The influence of Shandong dialects on the acquisition of English plosives

Abstract

The present study adopts acoustic means to investigate the articulatory problems from Shandong (Hereinafter, SD) learners on the production of English plosives. The VOT, pitch, and formants were selected as the parameters to examine the manner and place features of the plosives produced by the SD learners. Results demonstrate that the SD learners pronounce the voiced stops as voiceless ones. This result is due to the negative transfer from SD dialect which was proposed to contain no voiced stops. Further, the SD speakers also exit problem in the aspiration and tongue position during the articulation of [d, g, t′, k′], and this result lies in the positive influence from SD dialect.