Abstract
This is a study of voicing onset time for Pashto (L1) and English (L2) plosives with
focus on acquisition of English plosives by adult Pashtoon learners. VOT for
Pashto and English plosives were measured in carrier sentences. The results show
that the overall direction of increase in the VOT for plosives in Pashto and English
is from labial to coronal to velar but Pashto retroflex [ʈ] does not accord with this
directionality. No influence of adjacent vowels on VOT of the preceding stops is
noticed. The learners equate aspirated and unaspirated allophones of English labial
/p/ and coronal /t/ with the corresponding L1 sounds neutralizing the aspiration
contrast in the English plosives. However, they have separate phonetic
representations for the allophones [k kh
] of English velar stop /k/. The findings of
this study pose a challenge for feature model (Brown 1998, 2000) which predicts
that a new L2 feature cannot be acquired by adult L2 learners whereas the
participants of this study have acquired the feature [spread glottis] by developing
two separate phonetic representations for the two allophones of English velar stop.
Nasir Abbas Syed. (2013) Voice Onset Time (VOT) for Voiceless Plosives in Pashto (L1) and English (L2), The Journal of Humanities & Social Sciences, Volume-21, Issue-3.
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