Perception of Phi-Phrase boundaries in Hindi

This paper proposes an algorithm for finding phonological phrase boundaries in sentences with neutral focus spoken in both normal and fast tempos. A perceptual experiment is designed using Praat’s experiment MFC program to investigate the phonological phrase boundaries. Phonological phrasing and its relation to syntactic structure in the framework of the endbased rules proposed by (Selkirk, 1986), and relation to purely phonological rules, i.e., the principle of increasing units proposed by (Ghini, 1993) are investigated. In addition to that, this paper explores the acoustic cues signalling phonological phrase boundaries in both normal and fast tempos speech. It is found that phonological phrasing in Hindi follows both endbased rule (Selkirk, 1986) and the principle of increasing units (Ghini, 1993). The end-based rules are used for phonological phrasing and the principle of increasing units is used for phonological phrase restructuring.