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Title AN ACOUSTIC STUDY OF DIPHTHONGS IN PAKISTANI ENGLISH

Author(s) MUSTAGHFER ATZAZ

Abstract Pakistani English has been the subject of research for some time now and naturally different areas of it have already been researched. However, pronunciation is one of the important areas of Pakistani English which needs to be explored further. The current research is based on Pronunciation of Pakistani English and is limited to diphthongs. In this research, it was explored that how Pakistani English has got its own peculiarities and differences in pronunciation, especially, when it comes to diphthongs. For example, native speakers of English pronounce the word go with a glide /ɡəʊ/ due to the diphthongal effect while Pakistani speakers pronounce the same word with a straight sound which may be observed in the sound / و/. In current research, ten words were randomly selected for each diphthong, and twenty four students of Intermediate (Science group) part-II, whose mother tongue was Punjabi, were selected. Later, each participant was given a token word out of the already prepared list and pronunciation of the word was recorded through F-1 OPPO Mobile phone. On the other hand, Cambridge Advanced Learner Dictionary was used to take the token of British pronunciation of all words. Each token, which was one of the diphthongs, was analyzed through PRAAT(5353). Results obtained through PRAAT are in the form of number of pulses, which determine the length of the word, pitches, which show difference of glide, time taken in order to produce the word which once again determines the length of the word and which ultimately shows the difference in pronunciation of the diphthongs. For example the analysis of the data shows that all the participants pronounced /eɪ/ diphthong with a longer duration (0.361 seconds) as compared with the native speaker (0.145 seconds). Likewise, research participants used different pitch (215.517) and number of pulses (44.333) as compared to the British pitch (109.171) and number of pulses (16) in the pronunciation of the word ache. Thus, in current research the results are shown in the form of spectrographs and numeric values. Relevant tables have been prepared and calculated first in Microsoft Excel and then converted into Microsoft Word sheets. On the basis of the collected data and their results, researcher has found out that Pakistani English is different from British English in terms of diphthongs. In the light of this Spectrographic Model, it is concluded that differences in diphthongs’ pronunciation, as generated by PRAAT(5.3.53) are peculiar in nature.

Type Thesis/Dissertation MS

Faculty Languages

Department English

Language English

Publication Date 2019-10-01

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