Acoustic Characteristics of American English Monophthongs in Serbian EFL Speakers – A Case Study
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.18485/philologia.2021.19.19.6Keywords:
vowels, American English, Serbian EFL speakers, vowel qualityAbstract
The purpose of this study is to investigate the acoustic realization of American English vowels in a group of Serbian EFL learners from an urban area in Central Serbia and compare them to the native speakers' vowel production. Recordings were made of 9 male speakers producing nine monophthongs of American English /i ɪ ɛ æ ᴧ u ʊ ɔ ɑ/ in the CVC phonological structure, flanked by a labial consonant /p/ or /b/ and coronal /t/. These vowel realizations were compared to those of 9 male native speakers of American English who participated in a similar experiment (Čubrović 2016). The analysis of the spectral properties of nonnative English vowels shows that the influence of Serbian is evident in the production of some vowel pairs: /i ɪ/, /ɛ æ/ and /u ʊ/. Our Serbian EFL speaker group shows a tendency to merge two back vowels, /ɔ ɑ/, since F1 values for these two vowels are close. The mixed-effects statistical analysis found that there is a significant difference for F1 and F2 between native and nonnative speakers for all vowels except /i/ for the tense /i/.
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