Title: Voicing contrasts in the stops of Indian English produced by Assamese speakers
Abstract: Speakers of most American and British varieties of English contrast word-initial stops using aspiration, with long-lag Voice Onset Time (VOT) for /ptk/ and short-lag or lead voicing for /bdg/. However, Indian English (IndE) speakers of Hindi and Telugu backgrounds living in the US produce a short-lag versus lead voicing contrast instead. We analyzed data from 12 L1 Assamese speakers residing in India reading English wordlists. These speakers had attended Assamese medium schools starting at age 7.9 (±2.8), young enough to acquire the target English of their community. We measured the VOT of ten tokens each of /ptkbdg/ in word-initial position. Results support the interpretation of the contrast in IndE as voicing not aspiration, as unaspirated voiceless stops versus pre-voiced stops. We also measured two expected consequences of using [voice] for the contrast: full voicing of sonorant consonants after voiceless obstruents in onset clusters and full (>75% of closure), rather than passive, intervocalic voicing. Though neither occurs in aspirating languages, we find both in the IndE of Assamese speakers, suggesting IndE has developed a distinct contrast from American or British English.