ASPECTS OF EMOTIONAL PROSODY IN MALAYALAM AND HINDI

Abstract

Emotional prosody is considered as the ability to express emotions. Intonation is one parameter of prosody that gives information on the production aspects of emotions. The aim was to study the intonation patterns in two languages, Malayalam and Hindi, from two different language groups in India and also to document if there are differences in the patterns produced across gender groups. Eight native speakers of Malayalam and Hindi, in the age range of 18-40 years were considered for the study (two males and two females for each of the languages). Simple sentences with five basic emotions were used as the stimuli and the samples were recorded in Motor Speech Profile software (MSP) of Computerized Speech Lab 4150. The patterns were plotted using the PHH model. Acoustic data were subjected to statistical analysis, using Mann Whitney U Test (SPSS Version 16).The results of this study reveal that across the five emotions, the terminal intonation pattern has a falling contour, except for the emotion of anger in females, which has a raising contour. This was observed in both the languages. On subjective observation, there were instances of differences in the patterns across the genders, but these were not statistically significant.