Akshara-to-sound rules for Hindi

Abstract

The present paper brings to focus the main issues of regularity and inconsistency in orthography-phonology relation in Hindi arising out of an attempt at developing a program of Akshara-to-Sound rules for a pronunciation lexicon of Hindi for use in language technology for voice browser applications. The program of rules is based on interdisciplinary insights from research on writing systems, phonology and rule writing for a computer program. The paper first discusses the motivations for the Akshara-to-Sound rule set formulated to generate two levels of output—one of phoneme level and the other of phonemes and the prosodic structures of words in terms of strong and weak syllables. The irregularities in the correspondence between the Akshara and the sound are taken up next for an account. The paper ends with a discussion of the implications of the study for research on the acquisition and processing of written words in Hindi.