Investigating into the Patterns of Usage and Nature of Pronunciation of Some Consonant Grapheme Clusters in Bengali

Authors

  • Niladri Sekhar Dash Linguistic Research Unit Indian Statistical Institute

Keywords:

consonant, cluster, grapheme, pronunciation, Bengali, usage patterns, allographs

Abstract

In this paper I have made an attempt to describe the surface forms, usage patterns, and pronunciation variations of some Bengali consonant grapheme clusters, which are found as great stumbling blocks in language learning, optical character recognition, text-to-speech conversion, speech synthesis, and language processing. To make this study authentic, I have used a moderately large lexical database obtained from a written corpus of modern Bengali prose texts.  I have tried to study how these consonant grapheme clusters are orthographically designed by way of combining consonant graphemes and consonant graphic variants; how these clusters are utilized in formation of words; and how these clusters are actually pronounced within words in standard Bengali speech. I have also tried to discuss how the pronunciation of individual consonant graphemes is largely affected when these characters are combined in formation of clusters; and how the pronunciation of these clusters, that are controlled by various phonological rules and processes that operate in standard Bengali speech, leave notable marks on orthographic representation of words in written texts.

References

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Published

2014-04-22

How to Cite

Dash, N. S. (2014). Investigating into the Patterns of Usage and Nature of Pronunciation of Some Consonant Grapheme Clusters in Bengali. Asian Journal of Humanities and Social Studies, 2(2). Retrieved from https://www.ajouronline.com/index.php/AJHSS/article/view/992

Issue

Vol. 2 No. 2 (2014): April 2014

Section

Articles

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