Paper short abstract:

This paper studies the influence of Hindi on Saraiki, the language of the Hindu migrants from Pakistan in Delhi. Saraiki has fricatives [z x ɣ] in its phonemic inventory but Delhite Saraiki is expected to substitute these fricatives with [ʤ kh g] respectively under the influence of Hindi.

Paper long abstract:

A large scale migration of population occurred across Pakistan and India in 1947. Among those who migrated from Pakistan to India were Saraiki speaking Hindus. Saraiki became one of the minority languages in Delhi. Since then, the Delhite Saraiki has been under the influence of Hindi. In Delhite Hindi [z x ɣ] are substituted with [ʤ kh g] (Shapiro 2007).

This paper aims to study the change which occurred in the language of the Saraiki migrants who moved to Delhi after the partition. The foci of the study are [z x ɣ] consonants. Two groups of speakers, one comprising 60 migrants and another 60 made up from their offspring, will participate in the study. Both groups have equal number of male and female participants. 20 Saraiki speakers from Pakistan will also participate in the study as a control group. The target sounds are recorded in an imitation task. The recordings will be evaluated by four native speakers of Saraiki.

The interaction of factors like gender, frequency of use, (un)markedness status of the target consonants, dialectal variation among the speakers and the distribution of the target consonants will also be considered in identifying the influence of migration. Currently, the project is in the final phase of data collection. It is hypothesized that as Hindi has a strong influence on the Saraiki spoken in Delhi, the Saraiki speakers of Delhi will substitute Saraiki [z x ɣ] with [ʤ kh g] under the influence of Hindi.