Gujarati Phonology - Consonants

Consonants

• A fourth nasal phoneme is postulated for the phones and the nasalization of a preceding vowel . Before velar and palatal stops, there is variation between these; e.g. ~ ('ask for'), ~ ('swing').
• Stops occurring at first members of clusters followed by consonants other than /ɾ, j, ʋ/ are unreleased; they are optionally unreleased in final position. The absence of release entails deaspiration of voiceless stops.
• Intervocalically and with murmuring of vowels, the voiced aspirated stops /ɡʱ, d̪ʱ, bʱ/ have voiced spirant allophones . Spirantization of non-palatal voiceless aspirates has been reported as well, including /pʰ/ being usually realized as in the standard dialect.
• The voiced retroflex stops and the nasal /ɖʱ, ɖ, ɳ/ have flapped allophones . Intervocalically all three are flapped. /ɳ/ is unflapped before retroflex stops, and in final position varies freely between flapped and unflapped. The stops are unflapped initially, geminated, and postnasally; and flapped intervocalically, finally, and before or after other consonants.
• /ʋ/ has and as allophones.
• The distribution of sibilants varies over dialects and registers.
  • Some dialects only have, others prefer, while another system has them non-contrasting, with occurring contiguous to palatal segments. Retroflex still appears in clusters in which it precedes another retroflex: ('clear').
  • Some speakers maintain as well for Persian and English borrowings. Persian's /z/'s have by and large been transposed to /dʒ/ and /dʒʱ/: /dʒin̪d̪ɡi/ ('life') and /tʃidʒʱ/ ('thing'). The same cannot be so easily said for English: /tʃiz/ ('cheese').
  • Lastly, a colloquial register has, or both and, replaced by voiceless . For educated speakers speaking this register, this replacement does not extend to Sanskrit borrowings.

Phonotactical constraints include:

• /ɭ/ and /ɳ/ do not occur word-initially.
• Clusters occur initially, medially, and finally. Geminates occur only medially.
• Biconsonantal initial clusters beginning with stops have /ɾ/, /j/, /ʋ/, and /l/ as second members. In addition to these, in loans from Sanskrit the clusters /ɡn/ and /kʃ/ may occur.
  The occurrence of /ɾ/ as a second member in consonantal clusters is one of Gujarati's conservative features as a modern Indo-Aryan language. For example, languages used in Asokan inscriptions (3rd century BC) display contemporary regional variations, with words found in Gujarat's Girnar inscriptions containing clusters with /ɾ/ as the second member not having /ɾ/ in their occurrence in inscriptions elsewhere. This is maintained even to today, with Gujarati /t̪ɾ/ corresponding to Hindi /t̪/ and /t̪t̪/.
• Initially, s clusters biconsonantally with /ɾ, j, ʋ, n, m/, and non-palatal voiceless stops.
• Triconsonantal initial clusters include /st̪ɾ, spɾ, smɾ/ - most of which occur in borrowings.
• Geminates were previously treated as long consonants, but they are better analyzed as clusters of two identical segments. Two proofs for this:
  • The u in geminated uccār "pronunciation" sounds more like the one in clustered udgār ('utterance') than the one in shortened ucāṭ ('anxiety').
  • Geminates behave towards (that is, disallow) -deletion like clusters do.

Gemination can serve as intensification. In some adjectives and adverbs, a singular consonant before the agreement vowel can be doubled for intensification. #VCũ → #VCCũ.