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- Title
Lack of Aspiration in Unvoiced Plosives in Pakistani English: An Acoustic Analysis Based Study.
- Authors
Malik, Sadia; Saeed, Tariq
- Abstract
This study explores the differences between British English and Pakistani English speakers regarding the use of aspiration in unvoiced plosives-bilabial, alveolar and velar- at syllable initial position in both stressed and unstressed syllables through a quantitative and statistical analysis of acoustic co-relate of aspiration-VOT. Such differences may account for establishing and describing the phonetic features of Pakistani English as a non-native/ESL variety of English. It is hypothesized that unlike British English speakers, Pakistani English speakers do not use aspiration at stressed syllable initial positions as an allophonic variety of voiceless stops. 30 university graduates from Seraiki, Punjabi and Urdu languages (10 from each) were given a wordlist (Stimuli) comprising 60 words in the citation form to read out and the VOT values from their recordings were extracted using wavesurfer software. These values were then compared with the values from BE speakers' data. The acoustic analyses showed that there is a stark difference of VOT between BE and PE speakers as PE speakers' highest range of production of bilabial, alveolar and velar plosives at stressed and unstressed position does not go beyond 37 ms as compared to BE speakers' highest range of 94 ms. BE speakers vary in their VOTs at stressed and unstressed syllable initial positions using aspiration at stressed syllable initial positions but PE speakers do not show any variation in VOT at both the positions proving that they do not use aspiration at all at any position. A universal phenomenon observed is the rise in VOT values from bilabial to alveolar and alveolar to velar positions in both PE and BE speaker data.
- Subjects
ASPIRATION (Phonetics); ACOUSTIC measurements; BILABIAL consonants; QUANTITATIVE research; PHONETICS
- Publication
Kashmir Journal of Language Research, 2015, Vol 18, Issue 3, p87
- ISSN
1028-6640
- Publication type
Article