Aspiration in alveolar fricatives in Bodo

Aspirated fricatives are typologically rare in world’s languages, occurring mostly in the Sino–Tibetan languages. However, they are hitherto unreported in the Tibeto–Burman languages spoken in North–East India. In this study we present data from Bodo, a Tibeto–Burman language spoken in Assam, India and argue that the Bodo voiceless alveolar fricative is an aspirated voiceless alveolar fricative. To substantiate our argument, we consider a set of acoustic analysis and compare the results with acoustic properties reported for Korean, as it attests aspirated alveolar fricative. Results confirm that while aspiration duration and F1 onset follows the pattern reported for aspirated fricatives in Korean, intensity, H1–H2, centre of gravity and onset f0, do not have any patterns consistent with aspiration.