Acoustic characterization of Singaporean children's English with American and British counterparts: A case study on approximants

Abstract

We investigate English pronunciation patterns in Singaporean children in relation to their American and British counterparts by conducting acoustic analysis on /l/ and /ɹ/. A total of 110,405 utterances from American (140 speakers), British (82 speakers) and Singaporean (192 speakers) children aged 6–13 were studied. We find that similar to British children, Singaporean children do not lower F3 as much as American children when producing syllable-final /ɹ/s, suggesting a lack of rhoticity. A one-way ANOVA test demonstrated that these differences are statistically significant across speaker groups: F(2,411) = 750.9, p < 0.001, and a post-hoc Tukey's HSD test showed that all differences in pairwise comparisons are significant too. Interestingly, similarity between Singaporean and British pronunciation patterns are not observed for syllable-final laterals (dark /l/). We observe that Singaporean children's dark /l/s are produced with characteristics distinct from both those of American and British children. While American and British children demonstrate lowering of F1 and F2 in transitions into dark /l/s, these are not exhibited in Singaporean children's pronunciation. One-way ANOVA tests showed that these differences are significant: F(2, 1519) = 55.09, p < 0.001 for F1; F(2, 1519) = 118.7, p < 0.001 for F2, and post-hoc Tukey's tests reached statistical significance too.