Abstract
For the past 20 years, intelligibility research has paved the way in making pronunciation teaching and learning about individual competency rather than sounding like a native speaker. The body of research has empirically shown that language speakers of English (Lx) can be intelligible while sounding heavily accented. However, studies have yet to examine how first-generation immigrant couples from different cultural backgrounds interact with each other using an Lx. A phonetic analysis of an oral transcription is conducted to describe the segmental features of Dominican English (DomE) and Pakistani English (PakE), two Lx English spoken by Tabinda and Tariq, as they recount their love story. Compared to General American English (GAE), results show that both speakers are intelligible and make expected substitution based on their first languages. The Dominican speaker substituted vowel [ɪ] for [i] and tapped rhotics (/ɾ/ for /ɹ/). For PakE, the most prominent feature is changing the stops' place of articulation using dental (/t̪/ /d̪/) and retroflex stops (/ʈ / /ɖ /). Additionally, some phonetic features are found to be specific to each speaker. Although some segmental features are not present in either couple's L1, the "redundancy" effect described by Koffi (2021:99) when quoting Fry helps facilitate intelligible speech between them. This study contributes to the growing body of research describing the speech features that make Lx English speakers intelligible.
Recommended Citation
DURIS, MAHDI
(2024)
"ACCENTEDNESS AND INTELLIGIBILITY: THE TYPICAL PHONETIC STORY OF AN LX COUPLE IN THE US,"
Linguistic Portfolios: Vol. 13, Article 10.
Available at:
https://repository.stcloudstate.edu/stcloud_ling/vol13/iss1/10
