Acquisition of Tense and Lax Vowels by Persian Learners of English

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dc.contributor.authorAbdollahnejad, Elias
dc.date.accessioned2020-11-20T06:35:36Z
dc.date.available2020-11-20T06:35:36Z
dc.date.issued2020-11-19
dc.description.abstractThis study investigates the qualitative and quantitative features of English tense (/i: & u:/) and lax (/ɪ & ʊ/) vowels in the L2 production of advanced L1 Persian speakers. The first two formants (F1 & F2) are used to determine the spectral quality of vowels, while the vowel length (in milliseconds) represents the vowel quality. Unlike English, which has two high front (/i:/ & /ɪ/) and back (/u:/ & /ʊ/) vowels, Persian has only one high front vowel /i/ and one high back vowel /u/. Considering this difference, the main questions of this study are whether L1 Persian speakers have separate representations of English tense and lax vowels in their L2 phonological inventory and, if yes, whether they differentiate these vowels based on their qualitative and/or quantitative features. According to the Equivalence Classification Hypothesis (Flege, 1987), L1 Persian speakers are expected to assimilate/merge English front vowels /i: & ɪ/ to their existing L1 single front vowel /i/ and English /u: & ʊ/ to their existing single Persian back vowel /u/. A group of ten female advanced L1 Persian speakers of English are compared with a control group of ten female native English speakers in their production of these vowels in open and closed syllables. Results show that while both quality and quantity are used by English speakers, the Persian speakers have difficulties in acquiring this distinction in their L2 English on both measures. However, the difficulty seems to be mostly in the acquisition of L2 phonetic features (i.e. gradual) than phonological ones (i.e. categorical).en_US
dc.identifier.doihttp://dx.doi.org/10.11575/PRISM/38400
dc.identifier.issn2371-2643
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/1880/112769
dc.language.isoengen_US
dc.publisher.departmentSchool of Languages, Linguistics, Literatures and Culturesen_US
dc.publisher.facultyArtsen_US
dc.publisher.institutionUniversity of Calgaryen_US
dc.rights.urihttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0en_US
dc.subjectLinguisticsen_US
dc.subjectFarsien_US
dc.subjectPersianen_US
dc.subjecttense vowelsen_US
dc.subjectlax vowelsen_US
dc.subjectvowel qualityen_US
dc.subjectvowel quantityen_US
dc.titleAcquisition of Tense and Lax Vowels by Persian Learners of Englishen_US
dc.typejournal articleen_US
dc.typeworking paperen_US
ucalgary.item.requestcopytrueen_US
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Volume 31, 2020