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I often hear speakers of Indian English place stress-accent on the word "the", with a pause before finishing a sentence with a noun. There's a raised pitch and stress on the word "the", which almost makes it sound like the speaker is asking the listener to finish the sentence for them.

I'm curious if there's any research on this phenomenon, but I can't find any papers since I'm not sure if there's a term to describe it.

For example: "Today, we measured the resistance of the... semiconductor device"

I'd be very curious to know if this emerged from one of the native languages of India, or somehow evolved naturally while English spread throughout India.

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    An audio clip would help, if possible.
    – Justin
    Commented Jul 5, 2022 at 15:47
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    Stress in Indian English does not have the same role as it does in other dialects. Indian English has developed to become syllable-timed, whereas most other dialects of English (all, to my knowledge) are strongly stress-timed.
    – John Lawler
    Commented Jul 5, 2022 at 15:51
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    Sounds like accent. Or hesitancy in a third language. Or the mother tongue has no article (like Russian Strong like bull) and thus the hesitancy.
    – Yosef Baskin
    Commented Jul 5, 2022 at 15:54
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    @Prem The OP says he often hears this, not just 1 incident or 1 individual.
    – Barmar
    Commented Jul 5, 2022 at 19:20
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    One More Possibility I can think of : This is a teacher who is looking to get responses or interaction from students who are otherwise mostly silent (a common scenario !!) and is Pausing to see whether students can fill in the words in "Today, we measured the resistance of the ... [[PAUSE & LOOK at the class, waiting for replies from students ]] ... semiconductor device" with no other meaning !!
    – Prem
    Commented Jul 10, 2022 at 8:02

2 Answers 2

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I am a native English speaker learning Hindi, and I don't yet know most of the words in your example, but the word order would likely be something like:

We, today, semiconductor device's resistance, measure did do.

Notice the word order is Subject Object Verb, and the lack of the. I just think of Hindi nouns as already having a the. But I often have to pause while speaking a sentence to mentally re-organize the sentence parts.

My hypothesis: At least for native Hindi/Urdu native speakers, I suspect it may be a challenge to always remember to insert the, leading to overemphasis, and distraction from mentally lining up the noun that follows.

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  • I speak some Bengali and see your explanation as plausible. I also note that Subcontinental English usually uses the emphatic "the" pronounced /ðiː/. I suspect that the speakers have been taught that "the noun" = that particular noun and feel that some emphasis, and a pause for effect, is required.
    – Greybeard
    Commented Aug 5, 2022 at 16:36
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I am a German native speaker and I am observing the same in a business context. I thought that it might be ascribed merely to a local accent, but I have also observed it in videos on YouTube.

As someone asked for an example, here is a video: https://youtu.be/K_ZrB3TSFO8?si=y-X0vjNgJ5fPFnON At approx. 2:34 a man in the video says a sentence with "the... Area [...] The... Local people". He stresses the "the" and pauses before continuing with the noun.

I also thought it may be based on how Hindi/Urdu work compared to English, but I don't speak Hindi or Urdu and so can't compare.

Would be happy about any additional information to help research this phenomenon.

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