An Instrumental Study of Speech Variability of English Back-Rounded Vowels Between the English & Karachiites Pinglish
Acoustics of English Back-Rounded Vowels
Keywords:
Back-rounded vowels, ESL Karachiites, Formants, Duration, Voice qualityAbstract
The paper aims to examine the physical properties of English back vowels produced by English natives through computerized corpus data of English secondary data and non-native Karachiites ESL speakers as primary data. The purpose of this experimental study is to obtain the data from Karachiites’ Urdu-speaking native speakers’ acoustic values of back-rounded vowels and to investigate the differences in voice quality, duration, and pitch-fundamental frequency of English sound production between native Americans' back-rounded vowels and Urdu speaking native community from Karachi. Based on modifications of F1, F2, F3, F0, and the duration of rounded back vowels, Karachiites L1 speakers were compared to L2 native speakers of English. The English back-rounded vowels examined in this study were four: /u:/, /ɒ/, /o:/, and /ʊ/. The participating students (N=10) took part in this study from different Universities in Karachi. Five participants (n=5) were male and (n=5) were female students. A total of 120 voice samples (4×3×10=120) were calculated. Praat Speech Processing Tool was utilized to record and evaluate four back-rounded vowels. The difference in fundamental and voice quality frequencies and the length of the vowels were the defining characteristics evaluated for the conclusion. The study measured that out of back-rounded vowels, three vowels /u:/, /o:/ and, / ʊ / were higher in American English than in Pakistani English whereas, the vowel / ɒ / is produced higher in Pakistani English than in American English. This study hypothesized that Pakistani English Karachiites speakers differ in voice quality, fundamental frequency, and durational values of the vowels in the production of English back-rounded vowels if compared to American English speech production. The findings of the study revealed that the hypothesis was accepted as true in view of the variability of English speech by Karachiites and English native speakers.
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Copyright (c) 2022 Abdul Malik Abbasi, Dr. Amjad Ali Arain, Dr. Sameena Khokhar , Maha Batool
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