Research

My work primarily centers on Bengali, a South Asian language. Existing linguistic work on the language often presents large sections of its phonology as monoliths without any variation. In my M.A. dissertation, I attempted to address this by performing an acoustic analysis of the vowels of Chhora Bangla– a non-standard, regional variety. This study found that high vowels in this variety differ qualitatively from the Standard.

 

Currently, I am looking at vowel harmony in Chhora Bangla, using a contrastive hierarchy of the vowels to explain synchronic chain shifts. I employ directed acyclic graphs to represent morphological and phonological processes in this system. This project is being carried out under the guidance of Dr. Eric Raimy.

 

The formal side of things is merely one piece of the puzzle. As such, I also look at sociolinguistic and historical phenomena in Bengali-speaking communities. I am interested in questions of access and ideology, and the role of rural caste networks in inter- and intra-speaker variation.

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My work on the notions of purity and diglossia in colonial Bengal appeared in the Berkeley Bengal Gazette. Read it here.

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Image: a street in Chhora village