Instrumental analysis of loss of assimilation of English nasal stops in adult Saudi EFL learners' speech

Authors

  • Pradeep Sharma

    Independent Researcher
  • Mahboobeh Khaleghi

    Independent Researcher
  • Mohammad Saleem

    King Abdulaziz University

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.59400/fls.v5i3.1787

Abstract

Assimilation of consonant sounds within words and at word boundaries is a common phenomenon in English. However, EFL (English as a Foreign Language) learners may fail to observe the rule which makes their English sound sub-standard. This paper investigates whether adult Saudi EFL learners follow assimilation rules in English. Selected words and phrases spoken by a group of participants, where assimilated nasal sounds were used, were recorded using Praat software. Drawing spectrograms of the sound signals, time taken by participants to pronounce the assimilated sound segments was calculated. The time taken by native speakers of English to pronounce the same sound segments was also checked. The mean values of time taken by participants and native speakers to pronounce each assimilated sound segment were compared, with the assumption that if the participants took more time to pronounce the sound segments, they missed assimilation. The findings revealed that although in comparison to native speakers, Saudi EFL learners clocked slightly higher time duration, for most sounds the difference in time was not significant from the statistical point of view. The conclusion is that Saudi English learners are making efforts to be as close to native speakers as possible in using assimilated nasal sounds in English.

Keywords:

assimilation of nasals, contextual predictability, Saudi EFL, pronunciation errors, phonology

References

[1] Abdelaal NM (2017). Instrumental analysis of the English stops produced by Arabic speakers of English. International Journal of Education and Literary Studies 5(3): 8–15. doi: 10.7575/aiac.ijels.v.5n.3p.8

[2] Alanazi S (2018). The Acquisition of English Stops by Saudi L2 Learners [PhD thesis]. University of Essex.

[3] Alharbi TNL (2014). The Perception of English Syllable-final Nasals by Saudi ESL Learners [Master’s thesis]. Southern Illinois University Carbondale.

[4] Ali ZA (2012). A phonological study of English and Arabic assimilation: A contrastive study. Journal of the College of Languages (JCL) (25): 156–211.

[5] Al-Jarf R (2022). Proper noun pronunciation inaccuracies in English by educated Arabic speakers. British Journal of Applied Linguistics 2(1): 14–21. doi: 10.32996/bjal.2022.2.1.3

[6] Analyzing Language in Context (ALIC, 2023). Available online: https://alic.sites.unlv.edu/chapter-11-8-assimilation (accessed on 1 September 2023).

[7] Autores V (2008). Concise Oxford English Dictionary, 11th ed. Oxford University Press.

[8] Best CT, Tyler MD (2007). Nonnative and second-language speech perception: Commonalities and complementarities. In: Munro MJ, Bohn O (editors). Language Experience in Second Language Speech Learning: In Honor of James Emil Flege. John Benjamins Publishing.

[9] Boersma P, Weenink D (2012). Praat: Doing phonetics by computer (Version praat6309_win64 software). Available online: http://www.fon.hum.uva.nl/praat/ (accessed on 1 September 2023).

[10] Celce-Murcia M, Brinton DM, Goodwin JM (2010). Teaching Pronunciation: A Course Book and Reference Guide, 2nd ed. Cambridge University Press.

[11] Chaucer G (1387–1400). The canterbury tales. Available online: https://chaucer.fas.harvard.edu/pages/text-and-translations (accessed on 1 September 2023).

[12] Colantoni L, Kochetov A, Steele J (2023). L1 influence on the L2 acquisition of English word-final nasal place contrasts: An electropalatographic study of L1 Japanese and Spanish learners. Laboratory Phonology 14(1). doi: 10.16995/labphon.6434

[13] Crowley T, Bowern C (2010). An Introduction to Historical Linguistics, 4th ed. Oxford University Press.

[14] Cruttenden A (2014). Gimson’s Pronunciation of English, 8th ed. Routledge.

[15] Dawood HAS, Atawneh A (2015). Assimilation of consonants in English and assimilation of the definite article in Arabic. American Research Journal of English and Literature 1(4): 9–15. doi: 10.21694/2378-9026.15011

[16] EasyCalculation (2023). Available online: https://www.easycalculation.com (accessed on 1 September 2023).

[17] Ellis L, Hardcastle WJ (2002). Categorical and gradient properties of assimilation in alveolar to velar sequences: Evidence from EPG and EMA data. Journal of Phonetics 30: 373–396. doi: 10.1006/jpho.2001.0162

[18] Ernestus M (2011). Gradience and categoricality in phonological theory. In: Oostendorp M, Ewen CJ, Hume E, et al. (editors). The Blackwell Companion to Phonology. Wiley-Blackwell. pp. 2115–2136. doi: 10.1002/9781444335262.wbctp0089

[19] Flege JE (1980). Phonetic approximation in second language acquisition. Language Learning 30(1): 117–134. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-1770.1980.tb00154.x

[20] Fromkin V, Rodman R, Hyams N (2014). An Introduction to Language, 10th ed. Wadsworth.

[21] Gelfand S (2011). Essentials of Audiology. Thieme.

[22] Groll MD, Hablani S, Stepp CE (2021). The relationship between voice onset time and increase in vocal effort and fundamental frequency. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research 64(4): 1197–1209. doi: 10.1044/2021_JSLHR-20-00505

[23] Hall TA (1997). The Phonology of Coronals. John Benjamins Publishing.

[24] Heselwood B, Watson J (2013). The Arabic definite article does not assimilate. Leeds Working Papers in Linguistics and Phonetics 18: 34–53.

[25] Hon EA (2005). An Acoustic Analysis of Labialization of Coronal Nasal Consonants in American English [Master’s thesis]. Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

[26] Jansen W (2007). Phonological ‘voicing’, phonetic voicing, and assimilation in English. Language Sciences 29(2–3): 270–293. doi: 10.1016/j.langsci.2006.12.021

[27] Jones D (1976). An Outline of English Phonetics, 9th ed. Cambridge University Press.

[28] Jun J (1995). Perpetual and Articulatory Factors in Place Assimilation: An Optimality Theoretic Approach [PhD thesis]. University of California.

[29] Khattab G (2002). Sociolinguistic Competence and the Bilingual’s Adoption of Phonetic Variants: Auditory and Instrumental Data from English-Arabic Bilinguals [PhD thesis]. University of Leeds.

[30] Knight RA (2012). Phonetics: A Coursebook. Cambridge University Press.

[31] Koffi E, Schwintek E (2023). An idiolectal acoustic phonetic analysis of English nasal consonants. Linguistic Portfolios 12: 11.

[32] Ladefoged P (2003). Phonetic Data Analysis: An Introduction to Fieldwork and Instrumental Techniques. Wiley-Blackwell.

[33] Ladefoged P, Johnson K (2011). A Course in Phonetics, 6th ed. Wadsworth.

[34] Laver J (1994). Principles of Phonetics. Cambridge University Press. doi: 10.1017/CBO9781139166621

[35] Lecumberri M, Maidment JA (2000). English Transcription Course. Routledge.

[36] McMahon A (2002). An Introduction to English Phonology. Edinburgh University Press.

[37] Mitleb FM (2009). Voice onset time of Jordanian Arabic stops. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 109(5): 2474. doi: 10.1121/1.4744787

[38] Pitt MA, Dilley L, Johnson K, et al. (2007). Buckeye corpus. Available online: www.buckeyecorpus.osu.edu (accessed on 1 September 2023).

[39] Renwick ME, Baghai-Ravary L, Temple R, Coleman JS (2013). Assimilation of word-final nasals to following word-initial place of articulation in United Kingdom English. Proceedings of Meetings on Acoustics 19(1): 060257. doi: 10.1121/1.4800279

[40] Roach P (2012). English Phonetics and Phonology: A Practical Course, 4th ed. Cambridge University Press.

[41] Saleem MA (2022). Nasal assimilation in standard Arabic with reference to English: A phonological analysis. Journal of Tikrit University for Humanities 29(1,1): 57–73. doi: 10.25130/jtuh.29.1.1.2022.25

[42] Singh L, Cheng Q (2023). Words in context: Compensation for phonological assimilation in monolingual and bilingual toddlers. First Language 43(4): 407–430. doi: 10.1177/01427237231161135

[43] Skandera P, Burleigh P (2011). A Manual of English Phonetics and Phonology. Gunter Narr Verlag.

[44] Strycharczuk P (2019). Phonetic detail and phonetic gradience in morphological processes. Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Linguistics. doi: 10.1093/acrefore/9780199384655.013.616

[45] Turnbull R, Seyfarth S, Hume E, Jaeger TF (2018). Nasal place assimilation trades off inferrability of both target and trigger words. Laboratory Phonology 9(1): 15. doi: 10.5334/labphon.119

[46] Weismer G, Elbert M (1980). The duration of normally articulated and functionally misarticulated [s] in preschool children. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 67(S1): S39. doi: 10.1121/1.2018198

[47] Zuraiq WMS, Abu-Abbas KHM (2009). Assimilation processes by Arab learners of English1. International Journal of Arabic-English Studies (IJAES) 10(1): 85–92. doi: 10.33806/ijaes2000.10.1.7

Downloads

Issue

Vol. 5 , Iss. 3 (December 2023)

Article Type

Article

License

Copyright © 2023 Pradeep Sharma, Mahboobeh Khaleghi, Mohammad Saleem

Creative Commons License

This is an open access article under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.