Guest talk on "Resolving conflicting evidence on rhoticity in Indian English"
7 January 2022, by JH
Photo: rf
Tuesday, Jan 11 2022, 1.45 - 3.00 CET
Public talk - all are welcome. Please register in advance with Prof. Fuchs(robert.fuchs"AT"uni-hamburg.de).
Indian English, a postcolonial variety with a high degree of nativisation, is considered to have stable substrate-derived features, but rhoticity in this variety is highly variable, and subject to change. Recent studies have suggested that rhoticity may be returning among younger speakers. In the talk, Dr. Cowie considers evidence of rhoticity across three generations of Hindi English bilinguals. The results confirm that rhoticity is lowered for the graduates of the 1980s, and they also show that rhoticity has continued to decrease in the youngest generation. She argues that conflicting reports of rhoticity can be understood through distinct analyses of variants of /r/.