Browsing by Subject "English language - Phonology"

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    Diaphonic vocoid variants in inter-linguistic contact between English and Afrikaans, Afrikaans being the constant
    (1973) Botha, J T; Lennox-Short, A; Pienaar, P de V
    MOTIVATION: The object of this investigation is to record and describe various sounds and sound structures conditioned by interlinguistic contact, as observed in the English speech of South African Bilinguals whose home language is Afrikaans. SUMMARY OF CONTENTS: In Section A the phenomenon of bilingualism is discussed with reference to the findings of leading investigators into the field of contrastive linguistics. Section B contains a brief contrastive analysis of phonetic and phonemic features of English and Afrikaans. The main body of Section C is devoted to an auditory analysis of reading and "free speech" tests. Renderings by Afrikaans-English Bilinguals are matched against renderings of a Norm. The object was to explore and analyse the impact of native Afrikaans linguistic prejudices upon the quality of vocoids in citation forms and in the continuum of speech. Furthermore, several perception tests were used to establish whether native Afrikaans linguistic habits inhibit the aural perception and the identification of English vocoids. Correlates between the aural and the perception tests are recorded. Trends observed in the rendering of vocoids in the speech of Afrikaans-English bilinguals are listed. Section D contains the spectrographic analysis of English structures uttered by A.-E. Bilinguals and by the Norm. The results are compared with trends observed in the auditory analysis in Section C. Section E contains a summary of methods and techniques in the teaching of English speech that follow upon the findings in Sections C and D. CONTRIBUTION TO KNOWLEDGE: A comparative analysis of aspects of English and Afrikaans phonology on scientific principles constitutes some contribution to the body of knowledge of the discipline of contrastive linguistics. Furthermore, language teaching in South Africa lacks a firm basis of principle, the science of language pedagogy hardly exists. A scientific contrastive analysis of live speech offers an excellent basis for the preparation of instructional materials, and this investigation, therefore, should provide a significant contribution towards that end.