Voice Onset Time (VOT) for Voiceless Plosives in Pashto (L1) and English (L2)

Abstract

This is a study of voicing onset time for Pashto (L1) and English (L2) plosives with focus on acquisition of English plosives by adult Pashtoon learners. VOT for Pashto and English plosives were measured in carrier sentences. The results show that the overall direction of increase in the VOT for plosives in Pashto and English is from labial to coronal to velar but Pashto retroflex [ʈ] does not accord with this directionality. No influence of adjacent vowels on VOT of the preceding stops is noticed. The learners equate aspirated and unaspirated allophones of English labial /p/ and coronal /t/ with the corresponding L1 sounds neutralizing the aspiration contrast in the English plosives. However, they have separate phonetic representations for the allophones [k kh] of English velar stop /k/. The findings of this study pose a challenge for feature model (Brown 1998, 2000) which predicts that a new L2 feature cannot be acquired by adult L2 learners whereas the participants of this study have acquired the feature [spread glottis] by developing two separate phonetic representations for the two allophones of English velar stop.