Page 129 - A GRAMMAR OF BHOJPURI _ PhD Dissertation 2020 TU

4.6 Summary
In this chapter we have dealt with the segmental and suprasegmental features

of the sound system in the Bhojpuri language. In Bhojpuri there are 36 distinctive
consonant sounds.
They can be classified in terms of manner of articulation, place of articulation,

voicing, aspiration and sonorants. According to manner of articulation they can be
classified into seven groups as stops, fricatives, affricates, laterals, nasals, flaps and

glides. In terms of place of articulation they can be categorized into nine groups as
bilabials, dentals, alveolar, apico-alveolar, palato-alveolar, retroflex, palatal, velar and

glottal. We find contrasts among these sounds in terms of voiced vs. voiceless,
aspirated vs. unaspirated, voiced vs. breathy and clear vs. aspirate sonorants. All the

36 consonant phonemes occur in the inter-vocalic position. All the aspirate sonorants
occur either in intervocalic or in word-final or both of intervocalic and word-final

positions but not in the word-initial position. Moreover, म /m/ and ङ /ŋ/; र /r/ and ड़
/ɽ/; व /w/ and य /y/; ड /ɖ/ and ड़ /ɽ/ do not show word-initial contrast. The phonemes फ

̈
̈
/pʰ/ and भ /b ̤ /; ड /ɖ/ and ढ /ɖ/; ठ /ʈʰ/ and ढ /ɖ/; do not show word-final contrast. In
consonant clusters, we do not find gemination of either of the aspirated or breathy

phonemes in Bhojpuri. Likewise, glottal voiced fricative ह /ɦ/ also doesn't occur in
gemination. Similarly the glides do not occur in pre-consonantal, and the aspirate

sonorants do not occur in post-consonantal and gemination in Bhojpuri.
One of the typologically striking features of the Bhojpuri language in terms of

phonology is that it has aspirate sonorants in contrasts of nasals म /m/, न /n/ and ङ /ŋ/,
̈
lateral ल /l/ and flaps र /r/ and ढ /ɖ/.
There are four categories of vowels in Bhojpuri: oral vowels, nasal vowels,

diphthongs and triphthongs. Total number of oral vowels is eight with their nasalized
counterparts. Vowel length is not contrastive in Bhojpuri. All the oral monophthongal
vowels occur in all the positions: word-initial, inter-consonantal and final. The

syllable canon in Bhojpuri is (C)(V)(C)(C).
Bhojpuri was previously being written in Kaithi script (Verma 2003:569,

Pandey 2007:1) but now Devanagari is the canonical script of Bhojpuri writing
system. It seems to be regular and systematic to a greater extent, largely true for

'tadbhava' forms and recent borrowings from English and other languages, but almost
inconsistent for the 'tatsama' forms. Schwa deletion, nasal assimilation, consonant

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