Abstract

The purpose of this investigation was to document acoustic characteristics of Pakistani English (PaKE) vowel sounds. The experiment was designed to examine the properties of ten vowels produced by Pakistani ESL learners. The analysis is based on the voice samples of recorded 50 CVC words. Total 5000 (10  10  50=5000) voiced samples were analyzed. The data consisted of 50 words of ten English vowel sounds [i: ɪ e ɔ: æ ə ɑ: u: ɒ ʊ]. Ten ESL speakers recorded their voice samples on Praat speech processing tool installed on laptop. Three parameters were considered i.e., fundamental frequency (F0), vowel quality (F1-F2) and duration. Formant patterns were judged manually by visual inspection on Praat Speech Processing Tool. Analysis of formant frequency shows numerous differences between male and female of F1 and F2, fundamental frequency and duration of English vowels. The voice samples provide evidence for higher and lower frequency of vowel sounds. Additionally, the data analysis illustrates that there were statistical differences in the values of short and long vowels coupled with vowel space plot showing explicit differences in locating the production of vowels of male & female vowel space acoustic realizations.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.