Unstressed Vowels in German Learner English: An Instrumental Study

• Authors: Lukas Soenning
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

This study investigates the production of vowels in unstressed syllables by advanced German learners of English in comparison with native speakers of Standard Southern British English. Two acoustic properties were measured: duration and formant structure. The results indicate that duration of unstressed vowels is similar in the two groups, though there is some variation depending on the phonetic context. In terms of formant structure, learners produce slightly higher F1 and considerably lower F2, the difference in F2 being statistically significant for each learner. Formant values varied as a function of context and orthographic representation of the vowel.

Keywords

EN

vowel reduction; acoustic analysis; SLA; L1 German; L2 English

• Publisher: Uniwersytet Łódzki. Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego
• Journal: Research in Language
• Year: 2014
• Volume: 12
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 163-173

Dates

published

2014-06-30

Contributors

author

Lukas Soenning

• University of Bamberg

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Identifiers

DOI

10.2478/rela-2014-0001