Peak magnitudes of oral air flow during Hindi stops (plosives and affricates)

Abstract: Peak values of oral flow rate were obtained during the production of stop (plosive and affricate) consonants in CVCVC nonsense utterances which were embedded in the frame sentence “ye—hae”. Three normal adult male native speakers of Hindi served as subjects. The results suggest the following: aspirated stops were produced with substantially higher rates of air flow than their unaspirated counterparts. Air flow rates for voiceless stops were substantially higher than for voiced stops under the aspirated condition; under the unaspirated condition, on the other hand, the air flow rates in both categories were similar. All stops showed higher air flow values before a stressed syllabic than before an unstressed syllabic. The results further suggest that the oral air flow rates during various stops are largely determined by the degree of resistance at the glottis.