37.2074, Diss: Indo-Aryan; Nepali (macrolanguage); General Linguistics, Language Documentation, Phonetics, Phonology, Sociolinguistics: Krishna Prasad Chalise: "Acoustic Analysis of Nepali Speech Sounds"

Mon Jun 15 16:05:02 UTC 2026

LINGUIST List: Vol-37-2074. Mon Jun 15 2026. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 37.2074, Diss: Indo-Aryan; Nepali (macrolanguage); General Linguistics, Language Documentation, Phonetics, Phonology, Sociolinguistics: Krishna Prasad Chalise: "Acoustic Analysis of Nepali Speech Sounds"

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Date: 15-Jun-2026
From: Krishna Prasad Chalise [krishna.chalise at cdl.tu.edu.np]
Subject: Acoustic Analysis of Nepali Speech Sounds

Institution: Tribhuvan University
Program: Department of Linguistics
Degree Date: 2026
Level: PhD

Author: Krishna Prasad Chalise

Dissertation Title: ACOUSTIC ANALYSIS OF THE NEPALI SPEECH SOUNDS

Dissertation URL:
https://opac.tucl.edu.np/cgi-bin/koha/opac-ISBDdetail.pl?biblionumber=107344

Linguistic Field(s): General Linguistics
                     Language Documentation
                     Phonetics
                     Phonology
                     Sociolinguistics

Subject Language(s): Nepali (macrolanguage) (nep)

Language Family(ies): Indo-Aryan (indo1321)

Dissertation Director(s): Prof. Madhav Prasad Pokharel

Dissertation Abstract:

This dissertation aims to acoustically characterize the Nepali speech
sounds. A limited number of works are available in this field, and
most of them cover only some aspects of the plosives and affricates.
The work to cover all the Nepali speech sounds is Pokharel (1989),
which is general in nature and is based on limited data from a single
speaker. This study has characterized all the Nepali speech sounds in
different phonetic and production environments using the latest
theoretical and methodological developments in this field, and it is
based on a large number of tokens from multiple speakers. It consists
of eleven independent experiments. High vowels have low F1 and vice
versa, front vowels have high F2 and vice versa, and the central vowel
has the lowest F3. F2-F1 decreases from front to back vowels, F3-F1
decreases from high to low vowels, and F3-F2 increases from front to
back vowels. The intrinsic duration increases from high to low vowels,
and the F0 increases from low to high vowels. The nasal vowels are
longer than the oral counterparts, and they have three extra nasal
formants in 0-1200 Hz range. F1 increases for high and decreases for
low vowels, and F2 increases for high, decreases for low, and remains
constant for the central vowel in comparison with their oral
counterparts. A1-P0 is lower, and A3-P0 is higher for nasal vowels
than for their oral counterparts. Voicing contrast in plosives is
characterized by the presence vs. absence of full or partial voicing
during the closure. The voiceless and inaspirates are longer than
their counterparts. Voicing lag is longer in voiceless and aspirated
plosives than in their counterparts, superimposed aspiration is longer
following the aspirates, and the preceding vowel duration is longer
before voiced and aspirates. /n/ is the longest, followed by /m/ and
/ŋ/ respectively. N1 value increases from /m/ to /ŋ/, and N3 and N4
nearly follow the same pattern. BW1 is the largest for /ŋ/, followed
by /m/ and /n/. Fricative /s/ is relatively longer (142 ms) and its
CoG is around 7000 Hz, but it is higher for female and lower for male
speakers. Basically,/h/ is voiceless, but it is also found to be
voiced, partially voiced, and breathy voiced. It is a short (92 ms)
fricative, and there is a noise component in the initial part of the
following vowel, which has lower HNR and higher H1-A3 values than the
latter part of the vowel. It has a slightly different formant
structure from that of the following vowel to show that it has its own
constriction. The aspirated voiceless affricate is shorter CD, has
longer FD+SA, shorter rise time, lower CoG value, and longer SA than
that of the unaspirated counterpart. Similarly, the aspirated voiced
affricate is shorter, has a lower F0, and longer SA on the vowel
following it than that of the unaspirated counterpart. /r/ consists of
approximant and contact portion(s). The comparison of the formant
structure of the approximant portions with the formant structure of
the preceding vowel shows that there is lateral tongue bracing against
the teeth, which suggests that Nepali /r/ is a trill, although there
is a single tap in most of the situations. The range of the contact
duration is 25-40 ms. /l/ has 80 ms of average duration and has F1,
F2, F3, and F4) around 300 Hz, 1700 Hz, 2750 Hz, and 3750 Hz,
respectively.  Spectral dips are found around 1200 Hz, 2150 Hz, and
3600 Hz. The average relative intensity is lower than that of the
preceding vowel. Based on the vowel(s) in context, /j/ and /w/ are
produced somewhere from the region of /i/ and /e/, and /u/ and /o/
respectively, and the regions are the targets of the glides, but in
every case, the glides have more constricted production than that of
the vowel in the environment. Transition is another important part of
glide, and the composition of the target and transition makes a glide.
They have a fairly shorter duration and lower relative intensity than
the vowel in the environment. The HNR and F0 are slightly lower in the
glides than in the adjacent vowels.

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