According to SLM, PAM and L2LP, the phonetic resemblance between L1 and L2 plays an important role in the perception and production of L2 sounds. Therefore, the predictions for the present study are based on the acoustic comparison of Urdu vowels (as reported in Chapter 2 and Chapter 3) with SSBE vowels as reported by Hawkins and Midgley (2005). They reported formant frequencies of received pronunciation (RP) monophthongs by four different age groups. Figure 5. 1 shows the mean frequencies of
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the first two formants in F1/F2 vowel space for SSBE vowels (Hawkins and Midgley, 2005) and Urdu vowels.
5.1.1 Acoustic Similarities between RP and Urdu (Predictions according to L2LP)
According to L2LP (as discussed in Section 4.3), based on the acoustic similarities and differences between Urdu and SSBE, the following predictions can be made. From the visual inspection and acoustic measurements, it can be predicted that SSBE /ɪ/ may be confused with Urdu /ɪ/ and /eː/, and SSBE /ɛ/ will be assimilated to Urdu /ɛː/. F1 for SSBE /ɛ/ is higher than Urdu /ɛː/; however, F2 for SSBE /æ/ is lower than Urdu /ɛː/. The F2 of English /æ/ suggests that it may be assimilated to Urdu /ɑː/.
Figure 5. 1: Mean frequencies of the 11 RP monophthongs as reported by Hawkins and Midgley (2005) and 9 Urdu monophthongs on F1/F2 vowel space
Further, SSBE /ʌ/ appears to be acoustically similar to Urdu /ɑː/. Therefore, it can be predicted that SSBE /ʌ/ will be mapped to acoustically similar Urdu /ɑː/. SSBE /ɜː/
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appears to be quite different from Urdu /ɐ/. F1 and F2 of SSBE /ɜː/ are lower than Urdu /ɐ/. The perceptual assimilation of this central vowel cannot be predicted based on the acoustic measurements. However, it seems that Punjabi-Urdu speakers will find this vowel difficult to assimilate to the Urdu vowel categories.
Urdu /oː/ lies somewhere in the middle of SSBE /ɔː/ and /ɒ/. Hence it can be predicted that those two back SSBE vowels will be assimilated to this one Urdu back vowel. SSBE /uː/ and /ʊ/ are quite front in the vowel space as compared to Urdu /uː/ and /ʊ/. With regard to F1 it can be predicted that English /uː/ and /ʊ/ will be assimilated to Urdu /uː/ and /ʊ/; however, F2 of English /uː/ is much higher than Urdu /uː/. Therefore, it is hard to predict whether Punjabi-Urdu speakers can identify these two vowels as distinct or not.
5.1.2 Predictions: According to PAM
As discussed in Section 4.4.2, according to PAM, it can be predicted that there will be some Two-Category (TC) and more Single-Category (SC) (Best, 1995; Best and Tyler, 2007) assimilation patterns for SSBE vowels by Punjabi-Urdu speakers. For example, as noted in Section 4.4.2, there will be Single-Category (SC) assimilation patterns, especially for SSBE /ɛ/-/æ/, /ɜː/-/ʌ/ and /ɔː/-/ɒ/, as there is only one vowel in the Urdu vowel inventory in the corresponding vowel space, i.e. open-mid front, central, and open- mid back. In addition, there will be fewer Category-Goodness (CG) assimilation patterns, and there will be more Uncategorised-Uncategorised (UU) assimilation patterns, especially for English front vowels /ɛ/ and /æ/, back vowels /ɔː/ and /ɒ/, and diphthongs.
5.1.3 Predictions: According to SLM
As discussed in Section 4.4.1, according to the SLM equivalence classification hypothesis, Punjabi-Urdu speakers will not establish separate categories for English monophthongs that are found in the same phonological/acoustic space in Urdu, i.e. /iː/,
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/ɪ/, /ɛ/, /ʌ/, /ɑː/, /ɒ/ and /ʊ/. As a result, the speakers’ production of those vowels will not be very accurate because the vowels will be collapsed with similar L1 phonemes. However, with experience and exposure, Punjabi-Urdu listeners will be able to discern the phonetic differences between English and Urdu monophthongs and diphthongs, and will be able to establish new phonetic categories for them. Lastly, Punjabi-Urdu listeners will be able to establish new phonetic categories for English monophthongs and diphthongs that do not have a counterpart in Urdu phonological and phonetic system, i.e. /æ/, /ɜː/, /ɔː/, /uː/ and diphthongs.
This chapter presents the perceptual assimilation experiment in two contexts, bVd and
hVba (for an explanation, see below). Auditory free classification in a third context, hVd,
is presented in Chapter 6. Previous research shows that the consonantal context has an effect on the quality of vowels (Hillenbrand et al., 2001), and variations in the phonetic context due to the neighbouring consonantal context also affects cross-language perceptual assimilation patterns (Strange et al., 2004; Bohn and Steinlen, 2003; Strange et al., 2001). Three different consonantal contexts were chosen for the present study.
Monosyllabic words in bVd and hVd contexts were chosen for two reasons. Firstly, the vowels in these two contexts are not affected by the neighbouring consonants, and as a result the coarticulation effects are factored out (Ferrag and Pellegrino, 2010; Hawkins and Midgley, 2005; Deterding, 1997; Wells, 1982). Secondly, to test if the familiarity with the target language affects listeners’ perception. In addition, another reason to embed SSBE vowels in a bVd context was to make them appear very different than those in a hVba context, which aids in the cross-language assimilation task’s conceit that vowels in the hVba context are from a foreign language, whereas bVd context vowels are from SSBE.
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Nonce disyllabic words using hVba as a context were created to test if the (perceived) lack of familiarity with the target language affects listeners’ perception, and if listening to vowels in an unfamiliar context results in better identification of phonological and phonetic details and hence better perception. Best et al. (1988) reported that American English monolinguals identified the isiZulu click consonants as nonspeech because clicks are not found in American English; however, they discriminated the minimal contrasts very well. Therefore, following Strange et al. (1998) the 19 SSBE vowels are embedded in nonsense disyllabic words so that listeners could attend to the vowels without any perceptual effects due to experience of English.