English Fricatives Research Articles

Classification patterns in conversational English fricatives: Between- and within- speaker analyses

This study examines between- and within- speaker patterns in random forest classification models for fricatives in conversational English. Prior investigations on the categorization of fricatives have mostly focused on group-level analyses and careful speech. We use a corpus of sociolinguistic interview speech from Western Canadian English, which represents a more casual speech style, and we compare group-level results to the findings of classification models on individual speakers’ productions. The models use 23 different spectral, temporal, and amplitudinal measures to predict phonetic labels of the fricatives. Our results reveal that certain top-ranked predictors at the group level (e.g., spectral peak frequency, segment duration) are also important for fricative classification in the individual models. Other measures (e.g., midpoint kurtosis, RMS) show substantial variability in their relative prominence and play greater roles in individual- versus group-level modeling. We discuss the implications of these findings for our understanding of individual variation in connected speech and what the findings may imply about models of production and perception.

EXPLORING PRONUNCIATION CHALLENGES: INDONESIAN UNIVERSITY STUDENTS' PRODUCTION OF ENGLISH FRICATIVE SOUNDS

Abstract: This study investigated the production of English alveolar and post-alveolar fricatives by 40 Indonesian university students who are not majoring in English study. The research instruments were a questionnaire, which was used to obtain information about the participants, and a word list, which was comprised of 16 English words with alveolar and post-alveolar fricatives and 9 tricky words. The results revealed two main findings. The first was that most Indonesian non-English major university students who participated in this research were not proficient in producing voiced post-alveolar fricative /ʒ/ which resulted in the substitution of the sound with /z/, /s/, and /ʃ/. The participants, however, were quite great at producing the voiceless post-alveolar fricative /ʃ/ and had no difficulty in producing alveolar fricatives /s/ and /z/. The second was that the results indicated that the participants’ problems in pronouncing English fricatives were mainly attributed to native language interference, the absence of the target sound in the sound system of their native language, and limited knowledge of English phonetics. This research recommends that EFL teachers give a special portion of time to train their students to pronounce fricative sounds in English that do not exist in the students' native language and provide them with English sound phonetic knowledge. Both of these things are strongly believed to improve the students’ proficiency in English pronunciation.

An analysis of English as a foreign language learners’ perceptual confusions and phonemic awareness of English fricatives

An analysis of English as a foreign language learners’ perceptual confusions and phonemic awareness of English fricatives

The Undergraduate Students’ Pronunciation Difficulties of English Fricatives Based on Letter-Sound Relationship

The Undergraduate Students’ Pronunciation Difficulties of English Fricatives Based on Letter-Sound Relationship

Multi-Linguistic Interferences in the Articulation of English Fricatives among Selected Students in a Public University in Lokoja, Nigeria

In the quest to solve human communication problems, the need to learn a foreign language arises, and this usually occurs in a multilingual setting. In the process of this learning, some challenges occur, especially the phonological phenomenon of interference. Given this challenge, the paper contributes to scholarly works on language learning by exploring the articulation of English fricatives by selected [ethnic] students of the Federal University Lokoja (FUL), Lokoja, Nigeria. The researchers carefully selected some participants from the Ebira, Igala and Okun-Yoruba ethnic groups, which form the majority of ethnicities in the university community. A total of 60 students were selected for this study; 20 each from the 3 major ethnic groups in FUL. The major instrument used for this research is the Read Aloud Method, containing nine carefully structured sentences each containing a target English fricative sound. The selected test items were read aloud by the participants and subjected to both perceptual and acoustic analyses. The acoustic analysis was done using the speech analyzer PRAAT. Audio-Articulation Model developed by Mehmet Demirezen was used as the framework for this study. The study reveals that there is a dominant influence from the mother tongue of the participants as they were unable to properly articulate some fricatives in some cases. Also, the study found that there is an overlapping peculiar to the different speakers representing each ethnic group. It can be concluded that since ethnic groups have their distinct languages, it is a factor in the inability of speakers to properly produce fricative sounds. This absence of the fricatives in the L1 shows up in the production of the L2.

STUDENTS' ABILITY IN PRONOUNCING ENGLISH FRICATIVE CONSONANTS AT ENGLISH LANGUAGE EDUCATION OF FKIP UIR

This research aims to know the students' ability to pronounce English Fricative consonants at English Language Education of FKIP UIR. The design of this research is descriptive research with a qualitative approach. The researcher conducted the study at English Education of FKIP UIR. The researcher took 30 students from 65 second-semester students' at English Education of FKIP UIR. In this research, the researcher used the purposive sampling technique. The research instrument is a pronunciation test consisting of 26 words, and a recorder collected the data. The online Cambridge-American dictionary is used as the correction standard by the researcher. The result of data analysis showed that the average score for students' pronunciation was 19,62, with scores ranging from 7.4. Afterward, the findings revealed that students still have many problems pronouncing English fricatives, especially in /f/, /θ/, and /ʒ/ sounds. Meanwhile, the researcher found the most trouble when students were pronouncing the fricative sound /ʒ/ in the initial position. After that, the sound /f/ in the medial and /ʒ/ in the final position have the same lower score. Then, there is a problem when students pronounce the /θ/ sound and the/ sound in the final position. In conclusion, the student's ability to pronounce English fricative consonants at FKIP UIR English Language Education is fairly good.

THE INFLUENCE OF ARABIC SOUNDS ON ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION PRACTICED BY INDONESIAN QURAN TEACHERS

Three English fricatives [θ], [ð], and [ʃ] have been confusing many Indonesian people when they pronounce English words. Even though these three sounds are not present in Indonesian, they are found in Arabic. The goal of the research is to reveal if Indonesian Muslims, who are qualified Quran teachers, are able to pronounce English words correctly. The subjects of the research are passive English speakers but still get enough English exposure at college. In order to explore the language phenomenon, qualitative method is applied in this research. Qualitative method is used to describe and clarify experiences in people’s lives. From 60 data involving two subjects, the research showed that the two subjects succeeded in pronouncing 53 English words in total accurately. This phenomenon occurs due to a positive language transfer because Arabic can facilitate them to pronounce some English sounds.

Problems Faced by Pashto Speaking Community in the Articulation of English Fricative Consonants at Undergraduate Level in Swabi

The present research study aims at exploring the phonological errors with regard to the segmental features committed by the Pashtun ESL learners in Swabi (Khyber Pakhtunkhwa). In this research study, the researchers have used an audio recording as a tool to collect the data from the respondents. Both males and females were included in the data collection to fulfil the ethics of the research. The data was analysed and presented in a tabulated form. The results of the research show that Pashto speakers at Distt Swabi are significantly affected by the first language (Pashto) in the speaking of English, especially in terms of pronunciation. It is hoped that the findings of this research will present a set of general ideas to EFL teachers about the possible problems that the Pashto speakers of English in the area may face in pronunciation. Furthermore, English language teachers being aware of these problems of the students, like lack of familiarity with certain phonemes, and lack of concentration, can accommodate these problems by giving more time to focus on the phonemes that are creating a problem.

A Cross-Sectional Age Group Study of Coarticulatory Resistance: The Case of Late-Acquired Voiceless Fricatives in English.

As a class, fricatives are more "resistant" to consonant-vowel coarticulation than other English sounds. This study investigates the relative coarticulatory resistance of /θ, s, ʃ/ in child and adult speech to better understand the acquisition of individuated speech sounds. Ten 5-year-old children, seven 8-year-old children, and nine college-age adults produced [əFV] sequences in carrier phrases, where F was /θ/, /s/, or /ʃ/ and V was /æ/, /i/, or /u/. In Experiment 1, coarticulation was perceptually indexed: 65 adults predicted the target stressed vowel based on forward-gated audiovisual speech samples for a subset of four speakers from each age group. In Experiment 2, dynamic spectral measures of the /əFV/ sequences were analyzed using smoothing spline analysis of variance to again test for vowel effects on fricative articulation across age groups. The perceptual results indicated that fricatives blocked vowel-vowel coarticulation across speaker age groups. Contrary to expectation, vowels were most accurately predicted when F was /s/ and not when it was /ʃ/ or /θ/ across age groups. Acoustic results indicated the expected biomechanically motivated /ʃ/ > /s/ > /θ/ coarticulatory resistance hierarchy in adults' speech. By contrast, /ʃ/ > /s/ were similarly influenced by context in 8-year-olds' speech, and the results from 5-year-olds' speech suggested an influence of order of acquisition in that /θ/ was surprisingly resistant to coarticulation. The study results are taken to suggest that a temporal constraint on fricative articulation interacts with biomechanical constraints during development to influence patterns of coarticulation in school-age children's speech.

Who is Fu? – Perception of L2 sounds that are partially neutralized in L1

This study investigates the interference of L1 phonology with L2 speech perception, focusing on the identification of the English fricatives /f/ and /h/ by Japanese listeners. In Japanese, the contrast of /f/ vs /h/ is lost only in the /_u/ environment by neutralization (/fu/ and /hu/ > [ɸu]). This makes food vs who’d extremely difficult for Japanese to discern while fee vs he poses no problem. Perceptual experiments demonstrated that while /f/ and /h/ were accurately identifiable when isolated from non-/u/ syllables [e.g. f(a) vs h(a)], those isolated from /_u/ were rather hard [f(u) vs h(u)] and became even harder when presented with the vowel [fu vs hu]. Such Cs alone [f(u)/h(u)] were easier than the whole CVs [fu/hu] from which those Cs were excised, contrary to our general expectations. A cross-splicing experiment further revealed it was not the acoustics of coarticulated fricatives but the presentation of /u/ that made the identification difficult. The basic phonetic process of f/h was debilitated in fu/hu, where the L1 neutralization applied, cancelling the contrast and the need for attunement, which was then transferred to L2. It was argued that the L1-L2 sound correspondence can be affected by the knowledge of L1 phonological processes.

Acquisition of non-sibilant anterior English fricatives by adult second language learners

AbstractThis study examined the acquisition of the non-sibilant anterior fricatives /v, θ, ð/ by adult second language (L2) English talkers. Twenty-four Mandarin Chinese-L2 English talkers read aloud fricative-initial words. These talkers were chosen as their L1 contained /f/ but not /v, θ, ð/. Twenty L1 English listeners were asked to identify the L2-produced speech and rate the talker’s accent. On average, 69% of the fricatives were correctly identified. /v/ was the most difficult to correctly identify and was identified less accurately than /θ/ and /ð/. A ‘moderate’ accent was reported by L1 listeners, but accent rating did not predict L1 identification behavior. An exploratory acoustic analysis involving the correctly identified words from 22 talkers revealed that L2 talkers produced mean temporal differences used for voicing in line with published L1 data. Non-sibilant fricatives – particularly /v/ – may require pedagogical interventions to push L2 talkers off their learning plateau.

The English Fricative Consonant /z/ as a Challenge to Norwegian L1 EFL Learners: An Error Analysis of Phonemic Transcriptions

English fricatives, such as /z/, are thought to pose substantial challenges to the students of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) whose first languages (L1s) are characterised by phonetic repertoires that are dissimilar to that of English as far as fricatives are concerned (Kallio et al. 2021; Kanokpermpoon 2007). The absence of the fricative /z/ in the phonetic inventory of Norwegian is reported to impact negatively on the Norwegian L1 EFL learners’ speech production in English (Rugesæter 2014). The study that is further presented in the article aims to analyse potential challenges associated with the English fricative consonant /z/ experienced by a group of Norwegian L1 EFL students (hereafter “participants”) on the B2 level of proficiency in English according to the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (The Council of Europe 2011). To that end, the participants were requested to execute a series of phonemic transcriptions in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA): one transcription at the end of the autumn semester (Task 1) and another one at the end of the spring semester (Task 2). The phonemic transcriptions in the study were regarded as a diagnostic tool (Fouz-González, Mompean 2021; Lintunen 2005) that provided an index of the participants’ familiarity with /z/ and, indirectly, reflected their use of /z/. The error analysis of the participants’ transcriptions revealed that the majority of them made mistakes by substituting /z/ for /s/. Considering that the substitution of /z/ for /s/ was common in Task 1 and persisted in Task 2, it was concluded that the participants, who were on the upper-intermediate level of English proficiency, found /z/ challenging. The linguo-didactic implications of the findings are discussed in the article. Keywords: English as a Foreign Language (EFL), the English fricative consonant /z/, /s/ – /z/ contrast, upper-intermediate EFL learners, Norwegian L1

The Variability in Phonology of Indonesian Learner’s Interlanguage: A case study on English marked-fricatives

Interlanguage is the most fruitful issue in the field of second language acquisition. In the interlanguage phase, Indonesian learners of English tend to alternate between two forms of language features to express the same language function where a variation of language forms will be exhibited to mark the variable of linguistic function. Variability in phonology of interlanguage is the most interesting subject to investigate based on markedness differential hypothesis theory. This study is aimed at finding out (1) marked sounds of English fricatives: [θ], [ð], [ʃ], and [ʒ] which are indicated as interlanguage variants; and (2) how interlanguage sound variants emerge based on surround the varying element. There were 30 college students of English study purposively selected to become respondents in this research representing advance and intermediate proficiency of English speaking. The data were taken from two types of task namely word list reading and sentence reading. There were 600-word tokens containing target marked sounds of fricative [θ], [ð], [ʃ], and [ʒ] obtained from the data collection. The analysis was done quantitatively to find the percentages of non-interlanguge sounds and interlanguge ones produced by respondents. The result showed that fricatives such as [θ], [ʃ], and [ʒ] have phonological variations in interlanguage with certain positions of word being pronounced. These phonological variations emerge due to the generalization of pronunciation by similar-ending sounds, the certain vowel sound preceding marked sounds, and the absence of consonant clusters in learners’ native language which bears the variation of certain marked fricatives of English.

Using Problem-Based Learning in English Pronunciation Instruction: Focusing on Fricatives

The study examined the effects of the PBL approach on learning English fricatives and the Korean EFL college learners’ engagement and attitudes toward the PBL approach. In total, 43 learners participated in the study (23 in the PBL group and 20 in the non-PBL group). The findings of the study indicated that the the PBL group showed a statistically significant improvement in the pronunciation post-test (M=17.10, SD=3.27, t=2.852, p.05) compared to the non-PBL group, This finding demonstrated the importance of active problem solving, student autonomy, and interactive based collaboration. The frequency of adjective checklist also indicated that the top 10 adjectives in the PBL groups were all positive while the non-PBL group included 4 negative adjectives. The study thus provided an empirical case of application of PBL in learning English fricatives in a Korean EFL college context.

Asymmetries in Perceptual Adjustments to Non-Canonical Pronunciations

This paper examines two plausible mechanisms supporting sound category adaptation: directional shifts towards the novel pronunciation or a general category relaxation of criteria. Focusing on asymmetries in adaptation to the voicing patterns of English coronal fricatives, we suggest that typology or synchronic experience affect adaptation. A corpus study of coronal fricative substitution patterns confirmed that North American English listeners are more likely to be exposed to devoiced /z/ than voiced /s/. Across two perceptual adaptation experiments, listeners in test conditions heard naturally produced devoiced /z/ or voiced /s/ in critical items within sentences, while control listeners were exposed to identical sentences with canonical pronunciations. Perceptual adaptation was tested via a lexical decision test, with devoiced /z/ or voiced /s/, as well as a novel alveopalatalized pronunciation, to determine whether adaptation was targeted in the direction of the exposed variant or reflected a more general relaxation. Results indicate there was directional and word-specific adaptation for /z/-devoicing with no evidence for generalization. Conversely, there was evidence of /s/-voicing generalizing and eliciting general category relaxation. These results underscore the role of perceptual experiences, and support an evaluation stage in perceptual learning, where listeners assess whether to update a representation.

Belting in English is Easier Than It is in Portuguese

Belting singers receiving care at the speech therapy service mentioned they find it easier to sing in American English than in Brazilian Portuguese. Objective: to assess and compare the production of vowels and consonants of excerpts from musicals in Portuguese and English. Methods: a phonological and phonetic analysis of the same excerpt from musicals was performed in both languages. Results: We have observed that the predominance of fricatives in English and plosives in Portuguese explains the fluidity of singing in English and a greater disruption of speech fluidity in Portuguese. Conclusion: therefore, belting in English is easier than it is in Portuguese.

An Analysis of Students’ Difficulties in Pronouncing English Fricative Consonant at the Eleventh Grade of SMA Negeri 1 Kota Jambi

This research was aimed to find out the students’ difficulties and factor causes students difficult to pronounce English fricative consonant at the Eleventh Grade of SMA Negeri 1 Kota Jambi. The research methodology of this study was quantitative descriptive research which involved population and sample. The total population of this research was the XI MIPA 1 students of SMAN 1 Kota Jambi, which consisted of 36 students. In collecting the data, the researcher gave test and interview at the class. The result of the research showed that the eleventh grade students of SMA Negeri 1 Kota Jambi got difficulties in pronouncing English fricative consonant sounds of dental and labiodental. The students’ difficulties in pronouncing fricative consonant are producing sound (/q/, /ð/, and /v/). The highest percentage of the students score was 95% and the lowest was 15%. Where the mean score of the students’ test was 42,28% with a fair categories and percentage of students score test were /θ/ 76,11%, sound /ð/ 77,78%, /f/ 5%, and sound /v/ 57,22%. The factors of students’ difficulties in pronouncing English fricative consonant are; the influence of students’ mother language, the lack of students’ knowledge about English sound system and the unsuccessful in using borrowed English words.Key Words: Students Difficulties, Pronouncing, Fricative Consonant.

Perception and production of English fricatives by Chinese learners of English: Error patterns and perception-production relationship*

Perception and production of English fricatives by Chinese learners of English: Error patterns and perception-production relationship*

The Perception in Saudi Learners of the English Bilabial Stops and the English Labio-Dental Fricatives

Learning to produce and to identify sounds (phonemes) is not the same as learning the difference between sounds which leads to meaning delivery. One part of the acquisition of phonetics is the ability to perceive sounds which distinguish differences in meaning. This paper explores the perception in Saudi learners of the English Bilabial Stops /p/ and /b/ and the English Labio-dental Fricatives /f/ and /v/. Four different groups took part in this experiment. These groups were divided according to their age and their exposure to English either in English speaking countries or elsewhere. The participants had to listen to the different phonemes occurring initially, medially and finally. One of these groups of words contained non-sense words to test the participants’ mis-perceptions when they do not recognize the sounds as part of their mental lexical knowledge. The results show these four groups faced difficulties perceiving and recognizing some sounds according to their exposure to English. Two groups, consisting of adults and children, showed very few misperceptions and/or missed sounds because they studied English in Australia for more than three years. Children had better perception than adults. The other groups show to had more misperceptions and/or missed sounds. Participants who had studied English in Australia for less than six months showed fewer misperceptions than those participants who had studied English in Saudi Arabia. This study suggests that teaching articulation (pronunciation) to Saudi learners of English in early stages is essential in order to avoid unconscious miscommunications due to the wrong perception and production of phonemes.

Perception of English Fricatives (/v/, /3/) by Undergraduate Kuwaiti Arabic Learners

Perception of English Fricatives (/v/, /3/) by Undergraduate Kuwaiti Arabic Learners