilationin geometric phonology (Napoli, 1996, p.99).Apart from phonological rules, some otherdescriptions include there is a period of voicelessness afterthe articulation of stop, during this period a burst of aircomes out in aspirated stops (Hussain & Nair, 1995).One of the theories regarding the aspiratedcontinuants of Urdu is that they require more articulatoryeffort and hence they are replaced by the continuantfollowed by /h/ e.g. /d.la/ becomes [dl.ha], in thiscase feature of aspiration is lost and is promoted to /h/consonant and the word is re-syllabified. (Nisar & Baqir,2003). Again there is no indication of multiple aspiratedsonorant consonants.3. PROBLEM STATEMENTMultiple aspirated consonants occur in a singleUrdu word. What phonological rules are followed byaspirated consonants occurring in either adjacent syllablesor different syllables of an Urdu word?4. METHODOLOGYOver 255 words containing multiple aspiratedconsonants were collected from the Urdu dictionary “Ferozul-loghatUrdu Jadeed New Edition”. They weretranscribed both phonemically and phonetically. In order toremove ambiguities, these words were searched in otherdictionaries like “Farhang-i-Asafiyyah” and “Nur-ul-Lughat”, final analysis was done on words found in at leasttwo of these dictionaries. So after removing ambiguities,over 80 words containing multiple aspirated consonantsseparated by vowel or other consonants were analyzed e.g./p.pudi/ while over 70 words containing aspiratedconsonants adjacent to each other were analyzed e.g./pt.tr/ etc. The English translation of these wordswas adopted from “Kitabistan’s Twentieth-CenturyStandard Dictionary”.Apart from words containing multiple aspiratedconsonants, some words containing an aspirated consonantalong with its un-aspirated counterpart were collected inorder to have better understanding e.g. /b.bk/ etc.When the data had been gathered, it was used insentences in such a way that it always came in the middle ofsentences, attempting to hide the actual problem. Nativespeakers were interviewed regarding the phoneticrepresentation of these sentences i.e. word and its carrierphrase but it was observed that if speakers were provideddata in written form and then asked to pronounce it, theypaid attention to its written form and tried to utter as muchas possible according to orthography, especially in case ofthose words that are not commonly used, hence it wasn’ttotally reliable. Along with this it was also judged bylistening to native speakers day-to-day normal conversationthat is unconscious and hence more reliable.555. RESULTSThe analysis of the data showed that Urdu wordsdon’t contain multiple continuant aspirates. Only twowords were found that contained continuant aspirate /l/multiple times in their phonemic representation which are/l.l/ and /kl.l/ and they become [ l.l] and[ kl.l] respectively. Urdu words have only aspiratedstops and affricates (Appendix A). Most of the words havesimilar aspirated consonant rarely dissimilar.Regarding, phonological rules, deletion anddissimilation are very common. Metathesis is quite rarewhile assimilation; epenthesis and compensatorylengthening are absent.5.1 DeletionAnalysis of data showed that aspiration is deletedfrom aspirated consonant, word medially and word finally.Aspiration is never deleted at beginning of word.At word final position it is always deleted i.e. atcoda position of last syllable e.g. / tja.s/ becomes[tja.s]. [+aspirated]Rule 1. Deletion of aspiration from aspirated consonant atword boundary in words. “#” represents word boundary.The data that verifies the correctness of Rule 1 is given inTable B1 (Appendix B).Word medially, aspiration is deleted either syllableinitially or syllable finally or whole segment is deleteddepending on the context.The word that begin with a vowel and that vowelprecedes aspirated consonant in the first syllable, entiresegment is deleted e.g. /d.dm/ becomes [.dm].[-tense]X[+syllabic]X #[-nasal][-continuant][+aspirated]X[-nasal][-continuant][+aspirated]. X[-nasal][-continuant]Rule 2. Deletion of entire segment word medially. “.”represents syllable boundary. The data that verifies thecorrectness of Rule 2 is given in Table B2 (Appendix B).The words that begin with a consonant and theaspirated consonant at coda of first syllable is voiced whilethe other aspirated consonant at the onset of second syllable