The pronunciation of Austrian students of English at university-level: a descriptive analysis

Diplomarbeit zur Erlangung des akademischen Grades einer Magistra der Philosophie an der Geisteswissenschaftlichen Fakultät der Karl-Franzens-Universität Graz

vorgelegt von Angelika Mende am Institut für Anglistik

Begutachter: Ao. Univ.-Prof. Mag. Dr. Bernhard Kettemann

Graz, September 2009

Table of Contents

I Introduction 1

II Theoretical Background 3

1 Second Language Acquisition 3 2 Contrastive Linguistics 4 3 Interference 6

3.1 Positive Transfer 6 3.2 Negative Transfer 6 3.3 Further Definitions and Explanations 6 3.4 The Ontogeny Model of SLA 8 3.5 Influencing Factors 9 3.6 Other Varieties and Languages 11 3.7 Approximating Native Proficiency 11 3.8 Categorisation of Errors 13 3.9 Pedagogical Considerations 14

4 Two Sound Systems Compared 15

4.1 Varieties Chosen 16 4.2 RP and GA 17 4.2.1 Received Pronunciation 17 4.2.1.1 The Vowels 17 4.2.1.2 The Consonants 18 4.2.1.3 Connected Speech 21 4.2.2 General American 23 4.2.2.1 The Vowels 23 4.2.2.2 The Consonants 24 4.3 Standard German and Standard Austrian Pronunciation 26 4.3.1 Standard German Pronunciation 26 4.3.1.1 The Vowels 26 4.3.1.2 The Consonants 27 4.3.2 Standard Austrian Pronunciation 29 4.3.2.1 The Vowels 29 4.3.2.2 The Consonants 30 4.4 Expected Errors 31

III Corpus-linguistic Analysis 35

5 Empirical Framework 35

5.1 Research Question 35 5.2 General Considerations 35 5.3 Subjects 36 5.4 Choice of Material and Method 37 5.4.1 First Step: Recording the Informants 37 5.4.2 Second Step: Transcriptions and Annotations 38 5.4.3 Pronunciation Categories 39 5.5 Corpus Linguistics 41 5.5.1 WordSmith 42 6 The Results 43

6.1 Categories Unrelated to Target Variety 43 6.1.1 The Results – the Consonants 44 6.1.1.1 Devoicing of /d Y/ 44 6.1.1.2 Devoicing of /g/ 44 6.1.1.3 Devoicing of /d/ 45 6.1.1.4 Devoicing of / y/ 46 6.1.1.5 Devoicing of / Y/ 47 6.1.1.6 Devoicing of /v/ 48 6.1.1.7 Plosivisation of / C/ 48 6.1.1.8 Further Consonant Categories 50 6.1.2 The Results – the Vowels 53 6.1.2.1 Substitution of [ D] or [e] for /æ/ 54 6.1.2.2 Monophthongisation and Diphthongisation 55 6.1.2.3 Further Vowel Categories 56 6.2 Categories Related to Target Variety 57 6.2.1 The Results – the Consonants 58 6.2.1.1 Post-vocalic /r/ 58 6.2.1.2 Linking /r/ 59 6.2.1.3 Flap 60 6.2.1.4 Yod-dropping 62 6.2.2 The Results – the Vowels 63 6.2.2.1 /@9 / vs. /æ/ 63 6.2.2.2 /
/ vs. / @9 / or / N9 / 64 6.2.2.3 Nasalisation of /æ/ 65 6.3 Testing Native-Like Speech 65 6.3.1 The Results – the Consonants 65 6.3.1.1 Glottal Stop 66 6.3.1.2 Consonant Cluster Reduction 67 6.3.1.3 Elision of Consonants 67 6.3.1.4 Assimilation 68 6.3.1.5 Further Features of Connected Speech 69 6.3.2 The Results – the Vowels 70 6.3.2.1 Elision of Vowels 70 6.3.2.2 Vowel Reduction (Weakening) 70

7 Hypotheses Revised 71

IV Conclusions 75

8 English Summary 75 9 German Summary 79

Bibliography 83

List of Tables 88

List of Illustrations 89

Appendix 90

List of Abbreviations

AE American English

AG Austrian German

BE British English

CA Contrastive Analysis

CL Contrastive Linguistics

EA Error Analysis

GA General American

GG German German

IL Interlanguage

IPA International Phonetic Alphabet

KF Karl-Franzens

L1 First Language/Mother Tongue

L2 Second Language

NT no target variety

RP Received Pronunciation

SLA Second Language Acquisition

U University

The abbreviations of the pronunciation categories are listed in the appendix.

I Introduction

Teaching in Brazil nearly 30 years ago, I was struck by how much Portuguese phonology I could learn by carefully listening to my students speaking English. (Major 2001: ix)

Under ideal circumstances the learner of a foreign language improves his or her foreign language skills over time. He or she is increasingly able to master the different areas of the language such as syntax, lexis and phonology. The learning progress can be inhibited by various factors such as the transfer of structures from the first into the foreign language but also by individual factors as, for instance, motivation. Regardless of which and how many influencing factors are at work, the foreign language performance of those who study the respective language at university is expected to be better than that of other learners. The aim of this paper is to find out which pronunciation errors Austrian students of English at Karl-Franzens University, Graz, still make and which errors they have managed to eradicate. In other words, it will show how native-like their English already is. Only the segmental level will be examined, leaving out all prosodic features such as stress, rhythm and intonation. In addition, an attempt will be made to explore why certain errors are present in a particular phonetic environment but absent in another. Finally, the English of those students who have chosen a target variety such as, for example, British English, will be examined regarding their consistency. For this purpose the casual speech of ten Austrian students was recorded. These recordings were then transcribed orthographically, annotated and analysed with the corpus-linguistic programme WordSmith. The paper is divided into two major parts – the theoretical background and the corpus- linguistic analysis. The first part provides background information on second language acquisition, contrastive linguistics and interference. Important terms will be defined as well as some central notions explained. Then the sound systems of English and German will be contrasted, taking into account Standard British, Standard American, Standard German and Standard Austrian pronunciation. Finally, a list of the expected errors to be found in the English of the informants will be provided. The second part of the paper is concerned with the corpus-linguistic analysis of the students´ recordings. First an insight into the empirical framework of the study is offered, covering detailed information on the research question, the subjects and the various steps of the linguistic analysis. The major part of this chapter presents the results of this analysis. A 1

division is made between categories that are unrelated to the target variety, those that are related to the target variety and categories which account for native-like speech such as features of connected speech. The results of all three parts are further divided into consonants and vowels. Finally, it will be shown to what extent the hypotheses or expected deviations formulated in the theoretical part correlate with the actual results of the corpus-linguistic analysis.

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II Theoretical Background

The aim of the following chapters is to provide basic background information and define key terms.

1 Second Language Acquisition

First a distinction between first language acquisition and second language acquisition must be made. Under normal conditions every child acquires its first language in the course of a few years – his or her mother tongue. Already in elementary school, the child is able to communicate with others without any problems. After puberty there is only little progress in its command of language – although in some areas the adult never ceases to learn such as, for instance, in vocabulary. This acquisition of the mother tongue is called ‘first language acquisition’ (cf. Klein 1984: 15). Dulay et al. define ‘second language acquisition’ “as the process of learning another language after the basics of the first have been acquired, starting at about five years of age and thereafter” (1982: 10). Yule (2003: 191) adds that ‘acquisition’ always happens naturally in communicative situations. In contrast, ‘learning’ implies gaining knowledge about the target language 1 consciously. In this paper the two terms will not be used in that strict a sense but interchangeably. A number of researchers differentiate between the two terms ‘second language acquisition’ and ‘foreign language acquisition’. A ‘second language’ is acquired in countries where the language fulfils a social or institutional role, for example, as a lingua franca. A ‘foreign language’, in contrast, is learnt in countries where the language is simply taught at school but is of no great importance in social life (Ellis 1994: 11-2). As is done by many linguists writing on the topic, I will also use the term ‘second language acquisition’ to refer to both kinds of acquisition.

1 ‘Target Language’ is the language the learner has attempted to learn, whereas ‘source language’ is the native language of the learner, the one which may cause interference (cf. Nemser 1978: 55).

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In the middle of the last century second language acquisition research focused on the pedagogic aspect. The main aim was to find out how second language teaching can be improved. Beginning with the 1970s, it was the learner, not the teacher, who became central (cf. Archibald 1998: 1). This paper is concerned with the acquisition of a second language phonology – the acquisition of the sound system of a second language. The L1 is German and the L2 English.

2 Contrastive Linguistics

Fisiak defines ‘Contrastive Linguistics’ as a

subdiscipline of linguistics with the comparison of two or more languages or subsystems of languages in order to determine both the differences and similarities between them (1981: 1).

Examining language in its various forms presupposes one of two different language perspectives. The ‘diachronic’ perspective is concerned with how a certain language developed over time or language in general, whereas the ‘synchronic’ perspective analyses language at a specific time. Ferdinand de Saussure, who first used the this distinction, and modern linguistics as a whole use the latter perspective. (cf. Edmonson 2006:73). The subject- matter of the present study is viewed from the same perspective in so far as the pronunciation of Austrian English students at a specific point in time is looked at. According to Fisiak (1981: 6), Contrastive Analysis is important as it hints at possible areas of interference and errors. CA claimed to be able to provide improved methods for foreign language teaching. Up until now, this promise has not been delivered on (see Burgschmidt and Götz 1974: 183). 2 3 According to Jackson (1981: 195), CA started in the 1950s in America. It developed from behaviourist theories. In the middle of the last century, researchers made strong claims concerning the validity of Contrastive Analysis. Robert Lado, for instance, was of the opinion that all errors found in the second language could be traced back to the mother

2 The terms ‘Contrastive Linguistics (CL)’ and ‘Contrastive Analysis (CA)’ will be used interchangeably throughout the paper as their meaning is identical. 3 ‘Phonetics’ is always dealt with as ‘articulatory phonetics’ unless it is explicitly stated otherwise. 4

tongue. In his book Linguistics across Cultures he states that

we have ample evidence that when learning a foreign language we tend to transfer our entire native language system in the process. We tend to transfer to that language our phonemes and their variants, our stress and rhythm patterns, our transitions, our intonation patterns and their interaction with other phonemes (1957: 11).

It can be said that with the publication of this work modern applied CL began (Nickel 1971: 2). This claim is also referred to as the ‘strong claim’ of Contrastive Analysis. According to this claim, all errors made by the L2 learner could be predicted if L1 and L2 were properly compared to one another. In contrast to the strong version of CA, there is also a lighter one – the so-called ‘weak claim’. Followers of this claim did not believe that CA has predictive powers but could merely offer explanations for errors after they had been made (see Wekker 1992: 279-80). Over the years, more and more linguists began to disapprove of the strong claim of CA and thus the claim that it could explain all errors. They hold that universal factors should not be left out (see Major 2001: 35). Odlin (1989: 17) states that by the 1970s researchers found out that interference is not always the source of learning problems. Furthermore, CA sometimes failed in predicting difficulties that did occur. A couple of years later, in the 1980s, however, researchers realised that even though interference is not able to predict all errors, it is still an important influence in second language acquisition (cf. Major 2001: 35). As we will see in the next chapter, it is phonology which is particularly affected by the mother tongue´s influence. Today interference from the mother tongue into the foreign language is seen as merely one possible source of error. The strong claim of the Contrastive Hypothesis thus has turned into the weak claim which only attributes some of the transfer phenomena to the mother tongue (see Edmonson 2006: 220-1). However, it should also be mentioned that using a second language without transferring any elements from the mother tongue is particularly rare (see Juhász 1970: 11). A number of opponents of Contrastive Analysis conduct their research in another area, which is closely related to CA – ‘Error Analysis’. In contrast to Contrastive Analysis, Error Analysis does not predict errors but merely collects errors and categorises them after they have occurred. After the downfall of the strong claim of CA, interest in EA was renewed. 5

Unlike CA, it claimed not only to be preoccupied with interference errors but also to reveal all kinds of errors (cf. Sridhar 1981: 220-3). As will be seen in chapter III, it is not the purpose of this study to show which errors stem from interference and which errors do not. That is to say, no categorisation of the results into interference and developmental errors will be made as this would be beyond the scope of this study.

3 Interference

In order to be able to fully comprehend the concept of interference and to see how complex and ambiguous it is, further definitions and explanations must be provided.

3.1 Positive Transfer

The language learner transfers elements from the L1 to the L2. If these elements are also found in the target language, we talk about ‘positive transfer’. This kind of transfer leads to correct results and makes learning the new language easier (see Yule 2003: 194).

3.2 Negative Transfer

If the elements transferred do not have equivalents in the L2, we talk about ‘negative transfer’. The learner produces wrong results and the learning process is impeded. Negative transfer is more frequently called ‘interference’ (Yule 2003: 194-5). According to Ellis (1994: 299-300), in behaviourist theories errors resulting from interference would hinder the successful learning of a second language since correct language habits could not be developed.

3.3 Further Definitions and Explanations

Lukensteiner (2006: 38-9) mentions another kind of transfer phenomenon. In contrast to negative transfer, it is not considered an error in the second language but is also not a feature of authentic native speech. Lukensteiner provides an example of this kind of phenomenon taken from syntax, in which an Italian native speaker uses Future II in his L2 German. As the 6

usage of this tense is uncommon in spoken German, the German native speaker will unmask the learner as a non-native immediately. This kind of error can also be transferred to second language phonology. We will see later on the extent to which the Austrian students use features of connected speech such as weakening, assimilation and the like. The concept of ‘interference’ is closely related to CA. Juhász (1970: 9) differentiates between interference within one language and between two languages. The latter can itself be divided into interference from the L2 to the L1 and interference from the L1 to the L2. Finally, he distinguishes between phonetic, syntactic and semantic interference. As already seen from the introduction, this study is concerned with phonetic interference from the L1 to the L2. Another important term that must be defined is ‘interlanguage’. According to Major (2001: 4), IL is a mixture of parts of the L1, the L2 and universals. Yule (2003: 195) calls interlanguage an “inbetween system” which has its own rules. If the learner´s interlanguage contains numerous elements that cannot be found in the second language and there is no progress, ‘fossilisation’ of the interlanguage is the result. Fossilisation in L2 pronunciation leads to a foreign accent. Selinker and Lakshaman (1992: 198) state that up to now fossilisation still has not been fully understood. For example, it remains unclear why it affects certain language structures and not others. Closely related to interlanguage is the term ‘approximative system’. Nemser defines it as

the deviant linguistic system actually employed by the learner attempting to utilize the target language. Such approximative systems vary in character in accordance with proficiency level; variation is also introduced by learning experience [...], communication function, personal learning characteristics, etc. (1987: 55).

Today the majority of linguists doubt that interference is responsible for all errors that occur in the speech of an L2 learner. However, they all agree that there is one area where interference plays a remarkable role. Burgschmidt and Götz (1974: 124) mention that the highest degree of interference can be found in phonology, the lowest in lexis. Dulay et al. (1982: 96) come to the same conclusion and stress that the greatest impact is observable in accent rather than, for instance, syntax. James (1988: 30) provides one possible reason for this. Learning a new sound system also involves the changing of patterns of articulation and perception. Consequently, a new physiological behaviour has to be acquired – a task that does

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not seem to be as easy to fulfil as, for example, changing cognitive patterns when learning a foreign language´s syntax. It is assumed that most of the errors found in the speech of the ten informants are interference errors. As mentioned, however, it is not the aim of this study to find out which errors are in fact interference errors and which ones are developmental errors, but merely to present an insight into the pronunciation of the students. As a basis for learning the L2, the learner draws on his or her already existing L1 phonology and will therefore transfer sounds from the mother tongue to the foreign language (see Dulay et al. 1982: 112). One major problem of contrastive phonology is the inability to predict all errors. It is difficult to say why a certain sound is substituted instead of another. Thus, it remains unknown why German native speakers mostly substitute English / S/ with [s] and [d], respectively, and not with [f] or [t]. One can consequently only tell what sound is more likely to be substituted (see Burgschmidt and Götz 1974: 199).

3.4 The Ontogeny Model of SLA

In CA, the so-called ‘Ontogeny Model of Second Language Acquisition’ is central. As mentioned, CA believed in the beginning that interference alone was responsible for a foreign accent. In the course of time, however, linguists have realised that not all errors could be explained by interference. There is another possible source of errors beside interference from the mother tongue which can be attributed to developmental factors. These errors concern substitutions made by the adult learner which are also found in the target language of children who acquire it as their mother tongue (cf. Hieke 1986: 207). Major (1986: 216-7) claims that at the early stage of second language acquisition interference is predominant. Then interference decreases and developmental processes come to the fore but soon diminish. Unfortunately, this does not mean that learners finally become native-like as the majority of second language learners after puberty fossilise. Eventually, it is either interference or the developmental processes which prevail. According to Archibald (1998: 4), this concept of the two different kinds of errors – transfer errors and developmental errors – is also referred to as the ‘Ontogeny Model of SLA’.

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3.5 Influencing Factors

In this chapter those factors will be mentioned which probably have most influence on a learner´s performance of the L2, especially regarding phonology. According to Piske et al. (2001: 195), there are seven factors that predominantly influence the pronunciation of an L2 learner: age of L2 learning, gender, formal instruction, length of residence in an L2-speaking environment, motivation, language learning aptitude and amount of L1/L2 use. However, Piske et al. (2001: 197ff) also mention that studies carried out in order to find out about the validity of these influencing factors have shown differing results. For this reason they shall be discussed here only briefly. Edmondson (2006: 178) mentions that, according to some studies, the imitation of sounds works better in children than in adults. Consequently, learning a second language early in life is more likely to lead to native-like pronunciation. Juhász (1970: 29-30) mentions backslides in the learner´s second language that may happen if he or she has not spoken the foreign language for a longer period of time as well as if he or she is simply nervous, tired or confused. For that reason it would be wrong to see second language acquisition as something linear. Ternes (1976: 79) refers to the emotional or mental state of the learner as ‘psychological factors’. These influences such as tiredness, poor concentration and the like are difficult to predict and may vary significantly among individuals and at different points in time. Age of learning a second language is another important influencing factor. It has been claimed by numerous researchers that acquiring an L2 fully and natively requires its acquisition before the so-called ‘critical period’. Otherwise, native proficiency is not possible. This claim is referred to as ‘Critical Period Hypothesis’. However, there is much debate among linguists when the critical period ends and whether there is one at all (see Major 2001: 7). Some linguists developed the hypothesis that each linguistic ability has its own critical period, the first ability affected being pronunciation (Piske et al. 2001: 195). Following this hypothesis and the critical period hypothesis in general leads one to assume the importance of age for learning a second language. However, Piske et al. (2001: 197) hint at the fact that there has not been any study so far which proves that learning an L2 before puberty will in all cases lead to accent-free pronunciation. Nor has any study shown that learners inevitably have a foreign accent when

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they start learning the second language after puberty. These considerations show how complex the topic is and how heterogeneous the results of present studies are. Learning a second language after the age of about nine years is linked to difficulties. From then on, learning an L2 is always based on the already acquired first language and thus its forms and conceptualisations. Another restriction on second language learning concerns the lack of time and motivation involved. Even under the best conditions, such as living in the foreign country and with good motivation, accent-free performance of the foreign language cannot be achieved (see Burgschmidt and Götz 1974: 115). Burgschmidt and Götz (1974: 16) are also of the opinion that starting to learn a second language after eight or ten years of age inhibits one’s performance. They mention another factor that makes native-like speech difficult – the learning situation. The situation in which the pupils learn the language is not a real but artificial one and the teacher him- or herself is usually not a native speaker of the foreign language (cf. Burgschmidt and Götz 1974: 16). Furthermore, when pupils talk among themselves they only listen to an L2 that is influenced by the mother tongue. Ellis (1994: 265) refers to this kind of talk as ‘interlanguage talk’. Under conditions like these, Dulay et al. (1982: 109) claim that there is almost no other option but to draw on the structures of the mother tongue. Richards (1978b: 88) claims that those pupils who actually manage to speak English without a foreign accent succeed due to personal effort and aptitude and not because of the school system. In addition to all the above-mentioned influencing factors, Nickel (1992: 218) mentions that personality also often plays a role. Learners that are inhibited and introverted, for instance, show more elements of interference than extroverted learners. This holds particularly for situations where one has to reply spontaneously and comes also to the fore regarding over-compensation and hypercorrectness. So-called ‘phonetic ability tests’ showed that achieving better pronunciation is mainly due to the acceptance and usage of the foreign sound by the speaker rather than his or her aptitude ( see Burgschmidt and Götz 1974: 200-1). Dretzke (1998: 181) summarizes the main factors influencing the pronunciation of an L2 by saying:

There is further evidence that the cause of errors is manifold. Errors can have psychomotoric causes (ie difficulties in articulation) or cognitive causes (ie lack of knowledge of how to pronounce a word). They can also be induced by the classroom situation in general, by other students or even the teachers themselves,

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by the media (presenting ‘German English’ on TV and the radio for example), by random guessing, by total lack of knowledge etc. One´s personality including intelligence, motivation and attitude, certain learning strategies and communicative strategies as well as one´s particular physical and psychological state of mind can also play a dominant role in the production of errors.

3.6 Other Varieties and Languages

In addition to the standard variety of the mother tongue, regional and socio-(regional) dialects can also be a source of interference (cf. Burgschmidt and Götz 1974: 128). The heterogeneity of the population, especially in terms of phonetics, leads to seemingly insurmountable obstacles. The linguist would have to consider all the dialects of the informants, which practically cannot be fulfilled so he or she must generalise the different accents by using the standard variety for comparison (see Burgschmidt and Götz 1974: 199). The latter solution was also used for the present study (see empirical study for further information). Kettemann and Viereck (1983: 73-4) mention that interference from the dialect of the mother tongue may also lead to positive transfer, where features found in the dialect but not in the standard variety of the mother tongue are transferred to the second language. For example, the diphthongs [e H] and [o T] are found in both the Styrian dialect and the English language. It should also be mentioned that in addition to the mother tongue and its regional and social varieties, all other languages the learner knows may also be a source of interference (cf. Corder 1992: 27). The scope of the present study, however, does not allow for the consideration of any other languages except the mother tongue.

3.7 Approximating Native Proficiency

As we have already seen there are numerous influencing factors to be found that may play a role in a learner´s pronunciation of an L2, among them aptitude, motivation, age of learning the L2 and many more. It may well be, however, that the difficulty in achieving native-like pronunciation is not only attributed to errors in production but also errors in perception. This would then be closely linked to the mental presentation of sounds (Major 1986: 220). If this holds true one could assume that through improving the perception and recognition of foreign sounds, their articulation could be ameliorated as well. Lado (1957: 11) states that the learner of a foreign language does not in fact hear the foreign sounds but his or her own. As a

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consequence, he or she is not aware of phonemic differences unless his or her mother tongue contains similar phonemic differences. The question of the extent to which perception plays a role in native proficiency, however, will not be pursued any further in this study but merely remains a remark. Major (2001: 12) names four conditions that must be fulfilled when an L2 learner wants to achieve phonological native proficiency: individual segments (the respective phonemes), combinations of segments (producing syllables), prosody (including stress, rhythm, tone and intonation) and a so-called global accent (overall accent). The analysis of the recordings that follows in the second part of this paper is concerned with the first two of the conditions mentioned. Whether or not native speakers perceive a learner as a native mostly depends on the length of the conversation. It frequently occurs that when only articulating a couple of segments, the learner is perceived as a native speaker. As soon as he or she utters more segments and phrases where prosodic features come to the fore, the learner is immediately recognized as a non-native. In phonology the learner has one major disadvantage: while it is possible to evade certain elements in, for example, syntax, one cannot avoid any phenomena in phonology (cf. Major 2001: 19). Reaching L2 native-like proficiency is extraordinarily difficult – even under perfect acquisition conditions. It has been shown that learners sometimes manage to achieve that goal in the written but not usually in the spoken language. Consequently, it seems that areas such as lexis and syntax of an L2 lead to fewer learning difficulties than phonology (see Yule 2003: 191). It may as well be, however, that the learner of the L2 does not want to attain native-like proficiency in the phonology of the target language. Many learners are aware of the fact they have a foreign accent but they do not consider it important and hence concentrate on grammar and vocabulary. Cruttenden (1994: 273) distinguishes between three different levels of phonetic intelligibility. The first one is the so-called ‘minimum general intelligibility’ where the L2 learner uses elements that correspond to some extent to the phonemic system of RP. If the listener knows about the context of the message and has become accustomed to the learner´s accent he or she will be able to understand the meaning. The level of ‘high acceptability’, in contrast, applies when the speaker has native-like pronunciation, including all areas of phonetics – the segmental as well as the suprasegmental. The level that is the most

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unsatisfactory and undesirable of the three is called ‘restricted intelligibility’. Here the learner does not attempt to imitate any natural model. Dulay et al. (1982: 4) claim that learners of a foreign language only attempt to imitate the variety of English, for instance, American English, they think is worth copying. This decision is either made consciously or unconsciously. Regardless of whether a speaker makes an effort to improve his or her accent, if the speaker has a foreign accent it often leaves an unpleasant impression on the native listener. Dretzke (1998: 18) states that “German English often sounds hard, domineering, guttural, and harsh and can lead to prejudice and reinforce national stereotypes”.

3.8 Categorisation of Errors

Kufner (1971: 36-58) distinguishes between four different types of problems that may arise in the phonology of an L2 learner: phonemic problems, phonetic problems, allophonic problems and distributional problems. By ‘phonemic problems’ he means the transfer of phonemic elements from one language to another. The result is sound substitution – for example, the substitution of /w/ by [v] by a German native speaker learning English. ‘Phonetic problems’, in contrast, are those that also lead to sound substitution but do not cause misunderstandings. For example, when pronouncing the English word red with an apical /r/ there is no risk of understanding a different word. ‘Allophonic problems’ occur when a wrong allophone is used in the L2 and thus the allophonic rules of that language are violated. An example of this problem is the lack of aspiration of /p,t/ in the speech of Austrians speaking English. ‘Distributional problems’, finally, are related to the occurrence of a sound in a particular position within the word. German native speakers thus have difficulties pronouncing the consonant cluster / Sr/ as in thrive . Another categorisation of interference errors in phonology is made by Weinreich (1968: 18-9). He distinguishes between four types: under-differentiation, over-differentiation, reinterpretation and actual phone substitution. ‘Under-differentiation’ applies when the learner confuses two sounds in the L2 whose counterparts lack distinction in the L1. ‘Over- differentiation’, in contrast, occurs when the learner transfers phonemic distinctions from the L1 to the L2, where no such distinctions should be made. The third error is ‘reinterpretation of distinctions’. Here again the learner distinguishes phonemes which are redundant in the L2 but relevant in the L1. The last error type is ‘actual phone substitution’, which occurs in 13

phonemes that are identical by definition but which are pronounced differently. An example of phone substitution is the use of apical /r/ instead of uvular /r/. There are three more interference errors, the first being not an interlingual but an intralingual error. ‘Intralingual errors’ do not have their source in the mother tongue but describe “generalizations based on partial exposure to the target language” (see Richards and Sampson 1978: 6). ‘Overgeneralisation’ applies when the learner uses a structure according to his knowledge of other structures in the L2 (cf. Richards 1978a: 174). Levenston (1971: 115) mentions two more errors found in non-native speech. ‘Over-indulgence’ occurs when the learner uses structures excessively, whereas ‘underrepresentation’ describes the exclusion of structures in the L2.

3.9 Pedagogical Considerations

As the pedagogical aspect of second language phonology is not central in this study, only some brief remarks shall be provided in this chapter. In order to come as close to native proficiency as possible, the learner, naturally, has to acquire the phonology of the second language. For this reason second language instruction must include phonology as well, instead of merely focusing on syntax, lexis and semantics. The first impression the learner makes is mainly dependent on his or her pronunciation. Especially at university-level, providing good pronunciation instruction is crucial (cf. Dalton- Puffer 1997: 115). Cruttenden (1994: 288) also stresses this point by adding:

What is clear is that, in teaching pronunciation, we are concerned especially with imparting motor and auditory skills rather than with inculcating the kind of logical ability such as may be involved in the acquisition of a new syntax.

The subject of English has become deeply rooted in Austrian classrooms. It is already at primary level that pupils usually first make contact with the English language. Later on, in secondary school, English even becomes the most important foreign language to learn, besides one or more other languages. When the pupils enter university, they, consequently, have had ten years of English instruction (see Dalton-Puffer 1997: 115). In recent times, pronunciation in second language teaching has gained more attention than previously. However, it is still not frequently the subject-matter of discussion and its teaching is mostly poor (cf. Eckman et al. 2003: 169).

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When choosing English as their major subject at university, the students have an additional three to five years of English training – depending on whether they do the Bachelor or Master´s Degree. Dalton-Puffer (1997: 115-6) mentions that pronunciation courses at Austrian universities implicitly aim at achieving a native-like accent in the students. In most cases the target variety drawn on is Received Pronunciation or General American. These considerations may lead one to assume that the level of proficiency of Austrian English university students must be extraordinarily good by the time they are about to finish their studies. After graduation they are expected to have a very good command of the English language, including syntax, lexis and phonology. Regarding their mastery of English phonology, we will find out later on whether the ten selected students will manage to fulfil these expectations. Marton (1981: 157-65) argues that regarding Contrastive Analysis used or applied in the classroom, many researchers and teachers have pessimistic views. Some teachers even attribute no value at all to CA. One of the reasons for this disappointment lies in the limitations in its predictability of errors. But Marton mentions a few more reasons why teachers often disapprove of CA entering the pedagogical sphere. In the end, however, he stresses the importance of CA being applied to pedagogy. Together with error analysis, explaining and systematizing teaching is made possible. While EA merely shows errors, CA provides additional linguistic interpretation and explains why errors occur.

4 Two Sound Systems compared

It has been shown that it is easier to learn a second language which is similar to the mother tongue. If the two languages are very different it will be more difficult for the learner to learn the L2 (cf. Corder 1992: 21). For instance, it will be easier for a native-speaker of German to learn another Germanic language such as English rather than Chinese. The relationship between source language and target language is not a static but a dynamic one. Ternes (1976: 10) talks about constant interaction of ‘proactive’ and ‘retroactive’ transfer, meaning that the native language affects the target language and vice versa. Language, of course, varies much depending on the situational context. Dickersen (1986: 121), states, for instance, that the more attention that is paid to speech and the more formal a communicative situation is, the more standard markers are used by the speaker. 15

Consequently, an interview, passage or word-list reading contains more standard markers than casual speech. This holds true for native as well as non-native speech. Mach (1971: 103) differentiates between two kinds of production errors. There are errors that merely lead to a foreign accent and then there are errors that result in a change in meaning of the respective word. Within the present study it was assumed that due to the good command of English of the students, the second error type would not occur in any of them. It will be seen in the empirical part of the paper whether this assumption will turn out to be true. The language researcher often has difficulties in telling whether an error is a transfer or developmental error. An example is the tendency of a German native speaker to devoice final obstruents in English. This phenomenon can both be found in German and in the speech of English native children. Major, who invented the Ontogeny Model of SLA, refers to those errors as developmental errors which cannot be directly attributed to the mother tongue (cf. Archibald 1998: 4). As the study would have been too extensive, it was decided to only analyse the ‘segmental’ level, not the ‘suprasegmental’ level, of Austrian students´ pronunciation of English. Consequently, the phonological segments such as consonants and vowels were analysed and not the prosody of their speech like stress, intonation and rhythm (see also Archibald 1998: 8). In the chapters to follow the sound systems of the two main target varieties, Received Pronunciation and General American, will be contrasted with the ones of Standard German and Standard Austrian German respectively. The aim of this is to provide a background for the evaluation of the corpus-linguistic analysis following in the empirical part. At the end of the chapter hypotheses will be formulated regarding the expected deviations found in the speech of the Austrian students. Again, it will be shown in chapter III - the empirical part - whether these hypotheses have been upheld or must be discarded.

4.1 Varieties Chosen

A few brief remarks shall be made concerning the varieties that were chosen for comparison. Austrian students at KF-University, Graz, usually lean towards one or the other variety of English through the course of their studies. In most cases they choose between British English and American English. In some rare cases other national varieties of English are used as a target variety such as Scottish English or Australian English. Since the ten informants for this

16

study have either no model they try to imitate or have chosen British or American English as their target variety, no further national varieties will be taken into consideration. The terms ‘Received Pronunciation’ and ‘General American’ shall be defined briefly as they are central for this study. ‘Received pronunciation’ is an English accent that is not attributable to any particular area in the country. ‘General American’ is the American equivalent to this non-localizable accent (see Wells 1982a: 10). Ebner (2008: 7) argues that the Standard form of a language is the one used in public and found in the dictionaries. These two Standard varieties will be contrasted with the German equivalents – the Standard pronunciations of German German and Austrian German, respectively. It was necessary to use the standard versions of the four varieties as the study would otherwise have been too time-consuming and extensive. This inevitably leads to generalisations as the local accents of the informants could not be taken into consideration. It has to be mentioned, however, that the results did not show any phenomena that could directly be attributed to a local accent anyway. So in the chapters to follow whenever the terms ‘German German’ or ‘Austrian German’ occur, I mean the standard pronunciation form of the two varieties even when this is not explicitly stated. König and Gast (2007: 8) discuss the similarities and differences between the German and English phonology. The sound systems of the two languages are comparatively complex. The consonant systems are classified in a similar way and correspond to a substantial degree. So does phonotactics. The structures of the vowel systems, in contrast, are totally different. The following chapters are structured in such a way that first consonant and vowel charts will be displayed and secondly, additional explanations on the respective varieties will be provided. As already mentioned only the segmental level of the two languages will be compared, leaving out all prosodic features.

4.2 RP and GA 4.2.1 Received Pronunciation 4.2.1.1 The Vowels

Table 1 and Table 2 (on the next page) show the monophthongs and diphthongs of Received Pronunciation.

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position RD TN V ex. front close - + /i 9/ feel - - /H/ fill open-mid - - /D/ bed open - - /æ/ bad /e H/ fail central open-mid - + /2/ sir /a H/ hide

open - - // but /NH / foil back open - + /@9 / spa /?T/ bode

+ - /
/ got /a T/ bowed open-mid + + /N9 / law /H?/ peer close + + /u 9/ shoe /e ?/ bared + - /T/ full /T?/ poor

Table 1. The monophthongs of RP 4 Table 2. The diphthongs of RP 5

Table 1 lists all monophthongs occurring in RP. Additional information is provided such as the position of the tongue, whether the monophthong is rounded and whether it is tense. The phonetic transcription used here and throughout the paper is IPA. The last column lists examples for each monophthong. In table 2 RP´s diphthongs are listed, again with examples. One remark must be made regarding the diphthongisation of monophthongs in RP. According to acoustic measurements, /i 9/ as in see and seat is diphthongised in English (cf. Kufner 1971: 71). This feature, however, will not be analysed in the speech of the Austrian students.

4.2.1.2 The Consonants

The consonant system of Received Pronunciation is summarized in Table 3 on the next page.

4 cf. König and Gast (2007: 23) 5 cf. Cruttenden (1994: 88) 18

labial apical dorsal bilabial labio- apico- alveolar post- retroflex palatal velar uvular glottal dental dental alveolar E P p b t d k g F f v S C s z R Y h A tR dY N m n M L l

G w  , ± j T

Table 3. The consonants of RP 6

Table 3 shows all consonants of RP, categorising them according to their place and manner of articulation. The abbreviations P, F, A, N, L, G and T stand for plosive, fricative, affricate, nasal, lateral, glide and trill, respectively. E stands for English. The shading of the cells in the chart indicates those phonemes that are different in German and English. The shading behind S and C, for instance, shows that the respective sounds do not exist in German, while the grey area below k and g refers to the fact that there are sounds in this position in German that are missing in English. Having a look at the consonant systems of English and German shows the lack of B - x - W in the former. However, Kufner (1971: 31) claims that native speakers of English sometimes produce [k x] when highly emphasising. In addition to the above-mentioned phenomena, there are further features that may or may not be found in the speech of an RP speaker but which are quite common. Among them is, for instance, the reinforcement of the voiceless plosives /p,t,k/ and /t R/, respectively, by a glottal closure. Here the mouth is closed at the same time or after the glottis is closed. This phenomenon is mostly to be observed in syllable-final position following a nasal, lateral or vowel and a break or a consonant. Examples are the words limp , bank , melt and searched .

6 cf. König and Gast (2007: 14) 19

Instead of reinforcement the voiceless plosives may also be completely substituted by [ >] when occurring syllable-finally. The /t/-sound, for example, is frequently substituted by [ >] when a homorganic 7 consonant follows as in get down but also preceding other plosives like in football (see Cruttenden 1994: 155). Word-final /p,t,k/ are usually realised as unreleased [p t k] in English. However, one can also observe released versions of these consonants. The German native speaker therefore may release /p,t,k/ in final position but should avoid aspiration (cf. Kufner 1971: 54). There is one further process that may happen to /t/ in RP. Some speakers aspirate the consonant so much that it actually changes into the affricate [ts]. An example is the word tea [!tsi 9\ (cf. Kufner 1971: 33). In the analysis of the ten Austrian informants particular attention was paid to the devoicing of final consonants. As will be shown, final devoicing is a common feature of the German language. The final consonants /d/ and /t/ in the words Rad and Rat are thus both devoiced and become homophones. 8 Final devoicing is a hindrance for the German native speaker who learns English as an L2. English contains numerous words that have final voiced consonants but unlike in German they are usually not devoiced. We will see in how far the Austrian students tried to overcome their habit of final devoicing in English. It must be mentioned, however, that even within the English language devoicing may happen in certain situations and positions. Cruttenden (1994: 175) argues that in English full voicing of /b,d,g,v, C,z, Y,cY / only occurs word-medially between voiced sounds. Word-initially and word-finally devoicing is often observed in the speech of English native speakers. Cruttenden (1994: 166) also mentions common devoicing of /v/ when occurring word-finally before a word starting with a voiceless consonant such as in have some . This may even lead to complete elision of /v/. Every German native speaker learning English may encounter difficulties when trying to pronounce English consonant clusters. Clusters like / Ss/ and / Cz/ frequently lead to frustration. However, even native speakers of English often have difficulties articulating the consonant combination and therefore sometimes omit / S/ and / C/ altogether such as in the

7 Sounds are called ‘homorganic’ when they have the same place of articulation. For instance, /t,d,n/ are homorganic (Eckert and Barry 2005: 100) 8 ‘Homophones’ are forms which have the same pronunciation (Yule 2003: 120).

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words clothes /kl ?Tz/ and months /m nts/ (see Cruttenden 1994: 168). Some speakers of RP omit /h/ at the beginning of words. This feature is often considered as uneducated. However, in some function words like in have , has , had , pronominal adjectives and pronouns, this feature is accepted in connected speech (see Cruttenden 1994: 174). According to Thomas (1958: 137), the same applies to GA where it is common to omit word-initial /h/. Lengthening and shortening of sounds will not be dealt with here as it goes beyond the scope of this study.

4.2.1.3 Connected Speech

Words that are pronounced in isolation naturally have different realisations than in connected speech. In the former case they are quantitatively and qualitatively fully realised, whereas in the latter they are affected by neutralisation, elision, assimilation and weakening (see Dretzke 1998: 102). Cruttenden (1994: 267) argues that connected speech contains features that are usual in the fluent and normal speech of English native speakers. If such features were missing a highly artificial impression would be left on the listener. Some of the most frequent features of connected speech shall receive mention here. Since the Old English period, English phonemes have constantly been omitted and vowels obscured. In present day English this phenomenon is also observed and leads to contraction. Recent cases of elision are particularly found in colloquial and rapid speech so that, for example, the word satisfactory may be pronounced /sæs !fæktr H/. Elements of speech that are frequently affected by elision are unaccented syllables. Here the vowel often turns into / ?/ and / H/, respectively (see Cruttenden 1994: 213-4). Crystal (2001: 247) names the most frequent words where this phenomenon can be observed: that , his , and , from, to , there , have , must , do , were , some , of . He calls these forms ‘weak forms’, in contrast to the ‘strong forms’ that occur in isolated words. Burgschmidt and Götz (1974: 213) state that the weakening of vowels in present day English strongly correlates to speech velocity. The faster native speakers of English speak the more forms are weakened.

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In colloquial speech another phenomenon can be observed – coalescence of /t,d,s,z/ with /j/. It mainly occurs at word boundaries as in What you want /w
tRT w
nt.../ (see Cruttenden 1994: 260). Received Pronunciation is known as a variety of English which does not realise the post-vocalic /r/. There is one case, however, where it is in fact retained, namely preceding a vowel. This phenomenon is also referred to as the ‘linking-/r/’. There are two more consonants that may be affected by linking: /j/ and /w/. A ‘linking-/j/’ may occur after words ending in /i 9/, / H/, /e H/, /a H/, or / NH / as in my arms [ma Hj@9 mz]. A ‘linking-/w/’ may be observed when /u 9/, / ?T/ or /a T/ is followed by a vowel such as in window open [w Hnd ?Tv?Tp?n] (cf. Cruttenden 1994: 262-4). The last two linking consonants will not be analysed in the informants. The linking-/r/ is also found in positions where there is no /r/ in the orthography. Examples are the words Russia and China , an /r/ being inserted between and . This kind of /r/ is also referred to as an ‘intrusive-/r/’ (cf. Dretzke 1998: 66). According to Dretzke (1998), ‘neutralisation’ occurs when phonemes of words are not distinctive anymore. This only happens in particular environments. An example is the phenomenon of final devoicing in German that has already been mentioned above. Another common feature of connected speech is ‘assimilation’. This phenomenon applies when a sound is influenced by another sound and consequently, the two sounds become more and more similar or even identical. Regarding the degree of assimilation, one differentiates between ‘partial assimilation’ and ‘total assimilation’. ‘Partial assimilation’ occurs when a sound becomes similar to another and only adopts one feature like in ten cups

/te M kps/. In the case of ‘total assimilation’, in contrast, a sound fully takes on the form of another sound. An example is ten marks /tem m @9 ks/ (see Dretzke 1998: 109-10). According to Thomas (1958: 175), assimilation can also affect the voicing of sounds. The phrase used to, when denoting former customs, is a good example, where double assimilation takes place – [juzd] turns into [just] due to the influence of the following [t]. Thomas discusses this phenomenon for General American. The same applies to the phrases have to and has to when denoting compulsion. Although I did not find any writers stating that this would be the case for Received Pronunciation as well, I am of the opinion that one can also transfer the feature to RP.

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Another phenomenon often observed in the speech of English native speakers is consonant cluster reduction. According to James and Leather (1986: 49), this phenomenon of connected speech can affect two-consonant clusters or three-consonant clusters. Examples are kind of [ka Hn?v] and landlord [læn.l Nrd], respectively. The last feature of connected speech that shall be mentioned is ‘breathed onset deletion’ which describes the deletion of initial /h/ as in tell him [t D.l Hm] (see James and Leather 1986: 49).

4.2.2 General American

It is not necessary to present the features of General American in the same manner as was done with Received Pronunciation, i.e. in the form of tables. As the majority of the features are identical with those of RP, it will suffice to briefly describe the differences.

4.2.2.1 The Vowels

Cruttenden (1994: 84) states that the back vowel /
9/ is missing in GA. Words containing that vowel have either / @9 / as in spot and bottle or / N9 / as in gone and often . The vowel / @9 / is usually pronounced /æ/ in GA when followed by a voiceless fricative or a nasal preceding a consonant – an example being past . Taking a look at the diphthongs of GA, one realises that it lacks the three RP diphthongs / H?,e ?,T?/. Instead of the Schwa-sound, speakers of General American pronounce the post- vocalic /r/ (see Cruttenden 1994: 84). 9 According to Dretzke (1998: 16), there is a certain tendency in GA to monophthongise /e H/ and /o T/ as in the words nation and home . This habit is also referred to as ‘smoothing’. In the analysis of the Austrian informants, however, it will not be considered as it cannot be ascertained whether its source is GA or simply wrong Austrian German pronunciation. Another peculiarity can be found in GA that concerns its diphthongs. Wherever RP has / ?T/, GA has /o T/ (cf. König and Gast 2007: 27-8). Again this difference

9 In his book Gimson´s Pronunciation of English (1994) Cruttenden deals with the pronunciation of English formulated by Gimson. He fully preserves what Gimson wrote in An Introduction to the Pronunciation of English and only adds some of his own comments.

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will not be considered in the analysis of the informants. Where RP has / @9 / GA has / 29 r/ in some words such as, for instance, clerk and Berkely. The same applies to RP / r/ as in hurricane , nourish and curry (see Dretzke 1998: 169). As it is not expected that a significant number of words of that kind will occur in the informants´ recordings, it will be left out of the analysis. Whenever there is /i 9/ in Received Pronunciation, General American has /i/. This applies to almost all cases. Examples are sleeve and people (cf. Wells 1982: 122). As the length of sounds was not among the categories to be analysed in the study - unless really significant length mistakes were made by the informants – this information merely remains an interesting remark. Thomas (1958: 91) argues that GA frequently has an “overtense, overlong, overnasalized” [æ] as in the words bad , and , land . This feature is referred to as a nasal twang by Kufner (1971: 73). Bronstein (1960: 155) mentions another realisation of the same vowel: the raising towards / D/. Phoneticians either transcribe the realised vowel [æ “?] or [æ “?]. The raising of [æ “] in General American needs further explanation. Bronstein (1960: 152-3) adds that the realisation of this vowel is not made consistently – not in the same region nor in a particular individual. The author continues by providing numerous different usages of the three variants in different regions and words. This would seem to suggest that one cannot make generalisations concerning the use of [æ]. Among the Austrian students there are also two who use GA as their target variety. In order to find out whether words containing this vowel are pronounced correctly or incorrectly by the AE students I will stick to the dictionary´s phonetic transcription as there seems to be a large amount of ambiguity concerning the topic.

4.2.2.2 The Consonants

The /r/-sound may be realised differently by a speaker of General American compared to an RP speaker. Many speakers of GA, for instance, curl the tip of the tongue further backwards, This realisation of /r/ is represented by the IPA symbol [ ±]. When occurring between vowels /t/ is commonly realised as a tap in GA ([ 3]) like in better (see Cruttenden 1994: 84). 10

10 The different realisations of /r/ in English will be all transcribed with [r] in the paper.

The tap [ 3] is also often referred to as a ‘flap’ as in Yule (2003: 56) and this will also be done in the paper.

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According to Kufner (1971: 55-6), this peculiarity of GA also occurs after /r/, /l/ ( filter , sorted ) and sometimes after /n/ ( winter ). Regarding the latter position, the flap may even be omitted. The students´ English will not be analysed according to whether they use the British or American realisation of /r/. The use of the dark [ 4] wherever the phoneme /l/ occurs is also quite common, i.e. also before vowels where RP has clear [l] (cf. Cruttenden 1994: 84). This phenomenon will not be analysed as it goes beyond the scope of this study. When following /t,d/, /j/ is usually elided by the GA speaker such as in the words tunic , duty (see Cruttenden 1994: 192). Dretzke (1998: 169) refers to this phenomenon as ‘Yod dropping’. Unlike RP speakers, speakers of General American pronounce the post-vocalic /r/. As a consequence the word form would be pronounced /f Nrm/ by a GA speaker and /f N9 m/ by an RP speaker (see Wells 1982: 125-6). Another common feature of GA is its weakening or even omission of /d/, particularly when it occurs after [n] or [l] or around a second [d]. Examples are land , old and candidate (cf. Thomas 1958: 49). Kenyon (1982: 127) states that another feature of GA speech is the voicing of [t] after nonsyllabic [l] and [n] as in twenty [tw DntÍH]. The devoicing of consonants in GA is more complex and is discussed in Bronstein (1960: 83-94). He attributes partial devoicing to /v/ and / C/ when phrase-initially or –finally. Complete devoicing of /z/ is only found at the end of a phrase, while completely devoicing / Y/ and /dY/ when occurring phrase-finally accounts for substandard speech. When comparing these statements with the ones made on devoicing in RP one can clearly see how complex the whole topic of devoicing by native speakers of English is. It is often hard to detect a certain pattern native speakers follow, probably because there is none. For this reason devoicing can maybe be considered not the worst error made by English-L2 learners. Bronstein (1960: 85) argues that in rapid speech native speakers of English may substitute / C/ and / S/ with the dentally realised /d/ and /t/, respectively. Consequently, this feature is not only found in the speech of non-native speakers of English but of native- speakers as well. Initial voiceless plosives are aspirated more strongly in British English than in Standard German. American English speakers, however, aspirate less than speakers of

25

Standard German. Even within the German language there is a big variety of aspirated plosives to be found. Northern dialects aspirate more than southern varieties, among them also Austrian German which completely lacks aspiration (cf. König and Gast 2007: 15-6). Speakers of American English, furthermore, may produce affricates in words like try and dry so they turn into / !tRrai/ and / !dYrai/ (see Kufner 1971: 34). Although no statements could be found on whether this phenomenon also occurs in RP, I assume that this is the case. Therefore, I will not deal affrication of /t/ and /d/ as a variety phenomenon.

4.3 Standard German and Standard Austrian Pronunciation

In the following couple of paragraphs errors will be mentioned and discussed that frequently occur in the English of German native speakers. In this and the next chapter (4.3.1) only those errors will be dealt with that concern all native speakers of German, whereas chapter 4.3.2 discusses features typical for Austrian German. Some features of connected speech will be discussed as well but not dealt with as a separate chapter.

4.3.1 Standard German Pronunciation 4.3.1.1 The Vowels

position RD TN V ex. front close - + /i 9/ Stiehl - - /H/ still + + /y 9/ fühlen + - füllen /X/ close-mid - + /e 9/ hehlen + + /19 / Höhlen + - /8/ Höllen open-mid - + /D9 / Stähle - - /D/ Fällen central open - + /a 9/ Bahnen /a H/ Reihe - - /a/ bannen back close-mid/ + + /n9 / Wohle /a T/ Rauhe open-mid + - /N/ Wolle close + + /u 9/ buhlen /NX / Reue + - /T/ Bullen

Table 4. The monophthongs of Standard German 11 Table 5. The diphthongs of Standard German 12 11 cf. König and Gast (2007: 22) 12 cf. Hakkarainen (1995: 31)

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Table 4 and Table 5 show the monophthongs and diphthongs found in Standard German. The charts are structured in the same way as Table 1 and Table 2. In this chapter the terms ‘German’ and ‘Standard German’ are used interchangeably. Wherever Austrian German pronunciation is discussed this will be explicitly stated. In all other chapters of the paper ‘German’ refers to the German language and not a particular national variety. Standard German is also referred to as ‘German German’. Dretzke (1998: 45-69) names three English diphthongs that could lead to wrong pronunciations by the German native speaker: / H?,T?+e?/. The second element of all three diphthongs may be substituted by / 5/. In addition, the first element in /e ?/ is sometimes replaced by /e 9/. According to Swan and Smith (2001: 38), the two diphthongs / ?T/ and /e H/ may be monophthongised by the German speaker and thus turned into /o:/ and /e:/, respectively. A typical mistake made by the German native speaker learning English is the realisation of /æ/. As can be seen in Table 4, the German vowel system lacks this vowel. It therefore is usually replaced by / D/ or /e/ (cf. Dretzke 1998: 38). Furthermore, German speakers frequently replace /a/ with // (see Avery and Ehrlich 1992: 125) and substitute /o 9/ for / N9 / (see Swan and Smith 2001: 38). The connected speech phenomenon ‘elision’ applies when sounds in words are omitted (cf. Dretzke 1998: 111). Another difference concerns the height of vowels. The close vowels of German are higher than the ones of English and / D/ is usually pronounced higher in German than in English. For this reason, linguists frequently use /e/ in order to refer to the English vowel as in, for instance, bet . (see König and Gast 2007: 26). In the paper /D/ will be used, however, to indicate the English close-mid vowel to avoid the risk of confusing it with German /e/.

4.3.1.2 The Consonants

In the same manner as with the consonants of RP, the consonant system of Standard German is summarised in Table 6, on the next page.

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labial Apical Dorsal bilabial labio- apico- alveolar post- retroflex palatal velar Uvular glottal dental dental alveolar G P p b t d k g F f v s z R 'Y( B - x - W h A pf ts tR (d Y( N m n M L l G j T R

Table 6. The Consonants of Standard German 13

Again, the consonants are categorised according to place and manner of articulation. Grey cells indicate differences between the German and English phonology. G stands for German. In the following paragraphs typical pronunciation errors are discussed that occur in the speech of the German native speaker when speaking English. In chapter 4.3.2 we will then see what particular problems the Austrian German native speaker has in English. Naturally, not every possible error can be taken into consideration but rather those that are the most common ones. It has already been mentioned that native speakers of German have problems voicing word-final consonants. No difficulties should arise, however, in voicing consonants in other positions. This does not apply to /d Y/ - a sound which is missing in the German sound system. It is frequently substituted by /t R/ (see Avery and Ehrlich 1992: 124). 14 According to Swan and Smith (2001: 39), / Y,d Y,z,v,b,d,g/ cannot be found word-finally in German and are frequently substituted with their voiceless counterparts. As the interdental consonants / S/ and / C/ are not part of German phonology, they are

13 cf. König and Gast (2007: 14) 14 Avery and Ehrlich compare the German sound system to the one of American English. The difficulties German native speakers have that are discussed here also apply to a comparison between German and British English.

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usually replaced by /s/ and /z/, respectively (cf. Avery and Ehrlich 1992: 124). Kufner (1971: 42-3) adds another possible substitution of / S/ and / C/, namely by /f/ and /d/, respectively. Avery and Ehrlich (1992: 124) state that native speakers of German tend to replace /w/ by [v] as German lacks the former consonant. Some allophonic problems can also be observed when comparing the two sound systems. Pronouncing English /r/, for instance, may lead to problems. German speakers may either substitute it by uvular or trilled /r/ (see Avery and Ehrlich 1992: 124). Swan and Smith (2001: 39) mention that in German there is no distinction between ‘dark’ /l/ and ‘clear’ /l/ as there is in English. German students may use clear /l/ in all positions. The opposition between /s/ and /z/ only exists word-medially, not word-initially or – finally (see Busse and Görlach 2002: 21). As already mentioned, another characteristic of German native speakers is to transfer their habit of final devoicing into the English language. Weakening is a rare phenomenon in the German language. As a consequence, speakers of German may weaken too little when talking English (see Swan and Smith 2001: 39).

4.3.2 Standard Austrian pronunciation

Austrian German differs in a number of ways from the German spoken in Germany. A comparison with some regions of Germany shows fewer differences than with others. The speech of the southern areas, Bavaria in particular, is more similar to AG than the German of the middle and northern parts of the country (see Wiesinger 1988: 23). In the following two chapters those features shall be mentioned which distinguish Austrian German from German German. Again, the most common phenomena will be discussed.

4.3.2.1 The Vowels

A few remarks must be made regarding the pronunciation of vowels by native speakers of Austrian German. Ebner (2008: 42) mentions a number of characteristics of Austrian German vowels. One of them is the omission of vowels in an unstressed position when preceding nasals and 29

laterals. This holds especially for the final syllables <-en> and <-len> so that gehen is pronounced [ge 9n] and kühlen [ky 9ln]. The same words are articulated with [ ?] in German German. Ebner mentions one more characteristic of AG – the lack of rounding of <-ir-> to <- ür->. He does not provide IPA versions but it can be assumed that he implies German German usage of [ ?] and Austrian German usage of a diphthong in this position. Loan words may be realised differently in Austrian German than in German German. Unstressed <-e-> when occurring in an open syllable is pronounced with [ D] in AG and with [e] in GG. A speaker of Austrian German would thus realise the word Reflex [r D! fl Dks], while a German German speaker would pronounce it [re !fl Dks]. This also applies to <-o->. Auto is pronounced [ !a˛utN] in AG and [ !a˛uto] in GG (cf. Ebner 1980: 218). When having a look at the usage of / D/ and /e/, respectively, there is another striking phenomenon to be observed in Austrian German. Words like nämlich are usually pronounced [!nD9 ml HB ] in GG, whereas they are realised with short [ D] or even [e:] in AG – [!nDml HB ], [!ne 9ml HB ]. In AG, there is often no differentiation between / D9 /, / D/ and /e/. Thus words such as Bären , Ähre on the one side and Beeren , ehren and Schere on the other side, tend to be pronounced with [e 9] (cf. Lipold 1988: 42). The last difference between the AG and GG vowel system concerns <-i->, <-u-> and <- ü->. When occurring in a closed syllable they are articulated with close vowels in AG and open vowels in GG. The words Wille , müssen and uns are thus pronounced [vil ?, mysen, uns] by an Austrian German speaker and [v Hl?, m Xs?n, Tns] by a German German speaker (see Ebner 1980: 218). Differences in the openness and closeness of vowels between the two languages have been left out of the analysis. As mentioned, the length of sounds will also not be examined as this factor may very much be influenced by speed, emotional involvement, etc.

4.3.2.2 The Consonants

The contrast between aspirated and unaspirated consonants is fully lost in Austrian German. This applies to /p/ and /t/ but not to /k/. The realisation of these phonemes is consequently always [p t k h]. 15 Their counterparts /b,d,g/ are realised as [b fi,d fi,g fi], which shows that the distinction between ‘voiced’ and ‘voiceless’ has also – at least partly – been lost. This feature of devoicing – not only word-finally but also word-initially and –medially – is found in /v/ 30

and /z/ too, which then turn into [v fi] and [z fi] (cf. Hakkarainen 1995: 72). Kufner (1971: 21) adds that it is the degree of tension, not voicing, that distinguishes [p] and [b] in Austria as in the words packen and backen . Devoicing of /b,d,g/ will only be analysed in word-final position. A phenomenon that is extremely common in Austria is the vocalisation of final <-er>. It is mostly substituted by some kind of /a/-like vowel. Examples are Vater and Bruder . This peculiarity also affects <-er> preceding consonants such as in Berg and Kurt (cf. Wiesinger 1988: 23). The already-mentioned devoicing of /b,d,g,z/ in the final position is extended to word- initial and word-medial position in AG. They become voiceless but do not turn into fortis consonants as in the words Bote , Dach , gut , so. Another phenomenon of devoicing in GA can be observed in loan words such as Gilet . (cf. Lipold 1988: 45).

4.4 Expected Errors

After having compared the two target varieties of English, RP and GA, with the Standard pronunciations of Standard German and Austrian German respectively, this chapter presents the errors that are expected to be found in the speech of the ten Austrian students of English. The expected errors are in relation to the comparison between RP/GA and Standard German/Standard Austrian pronunciation, i.e. the contrasts presented previously form the basis for the hypotheses. The performance of students who study the L2 at university is of course assumed to show much better results than the performance of, let us say, pupils at school. The long-term occupation with the language both theoretically and practically should have resulted in an extraordinarily good command of the phonology of English. Activities such as language tandems and semesters abroad may additionally have enhanced the students´ pronunciation. However, simply because of these reasons one cannot expect all students of English to have native-like pronunciation. On the contrary, experience shows that performances differ significantly among students. Before the analysis of the recordings hypotheses were

15 When word-initial /k/ precedes a consonant, however, it is in fact not aspirated in Austrian German as in klingen (see Kufner 1971: 52).

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formulated concerning the students´ errors or deviations. While some pronunciation problems were not expected at such a high level of learning anymore, other problems were believed still to be present in the speech of the ten informants. In chapter III it will be shown which of these hypotheses correlate to the actual errors made by the students. The following charts display phenomena that are expected to occur and those that are believed not to be found in the majority of the informants. Some of them present errors such as, for instance, devoicing, whereas others account for the native-like pronunciation of the students such as the weakening of function words. ‘RP’ and ‘GA’ refer to errors that are expected or not expected from those speakers who have chosen Received Pronunciation and General American, respectively, as their target variety.

Phenomena to be expected – unrelated to Phenomena not to be expected – unrelated target variety to target variety Consonants devoicing of /d Y/ substitution of [v] for /w/ devoicing of /g/ word-finally substitution of [l] for [ 4] devoicing of /d/ word-medially and -finally pronunciation of non-Standard-English devoicing of /z/ realisations of /r/ devoicing of / Y/ lenition of /p,k,t,s,f, S/ devoicing of /v/ word-finally substitution of [t], [s] or [f] for / S/ devoicing of /b/ word-finally plosivisation of /t R,d Y,S,R/ substitution of [w] for /v/ fricativisation of /t R,d Y,k/ substitution of [ S] word-finally for /C/ affrication of /d/ substitution of [d] for / C/ word-initially affrication of /k/ (+/ B/ or /x/) (plosivisation of / C/) affrication of /t/ cluster problems involving [ S] aspiration of plosives (word-initially and – medially) aspiration of final plosives

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Vowels substitution of [ D] or [e] for /æ/ substitution of [ 5] for / ?/ substitution of a vowel for / ?/ substitution of [i 9] for / H/ substitution of [u 9] for / T/ monophthongisation of diphthongs diphthongisation of monophthongs substitution of [ @9 ] for / N/ (overgeneralisation) substitution of [æ] for / D/ or /e/ (overgeneralisation)

Phenomena to be expected – related to Phenomena not to be expected – related to target variety target variety RP GA RP GA Consonants lack of yod-dropping yod-dropping post-vocalic /r/ post-vocalic /r/ consistency consistency linking /r/ consistency flap consistency 16 flap consistency

Vowels /@9 / vs. /æ/ /æ/ vs. / @9 / inconsistency inconsistency /
/ vs. / @9 / and / N9 / /@9 / and / N9 / vs. /
/ inconsistency inconsistency

16 As will be seen in chapter 4, the categorisation ‘flap’ refers to cases where a flap is made or the consonant is omitted altogether (GA), while ‘lack of flap’ applies to cases where no flap is used but rather /t/ (RP).

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Phenomena to be expected – Phenomena not to be expected – native-like speech native-like speech

Consonants assimilation reinforcement of /p,t,k/ and /t R/ for [ >] elision of consonants substitution of /p,t,k,d/ by [ >] coalescence of /t,d,s,z/ with /j/ consonant cluster reduction Vowels vowel reduction (weakening) elision of vowels

In chapter III it will be shown to what extent these hypotheses hold true for the ten Austrian informants. Regarding the difficulty of certain English phonemes one further remark must be made. It seems that some phonological, syntactic and semantic structures are more difficult to form than others – for non-native and native speakers of the respective language alike. The sound pairs /v/ - /C/ and /f/ - /S/, for example, are said to be particularly difficult to distinguish for English native speakers and learners of English as an L2 (cf. Richards and Sampson 1978: 12-3). It could be argued then that some of the errors made by the Austrian students are not as ‘bad’ as others.

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III Corpus-linguistic Analysis

5 Empirical Framework

The previous two chapters provided background information on Second Language Acquisition and Contrastive Linguistics, basic definitions of important terms and a comparison between RP and GA on the one hand, and Standard German and Standard Austrian pronunciation on the other. In addition, my own hypotheses were presented and thus the accent deviations I expect Austrian English students at Karl-Franzens Unversity to make. The following chapter III, subdivided into chapters 5-7, first presents an extensive overview of the empirical framework of my study and then continues by presenting the results of the corpus-linguistic analysis. Finally, it will be shown whether the hypotheses formulated in chapter 4.4 will be validated or not.

5.1 Research question

The following study aimed to find out about the pronunciation level of Austrian English students at Karl-Franzens University, Graz. It was attempted to discover what kind of deviations there are to be found in the English spoken by Austrians at university-level and what it is that still distinguishes their pronunciation from native speech. The object of investigation is the segmental level only, leaving out the suprasegmental, i.e. pitch, intonation and stress. Through analysing the informants’ accent, an attempt was made to obtain a clear picture of the errors that are still made at a high level and therefore of how native-like their speech already is. Furthermore, the English of those who try to imitate a certain target variety, for instance, British English or American English, was analysed in terms of their being consistent throughout the recording.

5.2 General Considerations

Before describing the framework of my study in more detail, a few brief remarks should be made. When trying to analyse the sounds of a language the phonetician every now and then inevitably stumbles upon elements of speech sounds for which he or she is not completely

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sure of their IPA (or other phonetic transcript system) symbol. Among linguists it is common knowledge that two phoneticians may phonetically transcribe the same recording differently. Walz (1979: 5), for example, states that “just as students vary in what they produce, phoneticians vary in what they perceive.” Throughout listening to the students´ English, I was sometimes in doubt as to whether the sound is really the one I believed it to be. I had to trust my own ears and carried out my study as well and professional as I could. Therefore, I clearly state at this point that I do not lay claim to the absolute accuracy of my analysis. Whenever I had difficulties in attributing an IPA symbol to a certain sound I stuck to the dictionaries´ transcriptions (MacMillan English Dictionary for RP and Oxford Student´s Dictionary of American English for GA). Thus the speech of the Austrian students was compared with models of English found in the dictionaries rather than with the real life speech of individual native speakers of English. Even though it is expected that the results of the students´ pronunciation will overlap to a certain extent due to them having the same mother tongue, one always has to be careful with generalisations. Pronunciations differ not only according to language background but also among individuals. Features of any Austrian dialects the informants might speak are not taken into consideration. The Standard Austrian pronunciation is used as comparison with RP and GA, respectively. Furthermore, the study is not representative as only ten subjects were analysed. The original plan was to record twenty which turned out to be far too time-consuming due to the extensive analysis that was necessary. Nevertheless, the study´s results provide a good insight into the main phonetic problems Austrian university students face when learning English as a foreign language.

5.3 Subjects

The aim of this study is to analyse the English of Austrian people at high level. It therefore seemed to be logical to approach those Austrians that have been studying this language for a long period of time and from which one can expect a very good command of the English language. The subjects were four female and six male Austrian students of English who were all in the second half of their studies, most of them about to finish. The choice of gender was at random. All informants were raised in Austria, the federal states being Styria (mainly Graz) and Upper-Austria. Three informants speak BE (and thus RP), two AE (and thus GA) while

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the remaining five informants stated that they did not pursue a special goal concerning their variety of English.

5.4 Choice of Material and Method

Choosing material and a method that is suited to both the linguist´s skills and the study´s research question is not always an easy task. Piske et al. (2001: 193) claim that the techniques used by linguists doing research in L2 phonology differ considerably from one another. So far the majority of researchers have asked their informants to read sentences, paragraphs and individual words. A number of linguists had the subjects tell stories, describe pictures and the like in order to provide samples of free speech.

5.4.1 First Step: Recording the Informants

In order to obtain an authentic picture of the informants´ pronunciation of English it was decided to have a casual conversation with them rather than having them read a text or separate words. It was hoped that the informants perceived the conversation as casual and relaxed as well. If they did not their language might have been more formal than hoped for as, according to Major (1986: 219), speech in formal situations varies significantly from speech in casual situations. Lenition, weakening processes and a number of other absorption processes are more frequent in casual conversation, whereas fortition and strengthening is more often found in formal conversational situations. The conversation was recorded directly on the computer using the audio recorder ‘Audacity’. A fake topic for my thesis was invented as I wanted to prevent the students from consciously or unconsciously influencing their accent if they knew their pronunciation will be analysed afterwards. The fake topic was concerned with the student life of Austrian students and the questions posed by the interviewer were designed accordingly. Directly after the recording the students were informed about the real purpose of the study and then had the chance to delete their recording. Luckily, none of the informants made use of her or his rights and I could use all ten recordings. As a result of inventing a fake topic and choosing casual conversation it was attempted to create a natural conversational situation. However, it still cannot be guaranteed that the informants did not alter their accent consciously or unconsciously. For instance, the mere fact that they knew they were being recorded could

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have lead to a different accent. Another influencing factor might have been the interviewer´s English, which was British English. It could thus have been the case that the speakers of American English did not speak with as strong an American accent as they would have done with an interviewer who had chosen the same variety.

5.4.2 Second Step: Transcription and Annotations

After having recorded the ten informants, the conversations were transcribed orthographically. It did not seem to be necessary to transcribe the recordings phonetically as the focus of my study was merely the deviations found in the informants´ English. Therefore a different method of analysis was chosen – annotation. By ‘annotating’ one means the adding of any kind of information to the corpus (Hunston 2002: 19-20). In other words, text information about the respective students was added to the orthographically transcribed text. This was done in angle brackets (< >). The information that was added in these brackets consisted of pronunciation categories I created myself. The categories will be described in more detail in the next chapter. For now, a brief sample of an annotated text shall be sufficient:

oh she´s very influential yeah definitely so yeah ok that´s it and I´ve been studying English American Studies for uh five years now in February it´s yeah in February it´s five years since I started uhm //

(Informant 02, AE, male)

As one can clearly see the annotations are interwoven with the text; in each case the annotation refers to the previous word. and therefore provide information on the word ‘very’ – in this case ‘no devoicing of /v/’ and ‘weakening’. The double slash (//) at the end of the annotated text indicates turn-taking. The interviewer´s utterances are left out as they were not part of the analysis. In addition to the annotation and the double slash indicating turn-taking, a few more rules were established that were applied to all ten transcriptions:

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- All personal names mentioned by the informants are substituted by ‘XY’ and thus made anonymous. - Unintelligible utterances are represented by ‘(___)’. - Wrong translations are also represented by ‘(___)’. - Word fragments are marked by ‘-‘ at the end (for example, ‘fra- fragment’) - All punctuation marks are left out except for apostrophes belonging to words such as ‘don’t’, ’haven’t, etc. and hyphens like in ‘eighty-three’. - Non-verbal sounds are omitted such as lip smacks, coughs and the like as they are irrelevant for this study. - Hesitation markers are added in the transcription (‘hm’, ‘uhm’, ‘uh’, ‘m’, ‘mhm’, ‘mm’) - The word ‘yes’ is sometimes also represented as ‘yeah’. - The only abbreviated form of a word used despite words containing apostrophes is ‘ok’ for ‘okay’. - Pauses are not displayed in the transcription. - For all ten transcriptions British English orthography is used. - Capitalisation according to the English capitalisation rules is used throughout the recordings.

The students´ English was recorded between approximately 15 to 18 minutes. The unannotated transcriptions were reduced to 1,000 words each, starting from the beginning of the recordings. Therefore the same number of words were analysed for each informant, which made comparison possible. Proper names, hesitation markers and fragmented words were not included in the 1,000 words. The corpus of spoken English comprised 10,000 words in total.

5.4.3 Pronunciation Categories

The pronunciation categories can be divided into three parts – categories marking errors or deviations in the informant´s pronunciation, categories relating to a target variety and categories describing phenomena that fall into neither of the first two categories but are merely descriptive. In total, 94 categories were created. After the statistical analysis with the corpus- linguistic programme WordSmith, however, quite a number of categories will not receive

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mention here as the results linked to them turned out to be either insignificant or uninteresting. The categories are closely related to the expected deviations listed in chapter 4.4. A list with all the categories will be added as an appendix as it is not possible to list them all in the main part of the paper. However, a few examples shall be provided in order to be able to relate to the results in the chapters to follow:

Examples of categories marking errors: DV01 devoicing of /d Y/ DV07 devoicing of / Y/ PL01 plosivisation of / C/ VO01 vowels – substitution of [ D] or [e] for /æ/ MONO monophthongisation of diphthongs DIPH diphthongisation of monophthongs

These categories are considered errors with all informants, independent of whether they pursue a certain target variety or not.

Examples of categories related to a target variety: PR post-vocalic /r/ LPR lack of post-vocalic /r/ YOD yod-dropping LYOD lack of yod-dropping VO02 vowels – substitution of [æ] for / @9 / VO03 vowels – substitution of [ @9 ] for /æ/

As mentioned above, two of the informants claimed to use American English as their target variety, three claimed to use British English, and the remaining five stated they used no variety as a model. Those categories that are concerned with target variety, for instance, use of post-vocalic /r/ vs. lack of post-vocalic /r/, use of flap vs. lack of flap, etc., can turn into errors if used wrongly by the speakers who aimed at a target variety. If a speaker of British English, for instance, uses post-vocalic /r/ this usage is considered an error as in RP post-

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vocalic /r/ is not articulated except when a vowel follows, i.e. when it becomes a linking /r/. These categories, in contrast, are not considered errors with the speakers of no target variety. Examples of merely descriptive categories (testing native-like speech) GL01 glottal stop – reinforcement of /p,t,k/ GL02 glottal stop – substitution of [ >] for /p,t,k,d/ COA01 coalescence of /t,d,s,z/ VRE vowel reduction - weakening

These categories are neither related to a target variety nor do they represent actual errors. They may describe the use of sounds that are also found in native speech but which do not have to be realised necessarily. For example, in word-final position both the glottal stop [ >] and [t] occur in native speech (although [>] is probably more often found in regional dialects than in Standard speech). This category also contains phenomena that are labelled as connected speech such as weakening, elision and the like. Both these sub-categories are seen as a part of speech that account for native-like pronunciation. Informants who regularly weaken function words thus have a more native-like pronunciation than those who do not.

5.5 Corpus Linguistics

Before going into detail about corpus linguistics, the term ‘corpus’ itself must be defined. By ‘corpus’ one simply means “a body of written text or transcribed speech which can serve as a basis for linguistic analysis and description” (Kennedy 1998: 1). In recent years corpus linguistics has come increasingly to the fore of linguistic research, and even more so with the advent of computer programmes that enable a time- saving and detailed analysis of collected corpora. Huge numbers of texts from different research fields such as linguistics, psychology, literary studies and the like can be processed in a database and analysed over and over again. In the field of language acquisition, there have only been a few studies that are based on corpora. This particularly applies to second-language acquisition (Biber 1998: 202). Regarding phonetic corpus-linguistic analyses there are even fewer studies to be found. Even if one discovers a study it often uses phonetic transcription and not, as in the present study, annotation done on orthographic transcription. For this reason this study, unfortunately, lacks other comparable studies. 41

5.5.1 WordSmith

WordSmith is a useful corpus linguistics programme, which assists in evaluating and analysing corpora. The programme is particularly helpful in dealing with bigger corpora but is also of good help with smaller ones. For the analysis of my 10,000 word corpus I used version 3.0. There are also newer versions of WordSmith available – 4.0 and 5.0 - but for the purpose of my study – the analysis of the pronunciation of Austrian English students – version 3.0 was sufficient. The programme was invented by Mike Scott and is meant to appeal mainly to linguists and language teachers. There are three main tools: Wordlist, Concord and Keywords. Wordlist, as the name suggests, lists the words contained in the corpus in both alphabetical and frequency order. This enables an analysis and comparison of the lexical content of texts. In addition, it provides a number of items of statistical information such as, for instance, standard deviation. The second tool, Concord, shows concordances as it creates lists containing the search word with its respective context. In that way one can, for instance, find out about the words and phrases that occur most around the search word. So-called ‘collocates’ – words that appear most frequently to the right and left of the search word - can easily be detected. The tool Keywords, finally, displays keywords - words that occur remarkably more frequently in a specific, smaller text compared to a larger corpus. Additional information can thus be provided such as a text´s subject matter and genre (cf. Oakes 1998: 1993-4). In order to use WordSmith phonetically both the tools Wordlist and Keywords are of no use. Concordance, however, provided numerous interesting insights into the frequency of certain sounds and errors as well as their distribution within the text and phrase. As mentioned, only the tool Concord was used for analysing the students´ pronunciation. In order to be able to work with the annotated orthographic texts in WordSmith they had to be saved as text files. Once opened with Concord all categories were searched for separately in all informants´ texts. This made it possible to see how often a certain pronunciation category occurred in a text and what the sound´s context was, i.e. what sounds and words occurred right next to the sound. A short passage shall suffice to show what the concordance looked like (next page):

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Figure 1. Concordance in WordSmith

In this example it can easily be seen how often the informant (01, female, NT) pronounced the post-vocalic /r/ () and in which sound and word surroundings it occurred. Furthermore, when contrasting this concordance with lack of post-vocalic /r/ (), it was attempted to detect reasons why and were used in certain environments, respectively.

6 The Results

The following chapters show the results of the analysis of the students´ pronunciation with the concordance tool Concord. First, the results of the categories which are unrelated to the target variety are displayed. Secondly, those categories are looked at which are related to a target variety. Finally, the results accounting for native-like speech will be discussed.

6.1 Categories Unrelated to Target Variety

This chapter shows those categories that are considered errors with all informants. First the consonants will be displayed and secondly, the vowels.

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6.1.1 Results – The Consonants

The first couple of categories which will be investigated are those concerned with devoicing. As mentioned in the theoretical part, this is considered a major problem for native speakers of German, and Austrian German native speakers in particular. It has also been said, however, that devoicing also occurs to a certain extent in native speech. In some cases the respective sounds were not merely devoiced but also made fortis. These cases will not be dealt with separately but fall into the category of ‘devoicing’.

6.1.1.1 Devoicing of /d Y/

The following pie chart shows how often the Austrian informants devoiced /d Y/ (DV01) and how often they realised the voiced version (NDV01 – no devoicing of /d Y/).

1%

DV01 NDV01

99%

Chart 1. Devoicing of /d Y/

The results in Chart 1 are quite striking. The total number of DV01 and NDV01 was 146 (2 times DV01, 144 times NDV01). Of all informants there was only one – a male speaker of General American – who sometimes voiced /d Y/. No particular pattern could be detected in this informant as he voiced and devoiced in different positions – word-finally, - initially and before vowels.

6.1.1.2 Devoicing of /g/

Remaining with devoicing, it was of interest how the ten Austrian students treated /g/. This sound was mainly analysed when occurring word-medially and word-finally together with /z/.

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The question was posed whether the students managed to produce the two voiced consonants /g,z/ or whether they devoiced them or even substituted them with their voiceless, fortis counterparts [k,s]. As we saw Austrian German lacks /z/ and usually produces a devoiced version of /g/ - [g fi]. Not every /g/ that occurred in the text was analysed. Only those cases were annotated where /g/ was substituted by [k]. Therefore no counter-category NDV04 was created but only DV04 and displaying the results in the form of a pie chart is not necessary. It suffices to briefly mention how often the respective consonant was devoiced by the informants. All of the informants devoiced /g/ from once up to five times except for one. Informant 02 voiced /g/ wherever it occurred. Informant 08 devoiced five times and voiced two times. No pattern was observable in the latter student as he even produced a voiced and devoiced version of the same word ( exactly ) in the same sound environment. The majority of cases where /g/ was devoiced concerned words in which /g/ is directly followed by /z/. These two consonants were even substituted with [k] and [s], respectively. Examples of words are exactly and examples . But also word-final /g/ was affected as in big .

6.1.1.3 Devoicing of /d/

The devoicing of /d/ was only analysed in word-medial and word-final position. It was expected that the informants would devoice especially in the final position due to their habit of final devoicing taken over from the German language. DV05 stands for devoicing of /d/, while NDV05 stands for no devoicing of /d/.

45% DV05 NDV05 55%

Chart 2. Devoicing of /d/ in word-medial and word-final position

The total number of /d/ (both DV05 and NDV05) was 550. Unlike the results of devoicing of /d Y/, the devoicing of /d/ is more evenly distributed. 55 % of the /d/-sounds occurring word- medially and word-finally were voiced (305 times) and 45 % were devoiced (245 times). It 45

seems the Austrian students had fewer difficulties producing /d/ than they had articulating /d Y/. But still, almost half of the sounds were devoiced, which is not an insignificant number. Almost all informants devoiced about as much as they voiced. Two, however, voiced much more – one 81 % and the other 92 %. These results are quite outstanding, compared with those of the remaining informants. Concerning the sound´s environment, the outcome is not surprising. The majority of cases of devoicing of /d/ occur before voiceless consonants, while /d/ was not devoiced before vowels, nasals and voiced consonants. With some informants no particular pattern was observed. As mentioned, /d/ was not analysed word-initially – except for one informant whose use of initial /d/ was quite striking. This informant devoiced initial /d/ eight times (she devoiced /d/ 52 times in total). After the recording the informant stated that she had been attempted to speak with an American English accent for years until she changed to British English, which she has been pursuing since then. It seemed she had tried hard to follow all RP-‘rules’. I was under the impression her devoicing of word-initial /d/ was merely an overgeneralisation as she could, for instance, intuitively have transferred RP´s tendency to use /t/ between vowels instead of GA´s flap to /d/ in all positions.

6.1.1.4 Devoicing of /z/

The phenomenon of devoicing /z/ shall now be examined. Table 6 shows that German German does in fact have /z/, which is found in English too. In Austrian German, however, /z/ is frequently devoiced. It will be seen in the following graph whether this sound was also devoiced by the ten informants. DV06 is the abbreviated form of devoicing of /z/, while NDV06 stands for no devoicing of /z/.

13%

DV06 NDV06

87%

Chart 3. Devoicing of /z/

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Out of 742 occurrences of /z/, 87 % percent were devoiced (649 times) and only 13 % voiced (93 times). This makes it clear that producing a voiced /z/ is not easy for the informants – probably especially because they speak Austrian German. It can be assumed that native speakers of German German would have performed differently, i.e. they would have produced more voiced versions. The chart clearly shows that this consonant is something Austrian students of English need to work on. Regarding the sounds surrounding the error, only a few regularities can be found. The students managed to produce the voiced /z/ before or between vowels such as in the words crazy and reason . Furthermore, it seems they had less difficulty voicing in word-initial and word-medial position than in word-final position. This correlates to the ‘rule’ of final devoicing in German. As already mentioned, devoicing of /z/ sometimes occurred together with devoicing of /g/ such as in exactly .

6.1.1.5 Devoicing of / Y/

The sound / Y/ occurs in some loan words in German and - like in English - is usually not devoiced in Standard German. In Austrian German, however, the sound is regularly devoiced and may even be substituted with [ R]. It was therefore expected to cause severe problems for Austrian students. This assumption was backed up by the following chart.

26%

DV07 NDV07

74%

Chart 4. Devoicing of / Y/

Again, DV07 represents cases where the students devoiced and NDV07 cases where they did not devoice but produced /Y/ correctly. It must be mentioned that this sound is not very frequent in the English language. Consequently, it only occurred 31 times in the recordings of

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the informants. Out of these 31, 74 % were devoiced (23 times) and 26 % voiced (eight times). As with /z/, the students apparently have difficulties with / Y/ as well. No pattern could be detected when looking at the sound´s surroundings. It was voiced and devoiced in the same positions.

6.1.1.6 Devoicing of /v/

The last consonant where devoicing was expected to a certain extent is /v/. It is also found in German but not in word-final position. In word-initial and –medial position it is sometimes pronounced /v/ and sometimes /f/ (see Vase and eventuell ). Therefore it was interesting to see whether the students would devoice the sound in final position of English words. For this reason only /v/ occurring in word-final position was analysed. The difficulty of distinguishing /v/ and /w/ will be discussed in another chapter. Chart 5 shows the results of devoicing of /v/ (DV08 for devoicing and NDV08 for no devoicing).

8%

DV08 NDV08

92%

Chart 5. Devoicing of /v/ in word-final position

Out of a total number of 343, 92 % were devoiced (316 times) and only eight % voiced (27 times). For Austrian students this sound is obviously hard to articulate in final position. A certain tendency to voice /v/ when occurring before a word beginning with a vowel or a nasal could be observed such as in live in . However, in other cases preceding words starting with a vowel the informants devoiced. Wherever the sound occurred in clusters or before voiceless consonants it was devoiced. Examples are moved and live permanently .

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6.1.1.7 Plosivisation of / C/

Probably the most well-known sound which causes problems for the German-speaking learner of English is the one that is orthographically represented by . The graph is either the voiceless / S/ or the voiced / C/. The latter mainly occurs in function words, whereas the former is mostly found in content words. Consequently, / C/ occurs relatively frequently in the English language. This is a major obstacle which learners of English – not only German or Austrian ones – must overcome. The aim was to find out how often and in which surroundings the students turned the fricative into a plosive (more or less voiced [d]). Plosivisation of /tR,cY,S,R/ will be discussed in the next chapter. The performance of / C/ of the ten students is as follows (PL01 for plosivisation of / C/, NPL01 for no plosivisation of / C/):

49% PL01 NPL01 51%

Chart 6. Plosivisation of / C/

The chart above shows that out of a total of 771 occurrences 51 % of the words containing / C/ were articulated correctly (392 times). In 49 % of the cases (379 times) the plosive [d] was used instead of the fricative. Considering that the informants are university students of English of a high level this percentage still seems high. The sound was mainly pronounced correctly in content words. Function words that occur particularly often and which are usually unstressed were substituted by the plosive such as in the words the , that , these and so on. With some informants no pattern could be observed regarding the distribution of the sound. The usage of / C/ by two informants was particularly interesting. It seemed that informant 04 tried very hard to always produce / C/ as he probably had had problems with the sound previously. As was mentioned in the theoretical part, the sound is also sometimes changed to a plosive by native speakers of English – especially in

49

rapid and casual speech. It is therefore normal in authentic English to do so, too. Due to the extensive use of the sound by informant 04, however, his speech somewhat seemed artificial and thus not native-like. The second peculiarity was observed in informant 09. Unlike the other informants, he not only produced the plosive in function words but in content words as well. Examples are rather , weather and other . The categories affrication and fricativisation will be discussed in the next chapter.

6.1.1.8 Further Consonant Categories

The results discussed in the previous chapters are those which occurred most frequently with all informants. A number of additional errors that only occurred sporadically but which are, nevertheless, interesting will be mentioned in this chapter. Unfortunately, whether the students devoice / C/ in word-final position could not be determined within this study as there were no words occurring in the recordings which contained the sound in the respective position. With devoicing /b/, however, a few observations could be made. Out of five occurrences of final /b/, the informants devoiced it three times. This devoicing always occurred together with devoicing of /z/ - in the word jobs . The sound was also pronounced correctly two times, i.e. it was voiced. This was observed in the words job and cab . There is no obvious reason why the students voiced in the first cases but did not do so in the second. It was not assumed that native speakers of Austrian German would aspirate much when talking English. Unlike in German German, in Austrian German plosives are usually not aspirated – except if they appear in word-final position. In word-initial and word-medial position, however, plosives are realised as devoiced and unaspirated. These assumptions were only partly validated. Aspiration of /p/, for instance, only occurred once. Informant 09 aspirated /p/ in widespread which is an error in English. For German native speakers consonant clusters such as /sp/ and /sk/ do not exist. They are therefore hard to pronounce and the learners then often overgeneralise, i.e. they transfer their acquired knowledge about the aspiration of plosives in some positions to all positions. Consequently, they aspirate /p/ even when it occurs in a cluster such as informant 09. This transfer also affects /sk/. The error of aspirating /k/ in this position was made twelve times by the informants, which is a remarkable number. Words such as school and discussions were realised with [k h]. This shows that university students of English still have huge problems with distributional allophones. As 50

mentioned numerous times, native speakers of German also have difficulties in disposing their habit of final devoicing. In addition to devoicing final plosives, they also frequently aspirate them. This habit may then be transferred to the English language. The ten informants aspirated the already devoiced final /d/ twenty-five times. In order to explain this process an example shall be provided. It was mostly and which was affected by that interference. First – or rather simultaneously – the students devoiced /d/ and then – or simultaneously - aspirated the sound. Other examples are did , studied and decided . Quite a number of occurrences of lenition were found in the speech of the Austrian informants. The consonants which were analysed regarding lenition were /p,k,t,s,f, S/. Only a few cases of lenition of /p,f,s, S/ were found. In most cases no particular pattern concerning the sounds´ surroundings could be observed. Two words might have been influenced by Austrian German pronunciation: people and political . In the latter word lenition of /t/ and /k/ occurred at the same time so that the word sounded very Austrian. More lenition processes were observed regarding /k,t/. Examples are like , because and basically . In some cases the sound was directly followed by a word beginning with a vowel but most of the time no pattern could be detected. It must be mentioned that the sounds in these cases are, of course, not merely turned into lenis consonants but also articulated unaspirated. A few categories shall now be discussed which are not concerned with a change in the manner of articulation such as lenition but with a change in the place of articulation, i.e. plosivisation of /t R,cY,S,R/, affrication and fricativisation. In the last chapter it was shown that plosivisation of / C/ is a frequently occurring phenomenon in the speech of the informants. I also wanted to find out the extent to which the students turned /sR,cY,S,R/ into plosives. Only few of these sounds were plosivised. It was striking that /t R/ and / R/ were not turned into plosives at all. In contrast, /d Y/ was plosivised twice and / S/ once. Examples are schedule and Ethnology . The former word is considered an error as it was a speaker of American English and in that variety the word is usually pronounced with an affricate not with the plosive /d/ like in RP. Three categories of affrication were created – affrication of /d/, affrication of /k/ and affrication of /t/. Affrication of /d,t/ may also occur in English and can therefore not be considered an error with the Austrian students. The affricate produced when /k/ is affricated, however, is not part of the English language. According to Table 6, it is not part of the German language either but it may be turned into an affricate in some cases such as, for

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instance, Kind . This also happened with the informants´ English. The words book and college were articulated with [kx]. These two words were the only occurrences of affrication of /k/, however. Affrication of /d/ also only occurred five times – interestingly, mostly in the word during . The most cases of affrication concern /t/. Plosives in words such as to , but , eat and too were turned into affricates. Regarding the affricated sounds´ surroundings no regularities could be observed. The next category representing a change in the place of articulation is fricativisation. The consonants that were analysed according to this category were /t R/, /d Y/ and /k/. All three consonants are part of the English sound system. Fricativising them represents an error. Not many occurrences of these errors were to be found. The affricate /t R/ was only changed into a fricative twice. Interestingly, both speakers of American English substituted the affricate with the fricative / R/ in the same word – which . The word occurred in different surroundings, however, once preceding a vowel and once preceding a consonant. The affricate /d Y/ was only once turned into a fricative – in the word challenging . Both cases of fricativisation of the plosive /k/ could have been caused by interference from German. The words hierarchical and technical were both pronounced with ZB\ instead of [k]. This mirrors the pronunciations of the German translations hierarchisch and technisch . It was expected that the Austrian students would have severe problems with the English consonant clusters as many of them are missing in Austrian German. The ones that were expected to cause most problems were those involving / S/. The sound on its own is already difficult to pronounce but when occurring in a consonant cluster its articulation is even more challenging. The clusters /vz/ and / Cz/ were also expected to lead to errors. Unfortunately, there were no words containing these two clusters so it was not possible to find out if the students have problems with /vz/ and / Cz/ or not. However, there were three cluster errors involving / S/. The words in which they occurred were birthday , months and three . Regarding the surroundings of the errors, no regularities could be detected. But it can be assumed that the clusters themselves are difficult to pronounce for the students independent of their surroundings. Additional consonant categories were established (CO01 – CO09), which are mainly concerned with the substitution of a certain consonant by another. Each error only occurred a couple of times. Only those categories are discussed which produced the most interesting results. The substitution of [f] for / S/, for instance, occurred four times. As mentioned in the

52

theoretical part, substitution of this sound by [f,t,d] is often observed in the English of German native speakers. The words affected by this substitution are three and with . No possible reason due to the sound´s surroundings could be detected in the latter word. Three , however, preceded for – a word beginning with /f/, which could have influenced / S/ (total assimilation). Overgeneralisation may be found in had . Informant 03 substituted /d/ with [C]. As /w/ does not exist in German, native speakers of that language are expected to confuse it with /v/. Only one student, however, substituted [v] for /w/. The word affected by this replacement is were . It might have been influenced by /v/ in the following word never . Many more substitutions were made the other way around – substitution of [w] for /v/. Many learners of English who do not have /w/ in their native language at a certain stage of their learning overgeneralise /w/ and use it also where /v/ should be pronounced. The Austrian students did so nine times in words such as every (possible influence by following week ), events and visiting . A few cases of substitution of [ C] for /d/, [ S] for /s/, [s] for / R/ and [x] for /h/ were made by the informants, some of them probably again representing overgeneralisation. The German language does not have the distinction between clear [l] and dark [ 4] as English has. It only has clear /l/ in all positions. Consequently, German native speakers might have difficulties articulating dark /l/. All in all, 41 substitutions of [l] for [ 4] were found in the speech of the ten informants. They only occurred either word-finally such as in oil or in consonant clusters such as in people . Realising the allophone [ 4] in all positions where it should be realised is obviously still difficult for Austrian students at such a high level. In contrast, clear /l/ was not substituted by dark /l/. The last category regarding the consonant errors unrelated to the target variety that will be mentioned is the category . This category represents the error of using a non- Standard English /r/ allophone – the alveolar trill. This allophone can be found in certain German and English dialects such as, for instance, in Scottish English. As the respective student who used the trill 21 times stated he was not trying to pursue varieties that have this allophone, the 21 cases are considered errors. No pattern could be observed regarding the sound environment of the trill except for the fact that they predominantly occurred in consonant clusters. Examples are closer , years and semester .

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6.1.2 The Results – the Vowels

The following chapters present the results of the students´ pronunciation of vowels. Those errors will be examined which are not related to the target variety.

6.1.2.1 Substitution of [D] or [e] for /æ/

A vowel substitution that was expected to occur often in the speech of the ten informants is substitution of [D] or [e] for /æ/. As mentioned, the German vowel system lacks /æ/ and as a result, native speakers of German tend to replace it by [ D] or [e] – the two vowels that are most similar to the unknown vowel. When looking at the results it is clear that this hypothesis was not so far-fetched:

22%

VO01 NVO01 VRE 15% 63%

Chart 7. Substitution of [D] or [e] for /æ/

The category VO01 represents those cases where [D] or [e] was substituted for /æ/, while NVO01 stands for those cases where no substitution was made. The additional category VRE was established to see how often the students weakened /æ/. The latter category does not represent errors. As expected the students had severe problems with /æ/. Out of 1005 occurrences of the sound, only 15 % were articulated correctly (151 times). 63 % were substituted by [D] or [e] (633 times) and 22 % were weakened (221 times). Regarding the environment no regularities could be detected. It was only observed that weakening mainly occurred in function words rather than in content words. The environment of VO01 and NVO01, however, was approximately the same. As for the realisation of /æ/ in General American, it was mentioned earlier that it may be raised towards / D/. Thus substituting this sound for /æ/ is both a feature of General American 54

and a German accent in English. The two students who were speakers of AE also substituted [D] for /æ/ to a considerable extent. Whether this is due to them attempting to speak as AE as possible or whether this was simply interference from German cannot be detected. Informant 06, who does not have a target variety, had an interesting pronunciation of /æ/. From time to time she nasalized the sound – a feature that is found in some dialects of American English. The occurrences of the nasalised sound were not completely at random. Almost exclusively it occurred before nasals. Examples are tram , transport , thanks and financial . It is not believed, however, that the informant was aware of her nasalising /æ/. The category VO19 was created to represent this phenomenon. In this chapter nasalisation was added to the category VO01 – in order to simplify the calculation of percentages.

6.1.2.2 Monophthongisation and Diphthongisation

The informants´ English was also analysed regarding monophthongisation of diphthongs and diphthongisation of monophthongs. It was expected that both phenomena would not occur to a remarkable extent. German native speakers tend to turn diphthongs into monophthongs. Due to the assumption of the informants´ good command of English, however, not many substitutions were expected. The following chart shows the somewhat surprising results (MONO standing for monophthongisation and DIPH standing for diphthongisation):

284 300

250 200 150

100

50 9 0 MONO DIPH

Chart 8. Monophthongisation and diphthongisation

As can be clearly seen from the chart, the hypotheses were only validated in what regards diphthongisation. Only nine times did the informants turn monophthongs into diphthongs. The words affected are partly words that are difficult to pronounce for native speakers of

55

German such as stratum , projects and operas . In these cases learners are often insecure whether they should use a monopthong or a diphthong. Other cases of diphthongisation, however, were surprising as the respective words frequently occur in English and the students should therefore already know their pronunciation. Examples are walk and available . The number of monophthongisations is stunningly high. The diphthongs that were mostly affected by this process are [o T] as in don´t , know , so , old and so on. Interestingly, the phrase I don´t know was monophthongised by almost all informants. A possible reason for this could be that this phrase was mostly articulated relatively fast so it is more economical to pronounce a monophthong instead of a diphthong. Some of the diphthongs in this phrase were weakened to [?] but this will be dealt with in another chapter. Remaining with monopthongs and diphthongs, another phenomenon was examined: the pronunciation of monophthongs and diphthongs that are not part of RP and GA respectively. Again, recognising certain sounds was not always easy. It can be expected that a number of cases were not detected due to the difficulty of recognising them. The informants articulated fifteen non-English monopthongs, mainly the German front vowel [a] which was substituted for /æ/, / ?/ or / /. Examples are campus , polkas and bus . Unlike these words, some words were probably more difficult to pronounce such as manoeuvre . The word small was highly emphasized and lengthened and was maybe therefore pronounced with [o 9] instead of the more open [ N9 ]. Non-English diphthongs occurred twelve times in the students´ English. In some words monophthongs were turned into non-English diphthongs such as / ?/ into [o 5] in the third syllable of afterwards and / N9 / into [o 5] in fourteen . In other cases / ?/ was substituted by [ 5] as in orchestra .

6.1.2.3 Further Vowel Categories

A number of additional categories were established regarding vowel substitution unrelated to target variety. Substitutions of some vowels were only made a couple of times, while others were made a lot. Only those categories with many occurrences of substitution will be discussed. Some categories were deleted in a later phase of the study (e.g. VO15 and VO16). They were simply crossed out without changing the original numbering of the categories. In the category VO12 (substitution of a vowel for / ?/) most substitutions were observed. All in all, / ?/ was substituted 76 times by a vowel. Interestingly, mostly content

56

words are affected by this error. For example, the first syllable in the words concerning , difficult and department were not articulated with /?/ but with the respective vowels. In some cases emphasis might have led to the articulation of the vowel instead of the Schwa. For most substitutions, however, no visible reason could be detected. Native speakers of English weaken much. Especially in fast, casual talk weakening is a natural and highly common process. The Austrian students might simply not be fully able to adapt to that habit. Interesting results were found in category VO13 - substitution of [ @9 ] for / N/. Informant 03 is a speaker of AE who tried hard to always use the GA version of a particular sound rather than the RP version. In doing so, he sometimes overgeneralised AE features, i.e. he used AE sounds in positions where they do not belong. For instance, he articulated the words long , thought and Austria with [ @9 ] instead of / N/. The former sound is used by GA speakers in words where RP uses [
] as in nobody but not in the examples mentioned above. Overgeneralisation was also observed in the articulation of /æ/. As already mentioned, this sound causes major problems for German native speakers and tends to be substituted by either [ D] or [e]. The English students at KF University, Graz, are taught the difference between the sounds and are therefore usually aware of the distinction. It may then happen that they overgeneralise the use of /æ/ and in fact pronounce it in positions where / D/ must be used according to the distributional rules of English. Some informants overgeneralised this feature in the words men , get , best , left and some others. Some more substitutions were found in the speech of the students. However, they only rarely occurred and their occurrence was at random. Examples of further vowel substitutions are substitution of [
] for / U/, substitution of [i 9] for / H/, substitution of [ U] for / @9 / and substitution of [u 9] for / T/.

6.2 Categories Related to Target Variety

In the course of their studies most English students at Karl-Franzens University develop a tendency towards a certain national variety of English. In most cases it is British English or American English. The students who participated in this study are at a comparatively advanced stage of their learning and on their way to having a native-like pronunciation they must consider the respective features of their variety. Some students do not choose a particular target variety. The categories related to target variety will be examined separately –

57

first the students having a target variety and then those who have none. For reasons of simplification those students who have RP as their target pronunciation will be referred to as RP speakers and those students who chose GA will be called GA speakers. Likewise, the remaining five students who do not have a target variety are referred to as NT speakers.

6.2.1 The Results – the Consonants

Again it will be the consonants which will be looked at first. Chapter 6.2.2 then deals with the vowels.

6.2.1.1 Post-vocalic /r/

The first category to be investigated is PR and LPR, respectively, - post-vocalic /r/ and lack of post-vocalic /r/. As mentioned, in RP the /r/ after vowels is not pronounced, whereas in GA it is pronounced. The word fear , for instance, is articulated [f H?] in RP and [f Hr] in GA. When the informants who chose AE as their target variety pronounce the word without [r] this can be considered an error. Likewise speakers of RP make an error when pronouncing post- vocalic /r/. The results of the two students who try to reach GA as their target pronunciation and the three students who chose RP are presented in the following chart.

90% 82% 80% 68% 70% 60% 50% PR 40% 32% LPR 30% 18% 20% 10% 0% RP GA

Chart 9. Post-vocalic /r/

Both the speakers of RP and GA had quite good results concerning their realisation of post- vocalic /r/. In 68 % (224 times) of the words in which post-vocalic /r/ can or cannot be

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pronounced (330 for RP, 276 for GA), the RP speakers did not articulate the sound. In 32 % of the cases they did (106 times). The speakers of GA scored even better. In only 18 % of the cases (50 times) they did not pronounce the post-vocalic /r/ but did so in the remaining 82 % (226 times). Especially the latter result is quite remarkable. The environments of the sound are diverse and in most cases no pattern can be observed why the sound is pronounced in some positions and not in others. However, a few observations could be made. With some speakers it partly seems to depend on whether the sound is part of a function or a content word. Informant 07, who is an RP speaker, for instance, tends to pronounce the sound in content words, while she omits it in function words. As for the speakers of GA, informant 02 mostly did not pronounce the post-vocalic /r/ when a second instance of this sound was part of the word. An example is the word larger . The first [r] was realised, whereas the second was not. It can be assumed that pronouncing both post-vocalic /r/s in the word would be highly difficult for a German native speaker as these kind of consonant clusters (especially involving English /r/) do not exist in his or her native language. Consequently, the second one was simply omitted. A few brief remarks must be made concerning the realisation of post-vocalic /r/ by those students who do not pursue a target variety. As they are not bound to any variety rules their realisations of the sound cannot be considered errors. Out of 540 words in which the sound may or may not be realised, these students pronounced the post-vocalic /r/ in 37 % (201 in total), while they did not pronounce it in 63 % of the cases (339 in total). No pattern could be detected as for the sound’s phonetic environment.

6.2.1.2 Linking /r/

Closely related to an examination of the post-vocalic /r/ is the analysis of the linking /r/. As mentioned, a linking /r/ is the word-final /r/ that precedes a word starting with a vowel such as in later on . It was also mentioned that in RP the post-vocalic /r/ is usually not articulated except for this particular case. Since in GA the post-vocalic /r/ is always pronounced, independent of its position, this feature will only be examined in the speech of the RP and NT speakers. The results of the RP speaker´s realisation of the linking /r/ are as follows (LI01 = linking /r/; LLI01 = lack of linking /r/):

59

60% 58% 52% 50% 48% 42% 40%

30% LI01 LLI01 20%

10%

0% RP NT

Chart 10. Linking /r/

Linking /r/ and lack of linking /r/ in the English of the RP speakers are rather evenly distributed. In 48 % of the cases they pronounced the linking /r/ (22 times), while in 52 % they omitted the sound (24 times). The latter cases represent errors for the students of RP. The reason for the relatively high number of LLI01 scores is not easily to detect. One reason could be that the students overgeneralise the lack of a post-vocalic /r/. They are aware of the fact that as RP speakers they are not to articulate the post-vocalic /r/ and they transfer this habit to all positions – also the ones with a following vowel. This may especially hold true for informant 10 who focused on AE for a long period of time and then switched to BE. It would seem normal that she now forces herself to speak as British-like as she can and thus also overgeneralises. The results of the NT speakers´ realisation of linking /r/ are similar to those of the RP speakers. Slightly more than half of the cases were pronounced with a linking /r/ (58 %, 64 times) and slightly less than half were not pronounced with the sound (42 %, 46 times). As said before, for the NT speakers neither the articulation nor omission of the feature can be considered an error. There was one interesting occurrence of LLI01 to be found in the speech of informant 05. The speaker omitted the linking /r/ not between words but within a word – interact . Regarding the environment of the sound, no pattern could be observed.

6.2.1.3 Flap

Another difference between AE and BE Standard pronunciation is whether a flap is articulated instead of /t/ or not, such as in the words winter and writer . In GA it is articulated, whereas it is not realised in RP. It will be seen in the following chart the extent to which the 60

Austrian students managed to follow the phonetic rules of their target variety. Flap is abbreviated as FL and lack of flap is marked with LFL.

100% 93% 78% 80%

60% FL 40% LFL 22% 20% 7% 0% RP GA

Chart 11. Flap

The results presented in Chart 11 account for the surprisingly good pronunciation of the Austrian students regarding the feature of the flap. Especially the speakers of RP had good results – in 93 % of the words where flap may or may not be pronounced (55 times) it was not realised. Only seven % of the words contained a flap (four times). These speakers are very RP-native like concerning this feature. The speakers of GA did not score badly either. 78 % of the cases were realised with flap (50 times), while in only 22 % (14 times) [t] was used. It seems from these results that the students are very aware of the fact that in RP there is a tendency not to pronounce the flap, while it is common to do so in GA. Regarding the phonetic environment of the sound no peculiarities could be detected with the speakers of RP. With the two GA speakers one remark must be made. Informant 02 also used a flap word- initially – which is also sometimes found in the speech of native speaker of AE. An example is the word to . When examining the realisation of the flap with the students that do not follow a particular target variety, again one cannot speak of errors. Therefore the results shall merely be mentioned briefly. 27 % of the cases were pronounced with a flap (28 times), whereas in the remaining 73 % /t/ was used (74 times). Consequently, there is a clear tendency with those speakers not to articulate the flap. As with RP, no regularities regarding the sounds´ environments can be observed.

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6.2.1.4 Yod-dropping

By yod-dropping I mean the elision of /j/ after /t,d/. This phenomenon is typical of General American. Received Pronunciation, in contrast, lacks this feature. It was to be investigated how often the ten students of English omitted /j/ after /t,d/. First the RP and GA speakers’ realisation of this feature will be examined and secondly, the NT speakers will be looked at. The abbreviated form of yod-dropping is YOD, while the abbreviation of lack of yod- dropping is LYOD.

100% 100%

80% 75%

60% YOD 40% LYOD 25% 20% 0% 0% RP GA

Chart 12. Yod-dropping

The chart shows quite surprising results. Out of 7 occurrences the speakers of RP did not omit /j/ at all, which accounts for their RP-like pronunciation regarding this feature. The speakers of GA, in contrast, only deleted the /j/ in 25 % of the cases (three times). In 75 % of the words the sound was pronounced (nine times). Concerning this feature, their pronunciation is therefore more RP-like than they would probably wish it to be. No pattern whatsoever could be observed concerning the phonetic environment of the sound. The occurrence of YOD and LYOD was completely at random. The NT speakers also performed interestingly. In 91 % (29 times) of all occurrences (32 in total) /j/ was not deleted, whereas only in nine % the sound was omitted (three times). One case of overgeneralisation was found in informant 05. He deleted /j/ in a word where even in GA it is maintained – in during . As with RP and GA, no pattern was detected with regard to the sound´s surrounding. It seems that regardless of whether the students pursue a particular target variety or not, they tend not to delete the /j/.

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6.2.2 The Results – the Vowels

The following chapters discuss the pronunciation of those vowels that are related to the target variety, i.e. those vowels which represent differences between RP and GA.

6.2.2.1 /@9 / vs. /æ/

Among other features, chapter 4.2 discussed the vowel differences between RP and GA. Some of them were left out of the analysis, such as whether the informants used RP / ?T/ or GA /o T/. Of particular interest was whether they articulate RP / @9 / or GA /æ/ in words such as after , can´t and example . The pronunciation of /æ/ is represented by the abbreviated category VO02, the pronunciation of /@9 / by VO03. The following chart shows the results for the RP and GA speakers:

90% 90% 80% 70% 62% 60% 50% VO02 40% 38% VO03 30% 20% 10% 10% 0% RP GA

Chart 13. /@9 / vs. /æ/

Chart 13 shows rather similar results to chart 12. In 90 % (37 times) of all cases (41 in total), the speakers of RP used the RP version of the sound, i.e. /@9 /. In only 10 % (four times) they used the GA version /æ/. Again, the speakers of GA did not perform so well. In 62 % (five times) of the cases (eight in total) they used the RP sound and only in 38 % the GA sound (three times). Again, the distribution of the two sounds was random. The NT speakers, again, used the RP sound much more often than the GA sound. In 93 % of the occurrences / @9 / was realised (53 times), while in only seven % /æ/ was produced (four

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times). There was no visible reason why the students used the RP sound in some words and the GA sound in others. The students who do not have a target variety obviously often tend to use RP rather than GA features.

6.2.2.2 /


/ vs. /@9 / or / N9 / 

The back rounded vowel /
/ is part of the vowel system of Received Pronunciation, whereas it is missing in General American. Instead native speakers of American English use / @9 / or / N9 /, depending on the word. This was expected to be the most difficult feature to realise for the students who follow a target variety. In chart 14 it will be seen whether this holds true. VO04 represents the GA pronunciation, i.e. /@9 / or / N9 /, while VO05 stands for the RP pronunciation, i.e. /
/.

100% 91%

80% 78%

60% VO04 40% VO05 22% 20% 9% 0% RP GA

Chart 14. /
/ vs. / @9 / or / N9 /

It turned out that the expectations were not fulfilled at all. Both speakers of RP and GA used RP /
/ in most cases. The speakers of RP produced this sound in 91 % (156 times) of all occurrences (171 in total) and in only 9 % did they use the GA sound (15 times). The speakers of GA used the RP sound in 78 % (35 times) of the cases (45 in total) and the GA sound in only 22 % of the cases (ten times). It was mainly words that occur frequently in the English language which were pronounced with [
] such as not , of and lot . However, in other frequently occurring words the GA version was used such as in got . It was impossible to

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detect why the informants sometimes used the RP sound and sometimes the GA sound. There was no indication from the phonetic environment of the sound to be found. The tendency towards using the RP sound was also examined in the English of the NT speakers. In 85 % (208 times) of all cases (246 in total) they used the RP version and in only 15 % the GA sound (38 times). It was again mainly the word got which was pronounced with

[@] rather than with [
]. No pattern was detected with regard to the sounds´ environment.

6.2.2.3 Nasalisation of /æ/

The phenomenon of nasalising /æ/ is represented by the category VO19. The excessive use of this sound by informant 06 was already discussed in chapter 6.1.2.1. For this reason it suffices to merely summarise the results. Nasalising this sound may occur in some regional dialects of the United States. It cannot be considered a feature of GA per se. The sound exclusively occurred before a nasal ( tram , transport , etc.). It remains uncertain whether the informant was aware of her using the nasalised /æ/. As the informant does not pursue a target variety it is unlikely that she tries to imitate an American English dialect. The feature only occurred in informant 06.

6.3 Testing Native-Like Speech

The previous chapters discussed the pronunciation of vowels and consonants of the ten Austrian students. It was seen which errors the students still make and which errors they have managed to partly or fully avoid. The following chapters are concerned mostly not with errors but with features of connected speech. As mentioned, in casual speech it is normal to weaken unstressed syllables, to omit certain sounds, etc. If the speech of a learner of English lacks these connected features one cannot speak of errors but a native-speaker will still unmask him or her as a non-native. At the students´ high level of English it was expected that at least some of the features of connected speech would be found.

6.3.1 The Results – the Consonants

It will again be the consonants which will be discussed first and afterwards the vowels will be examined. 65

6.3.1.1 Glottal Stop

Two categories were created for phenomena involving the glottal stop [ >]. They both may both be found in regional varieties of British English rather than in American English. The first one is reinforcement of /p,t,k/ or /sR/ which may occur in syllable-final position following a nasal, lateral or vowel and a break or a consonant. The second one is the substitution of [ >] for /p,t,k,d/ in syllable-final position. The results of the two features – represented by GL01 and GL02 – are displayed in the following chart.

80 76 70 60 50 40 Total Frequency 30 25 20 10 0 GL01 GL02

Chart 15. Glottal stop

From the chart one can see that the reinforcement of /p,t,k/ and /t R/ occurred less than the substitution of /p,t,k/ by [ >]. The sound /t R/ was not reinforced at all. The sound which was mostly reinforced and substituted was /t/. Examples are that many , flatmates , and it was . In contrast, /p/ was neither reinforced nor substituted. The sound /d/ was also reinforced and substituted a number of times such as in had to , started uhm and good because . Most students did not reinforce or substitute /k/ by [ >]. One informant, however, is outstanding in that regard. Informant 08 replaced /k/ by [ >] four times out of six. In all four cases the substitution occurred in the word like . Regarding the phonetic environment of the reinforcement and substitution, respectively, no pattern can be detected. With some informants the phenomena mostly occurred before voiceless consonants, with others it also frequently occurred before voiced consonants and vowels.

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6.3.1.2 Consonant Cluster Reduction

Another feature of connected speech is consonant cluster reduction (CCLRE). It is very common in the speech of native speakers of English to omit a consonant when it occurs in a cluster. Apparently clusters are also not easy to pronounce for native speakers. An example is the elision of /d/ in landlord . Before presenting the results of CCLRE a distinction must be made from elision of consonants (ELC) and assimilation (ASS01 and ASS02). CCLRE applies to consonant clusters in which the consonants are not homorganic such as in don´t think where /t/ is omitted. In contrast, assimilation occurs in clusters in which the consonants are homorganic as in moved to where /d/ is deleted. Finally ELC applies to cases which are not consonant clusters but where a consonant is simply omitted such as /d/ in and always . The results of CCLRE are rather striking. The reduction occurred 331 times among the informants. The sounds which were most often reduced were /d/, / C/ and /t/. Examples are the phrases I don´t know (elision of /t/), I didn´t know (elision of /t/) and at the (elision of / C/). The environment of the reduction is of course consonants – both voiced and voiceless ones. Despite that, there did not seem to be a particular pattern.

6.3.1.3 Elision of Consonants

The category ELC – elision of consonants – is divided into two sub-categories. The first one represents errors such as the elision of /g/ in English . The second sub-category describes consonant elisions which are common in native-speech and, when found in the English of the informants, accounts for their native-like pronunciation. An example of this feature is the omission of /d/ in and in . The abbreviation for both sub-categories is ELC but for reasons of illustration the following chart distinguishes between ELC01 for the first type of ELC and ELC02 for the second type of elision.

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42

ELC01 ELC02

166

Chart 16. Elision of consonants

Chart 15 shows that out of 208 occurrences of elision, 42 represent errors (20 %) and 166 native-like speech (80 %). The cases that are considered errors mostly affect the /g/ and /j/. These two sounds were frequently omitted by the informants such as in the words English , popular and during . It cannot be said whether elision of /j/ in words like the latter two represent overgeneralisation of AE yod-dropping or not. The second type of consonant elision that accounts for native-like speech mostly affected /t/ and /d/. These sounds were mostly omitted when occurring word-finally such as in and always and what was . Some informants also elided consonants in a particular position which is considered a feature of GA. Examples of this kind of elision are the words wanted and recommended where word-medial /t/ and /d/, respectively, are omitted.

6.3.1.4 Assimilation

Of particular interest for this study are both the phenomena of partial and total assimilation. The following pie chart (next page) shows how often the students assimilated partially (ASS01) and totally (ASS02).

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1%

ASS01 ASS02

99%

Chart 17. Partial and total assimilation

Only 1 % of all cases of assimilation (95 in total) were partial assimilation, whereas 99 % were total assimilation. The relative infrequency of partial assimilation corresponds to its total assimilation, which is consequently 1. It was in the English of informant 03 where this partial assimilation occurred. The consonant /s/ was influenced by the following [ C] and was assimilated to [ S] in the words of course there´re . Total assimilation, in contrast, was found frequently in the speech of the informants. It was mostly the consonants /z/, /d/ and /v/ in word-final position that were affected by assimilation and consequently turned into /s/, /t/ and /f/, respectively. Examples are is something , moved to and have fun . This process of assimilation in which consonants are fortified and devoiced cannot be considered an error as it is a normal feature of native speech as well. Therefore final devoicing in this position is not an error. Interesting results were found in the English of informant 04. It was said before that he seemed to try hard to properly pronounce / S/ and / C/ and as a result his English sounded rather artificial. The same happened with assimilation. The informant only assimilated once and most of the time pronounced each consonant with great effort, which resulted in a kind of hard, staccato and artificial English. As no audible vowel assimilation could be detected, this category was discussed in 6.3.1 The Results – the Consonants.

6.3.1.5 Further Features of Connected Speech

Two more features of connected speech that concern the pronunciation of the informants´ consonants shall be discussed briefly. The first one is the category BOD – breathed onset deletion. The omission of word-initial /h/ is often observed in the speech of English native speakers. It was not assumed that the English of the Austrian students would also contain this 69

feature. This hypothesis turned out to be true. Only two cases of breathed onset deletion were found – in the speech of one informant. What is more, these two cases cannot be considered native-like pronunciations but errors. The informant deleted /h/ at the beginning of huge and consequently produced [ju 9tR] (the second error in this word is final devoicing and fortition of /d Y/). The second feature to be discussed is the coalescence of /t,d,s,z/ with /j/. Again, this feature was rare in the informants´ English as it only occurred once. Informant 08 pronounced where do you go [we ? tRT g?T].

6.3.2 The Results – the Vowels

Only two features of connected speech regarding vowels was analysed in this study – elision of vowels and vowel reduction (weakening).

6.3.2.1 Elision of Vowels

The first category to be mentioned in this chapter is VOD – vowel deletion. Eighty-eight cases of deletion were found in the informants´ English. Most of them represent errors such as the omission of / ?/ in the last syllable of European . Others, however, could be counted as native-like speech. An example is the deletion of word-initial / ?/ in about . Finally, there are those cases of vowel deletion which - according to the dictionary – represent errors but might also be done in fast native speech. Examples are the omission of /T/ in usually and actually .

6.3.2.2 Vowel Reduction (Weakening)

As mentioned earlier in the paper, weakening unstressed syllables is a very common feature of the speech of English native-speakers. If it is not done by the learner, he or she will be recognized as a non-native. For this reason students of English should put great emphasis on improving their weakening habits. All in all, the students weakened 617 times, some weakened more some less. Naturally, it was mostly function words that were affected by vowel reduction such as of , to , as , on , and , but and because . In some cases it was clear that it was the speed which led to weakening. In other cases no obvious reason could be detected.

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Although the students did not weaken in all cases there were parts of every informant´s English which a native speaker would also weaken. Before revising the hypotheses one remark must be made. An additional part of the linguistic analysis of the recordings was also to see whether the students´ pronunciation varied throughout the recording, i.e. for example, if they have a better pronunciation at the beginning of the conversation than at the end. There was in fact some variation to be found with the informants´ English. Due to the fact that no audible reason for this variation whatsoever could be detected this part of the analysis remains unmentioned.

7 Hypotheses revised

After having given a detailed record of the results of the students´ pronunciation, it is of interest to see how far the outcome corresponds to the hypotheses that were formulated in chapter 4.4. Before doing so, however, one remark must be made concerning factors that might influence or might have influenced the students´ pronunciation. The informants consulted within this study were asked to provide information on the influencing factors formulated by Piske et al. such as age of learning, foreign language instruction and so on. However, valid conclusions regarding these factors cannot be made for various reasons. First of all, the study is not representative as only ten students were recorded and analysed. Furthermore, the information given by the students such as, for example, whether they considered their foreign language instruction at school and university as good is subjective and therefore cannot be validated. Finally, in order to find out about language improvements due to a stay abroad, a long-term study would need to be carried out in order to obtain a pre- post comparison. For the above-mentioned reasons the pronunciation of each individual informant will not be compared but the performances will be discussed collectively. The only comparison among the informants that will be made is between speakers of RP, speakers of GA and NT speakers. When comparing the hypotheses with the actual results of the analysis, it becomes clear that the pronunciation of certain errors was predicted correctly and of others incorrectly. First the hypotheses that are unrelated to the target variety will be compared with the respective results. Only the most striking results will be discussed. Examining the consonants first, it is striking that the expectations regarding the students´ devoicing of consonants were met in 71

almost all cases. It was expected that the students would devoice all consonants under investigation. The consonants /d Y,g,z, Y,v/ were voiced by the informants to a large extent. In contrast, approximately only half of all occurrences of word-final /d/ and /b/ were devoiced. The students thus performed better than expected regarding these two sounds. As mentioned, devoicing of / C/ could not be analysed as the recordings did not contain any words with this sound occurring word-finally. Regarding the aspiration of plosives the hypotheses were also only partly validated. While the students generally had no problems aspirating plosives in word-initial and –medial position, they did not always aspirate plosives in final position and in certain consonant clusters such as /sk/ and /sp/. Lenition of /p,k,t,s,f, S/ and plosivisation of /sR,d Y,S,R/ only occurred rarely – which corresponds to the expectations. Both affrication of /d,k,t/ and fricativisation of /t R,d Y,k/ were processes which were not expected much. Regarding fricativisation this held true – it only occurred in a few words. There were more cases of affrication to be found, however, not concerning /k/ but /t/ and /d/. I expected the students to still have consonant cluster problems involving / S/ and it turned out that I was right – there were a few difficulties to be found. The pronunciation of / S/ itself was not thought to be troublesome for students at such a high level anymore. Except for four words, the students articulated the sound correctly. While the students were not expected to substitute [v] for /w/, they were expected to replace /v/ with [w] . This also turned out to be right. One of the most startling results concerns the realisation of /l/. The informants substituted [l] for [4] 41 times, especially in word-final position and in clusters. For students at university-level this number seems rather high. Similarly surprising was the fact that one informant was apparently not able or willing to always articulate the Standard English /r/-sound but to replace it by the trill. The next results to be compared with the hypotheses are the ones regarding vowels which are not related to the target variety. It was expected that the students would have severe problems with producing /æ/ and would rather substitute it with [D] or [e]. It turned out the students replaced 63 % of all occurrences and thus this hypothesis is validated. One particular realisation of the respective vowel by informant 06, however, was not predicted – nasalisation. Not much monophthongisation and diphthongisation was expected to be found in the informants´ English. As for diphthongisation this holds true. Monophthongisation, in contrast, was a frequent phenomenon to be observed. The students also quite often substituted a vowel for / ?/, which corresponds to the predictions. Two cases of overgeneralisation –

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substitution of [ @9 ] for / N/ and [æ] for / D/ and /e/, respectively, were not really expected from the informants. However, quite a number of occurrences could be found. The same happened with elision of vowels, which was not predicted to occur often. Numerous cases of vowel deletion – some representing errors, others native-like pronunciation – were detected. In the following paragraphs those hypotheses will be dealt with which are related to the target variety. Again, the consonants will be discussed first. It was of particular interest whether the students of RP and GA, respectively, would be consistent regarding the pronunciation of post-vocalic /r/. As predicted, the recordings showed great variation. The speakers of both varieties sometimes pronounced the sound and sometimes did not. The same applied to the NT speakers – although they showed a certain tendency towards a lack of a post-vocalic /r/. The articulation of the linking /r/ was only examined with the speakers of RP and NT. Again, inconsistency was expected. This turned out to be true. Both speakers of RP and NT only articulated the sound in about half of the cases. The flap was not expected to always be pronounced by the speakers of GA and to not always be articulated by the speakers of RP. Again, this expectation was fulfilled. The results in detail, however, were still surprising. The speakers of RP did not realise the flap at all, while the speakers of GA did articulate it in most cases. The speakers of NT tended towards the RP version. It was expected that the speakers of GA would omit /j/ in certain positions (yod-dropping) and the speakers of RP would avoid doing so, i.e. they would pronounce it. The latter expectation held true. The former one, however, did not. In 75 % of the cases the speakers of GA in fact did not delete the sound and thus used the RP version. Again, there was a tendency of the NT speakers towards the RP version. There are only two hypotheses regarding the vowels related to the target variety that will be mentioned here. Inconsistency was expected concerning the pronunciation of / @9 / vs. /æ/. As we saw, the former sound constitutes the RP pronunciation, while the latter one represents the GA pronunciation. This inconsistency was found in the speech of the GA students who pronounced the RP version in most cases. The RP speakers, in contrast, articulated / @9 / in 90 % of the cases and were consequently quite consistent. The opposition

/
/ vs. / @9 / or / N9 / was also under investigation. It was also expected that the RP speakers would always produce the first vowel and the GA speakers always one of the latter two vowels. Again, I was mistaken regarding the RP speakers. In 91 % of all cases they used the RP version. The GA speakers, in contrast, did show inconsistency as they only used their

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version in 22 % of all cases. In both opposition pairs, the speakers of NT articulated the RP sound predominantly. The hypotheses and results regarding native-like speech shall be discussed briefly, starting again with the consonants. Against expectation, /p,t,k,t R,d/ were reinforced or substituted by [ >] a number of times. This mostly concerned /t/. Not much consonant cluster reduction was expected to occur in the informants´ English. However, all in all this phenomenon appeared 331 times and, consequently, this hypothesis was not validated. The phenomenon of consonant elision, in contrast, was expected to occur often and in fact was found numerous times in the students´ English. Most cases represented errors but some also native-like speech. Another expected feature to be found was assimilation. Although there was almost no partial assimilation to be found, the informants´ speech contained many instances of total assimilation. As anticipated, almost no breathed onset deletion occurred in the recordings and the ones that did occur did not constitute features of native-speech but mere pronunciation errors. The last consonant feature to be mentioned is coalescence of /t,d,s,z/ with /j/. This feature was expected to be part of the informants´ English. However, it only occurred once. Two vowel results that account for native-like speech remain to be discussed. I did not expect the students to delete many vowels. In turned out, however, that they in fact omitted a number of vowels – most of them errors but also some that represent native-like speech. From a student of English at university-level it was expected that he or she would reduce many vowels, i.e. weaken much. It turned out that the students´ English contained much weakening and therefore this hypothesis was validated.

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IV Conclusions

7 English Summary

The aim of this paper was to provide an insight into the pronunciation of ten Austrian students of English at Karl-Franzens University, Graz. An attempt was made to find out how native- like the students´ pronunciation actually is, i.e. what kind of errors are still to be observed in their English. In addition, their consistency regarding the features of their target variety was under investigation. First, theoretical background on second language acquisition, contrastive linguistics and interference was provided. In contrastive linguistics two or more languages are compared to one another and thus their similarities and differences are determined. Two predominant notions of CL were discussed – the ‘strong claim’ and the ‘weak claim’ of contrastive analysis. Whereas followers of the strong claim stated that all errors could be predicted if the L1 and the L2 were properly compared, the weak claim did not attribute predictive powers to CL but merely explained errors after they were made. In the course of the history of this linguistic field it became clear that not all errors were attributable to the mother tongue of the learner but influence from the L1 to the L2 was still an important factor. The next term that was discussed was ‘interference’. A distinction was made between ‘positive transfer’ and ‘negative transfer’ (interference). The former applies when the elements that are transferred from the L1 to the L2 are actually found in the L2 as well. The latter, in contrast, applies when the L1 elements do not have equivalents in the L2 and the learning process is therefore impeded. There is consent among linguists that most interference is found in phonology, rather than syntax or lexis. Another crucial term was introduced – ‘interlanguage’. This linguistic system lies somewhere between the L1 and the L2 and has its own rules. If the interlanguage contains numerous elements that are not found in the L2 this results in ‘fossilisation’. Linked to interference is the so-called ‘Ontogeny Model of SLA’ which introduces developmental errors – in addition to interference errors. By developmental errors one means substitutions made by the adult learner which are also found in the target language of children who acquire it as their mother tongue. The aim of this paper was not to find out which pronunciation errors are interference errors and which are developmental errors but merely to present an insight into the pronunciation of the ten Austrian students of English. 75

It was made clear that the factors influencing an L2 learner´s performance are manifold. Factors such as age of learning, gender, formal instruction, length of residence in an L2-speaking country may be sources of influence. Furthermore, motivation, aptitude and the so-called ‘psychological factors’ like tiredness, poor concentration and nervousness may impede the performance of the target language. It was then necessary to contrast the sound systems of English and German, including General American and Standard Austrian pronunciation. The vowels and consonants as well as features of connected speech were dealt with. Only the segmental level was compared, leaving out the prosodic features such as intonation, rhythm and stress. Finally, a list of the deviations which were expected to be found in the students´ English was displayed. The empirical part offered an insight into the research question, the subjects and the method of the analysis. The first step was to record the ten Austrian students of English. I chose casual conversation as the students´ pronunciation was then expected to be most natural. Furthermore, a fake topic was invented to prevent the students from consciously or unconsciously changing their accent if they knew their pronunciation was being analysed. After the recordings the informants´ English was orthographically transcribed and annotated with pronunciation categories. Finally, the annotated transcripts were analysed with the corpus-linguistic programme WordSmith in order to obtain information on the frequency of errors as well as on the sounds´ phonetic environments. The part entitled ‘The Results’ finally presented the outcome of the analysis of the students´ English. Regarding the errors which were unrelated to the target variety, some interesting observations were made. It turned out that the students had severe problems with the voicing of certain sounds. The degree of devoicing of /d Y,z, Y/ and /v/ was particularly high. The students tended to devoice the sounds in voiceless environments, whereas they often voiced them in voiced environments such as before voiced consonants and vowels. Another astonishing outcome in this category concerns the substitution of [w] for /v/ and of [l] for [ 4], respectively. Both phenomena were found numerous times in the students´ speech. A few errors in the same category but regarding vowels also showed interesting results. The students still seem to have difficulties articulating /æ/ and tend to substitute the vowel with [D] or [e]. In most cases no pattern could be detected with regard to the errors´ phonetic environment. The excessive use of monophthongs instead of diphthongs as well as the substitution of a vowel for / ?/ were similarly striking. The two cases of overgeneralisation –

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[@9 ] for / N/ and [æ] for / D/ or /e/ - account for the attempt made by the students to sound native-like but they – nevertheless - constitute errors. Of particular interest was also whether the speakers of RP and GA would be consistent regarding the usage of the features of their respective variety. Concerning the consonants of this category it turned out that the students were highly inconsistent in their use of the post- vocalic /r/. Speakers of RP and GA alike sometimes used the sound and sometimes omitted it. In two other categories – flap and yod-dropping – the speakers of RP and GA performed rather differently. While the speakers of RP almost never used the GA sounds, the speakers of GA frequently articulated the sounds of RP. In most cases those speakers who do not pursue a particular target variety tended to use the RP sound more than the GA sound. Examining the vowels which are related to the target variety, the results show that with both / @9 / vs. /æ/ and /
/ vs. / @9 / or / N9 /, the speakers of GA tend to use the RP version of the sound, i.e. the first one in each of the oppositions. The RP speakers predominantly used their version of the sounds. Again, there was a certain tendency to be observed in the speakers of NT to use the RP sounds. With those features that account for native-like speech, the informants performed differently. Features such as consonant cluster reduction, reinforcement and substitution of /p,t,k,d,t R/ by [ >], elision of consonants and assimilation were observed frequently in the speech of the students. Furthermore, quite a lot of weakening and vowel deletion was detected. Breathed onset deletion and coalescence, in contrast, were two features which were rarely found. Summing up, the pronunciation of the Austrian students of English is rather good. They have managed to eradicate a number of errors. However, there are some areas they still need to work on such as devoicing, overgeneralisation, the articulation of /æ/ and some features of connected speech. Furthermore, those speakers who have a target variety should pay more attention to the realisation of its respective features such as the post-vocalic /r/. The next step then would be to establish pedagogic means in order to improve the students´ pronunciation of English by focusing on the most problematic areas discussed in the paper. Professors teaching pronunciation at the English department at Karl-Franzens University, Graz, could develop special exercises that include these areas. Furthermore, an attempt could be made not merely to deal with the production of sounds but the perception as well. As mentioned, the learner is only able to perceive those sounds that are found in his or her mother tongue. Special perception exercises could improve the ability of the students to also 77

perceive the sounds of the target language, which would then lead to them being able to pronounce the foreign sounds.

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8 German Summary

Ziel der vorliegenden Diplomarbeit war es, einen Einblick in die Aussprache von zehn österreichischen EnglischstudentInnen der Karl-Franzens Universität, Graz, zu geben. Es wurde versucht, herauszufinden, wie nahe deren Aussprache jener von Englisch- MuttersprachlerInnen ist, d.h., welche Fehler nach wie vor vorhanden sind. Zusätzlich wurde untersucht, wie konsequent die StudentInnen sind was die Umsetzung ihrer Zielvariante betrifft. Der Theorieteil umfasste Hintergrundwissen bezüglich Zweitsprachenerwerb, Kontrastiver Linguistik und Interferenz. In der Kontrastiven Linguistik werden zwei oder mehr Sprachen miteinander verglichen und so ihre Gemeinsamkeiten und Unterschiede herausgearbeitet. Zwei wesentliche Richtungen der Kontrastiven Linguistik wurden vorgestellt – der „strong claim“ und der „weak claim“. Anhänger des strong claim vertreten die Meinung, dass alle Fehler vorhergesagt werden können, wenn die L1 und L2 richtig miteinander verglichen worden sind. Der weak claim, hingegen, schreibt der CL keine prädiktive Fähigkeit zu, sondern erklärt Fehler erst, nachdem sie gemacht worden sind. Im Laufe der Geschichte dieses linguistischen Teilbereichs ist klar geworden, dass nicht alle Fehler der Muttersprache des Lernenden zugeschrieben werden können, Interferenz jedoch nichtsdestotrotz einen wesentlichen Faktor darstellt. Der nächste Begriff, der behandelt wurde, war „Interferenz“. Hier wurde zwischen „positivem Transfer“ und „negativem Transfer“ (Interferenz) unterschieden. Positiver Transfer trifft zu, wenn Elemente, die von der L1 auf die L2 übertragen werden, auch in der L2 vorhanden sind. Bei negativem Transfer, hingegen, haben die Elemente der L1 keine Äquivalente in der L2, was zur Behinderung des Lernprozesses führt. LinguistInnen sind sich einig, dass am meisten Interferenz nicht in der Syntax oder Lexis, sondern in der Phonologie stattfindet. Ein weiterer zentraler Begriff wurde behandelt – „Interimsprache“. Dieses linguistische System liegt irgendwo zwischen der L1 und der L2 und hat seine eigenen Regeln. Wenn die Interimsprache des Lernenden viele Elemente enthält, die in der L2 nicht vorzufinden sind, spricht man von „Fossilisierung“. Mit Interferenz eng verbunden ist das sogenannte „Ontogeny Model of SLA“, das „developmental errors“ einführt – zusätzlich zu Interferenzfehlern. Diese Art von Fehlern betrifft Substitutionen, die von dem erwachsenen Lernenden gemacht werden, jedoch auch in der Zielsprache von Kindern, die sie als ihre Muttersprache lernen, vorkommen. Das Ziel dieser Arbeit war nicht, herauszufinden, welche 79

Aussprachefehler Interferenzfehler und welche developmental errors darstellen. Es sollte lediglich ein Einblick in die Aussprache von den zehn österreichischen EnglischstudentInnen gewährleistet werden. Es wurde weiters versucht, klarzustellen, dass die Faktoren, die die Leistung eines Lernenden beeinflussen, vielfältig sind. Faktoren wie Geschlecht, Unterricht, Länge des Aufenthalts in einem L2-sprachigen Land stellen beispielsweise wesentliche Einflussfaktoren dar. Zusätzlich können Motivation, Talent und die sogenannten „psychologischen Faktoren“ wie Müdigkeit, schlechte Konzentration und Nervosität die Leistung in der Zielsprache hemmen. Als nächsten Schritt war es notwendig, das englische und deutsche Lautsystem miteinander zu vergleichen. Die amerikanische und österreichische Standardaussprache wurden hier ebenso berücksichtigt. Es wurden Vokale, Konsonanten sowie Elemente von „connected speech“ behandelt. Verglichen wurde lediglich die segmentale Ebene der Sprachen – die prosodischen Elemente wie Intonation, Betonung und Rhythmus wurden nicht verglichen. Zuletzt wurden jene Aussprachefehler aufgelistet, die im Englisch der Studierenden erwartet wurden. Der empirische Teil der Arbeit ermöglichte einen Einblick in die Forschungsfrage, die InformantInnen und die Methode der Analyse. Der erste Schritt bestand darin, das Englisch der zehn österreichischen EnglischstudentInnen aufzunehmen. Es wurde freie Konversation gewählt, da hier die Sprache der InformantInnen am natürlichsten ist. Weiters wurde ein erfundenes Diplomarbeitsthema vorgestellt, um bewusste oder unbewusste Beeinflussung des Akzents bei Wissen über den Forschungsgegenstand zu verhindern. Nach den Aufnahmen wurde das Englisch der InformantInnen orthographisch transkribiert und anschließend mit den erstellten Aussprachekategorien annotiert. Schlussendlich wurden die annotierten Transkriptionen mit dem Korpus-Lingustik-Programm WordSmith analysiert. So konnten Informationen bezüglich der Häufigkeit bestimmter Fehler, sowie der phonetischen Umgebung der Fehler gewonnen werden. Das Kapitel „The Results“ präsentierte letztlich die Ergebnisse der Analyse. Bezüglich der Fehler, die nichts mit der Zielvariante zu tun hatten, konnten einige interessante Beobachtungen gemacht werden. Es stellte sich heraus, dass die StudentInnen große Probleme mit der Stimmhaftigkeit von bestimmten Lauten hatten. Vor allem /d Y,z, Y/ und /v/ wurden oft entstimmt. Die StudentInnen tendierten dazu, die Konsonanten in stimmloser Umgebung zu entstimmen. In stimmhafter Umgebung, jedoch, wurden sie oftmals nicht entstimmt, wie vor 80

stimmhaften Konsonanten und Vokalen. Ein weiteres interessantes Resultat in dieser Kategorie betrifft die Substitution von /v/ durch [w] und [l] durch [ 4]. Beide Phänomene wurden im Englisch der StudentInnen oftmals beobachtet. Einige interessante Ergebnisse konnten auch bei den Vokalen derselben Kategorie festgestellt werden. Die StudentInnen scheinen nach wie vor Probleme mit der Artikulation von /æ/ zu haben – sie substituierten den Laut oft durch [ D] oder [e]. In den meisten Fällen konnte kein Muster festgestellt werden was die phonetische Umgebung des Fehlers betrifft. Auch überraschend war die häufige Verwendung von Monophthongen statt Diphthongen sowie die Substitution von / ?/ durch einen Vokal. Die zwei Fälle von Übergeneralisierung – [
9] für / N/ und [æ] für / D/ oder /e/ - zeigen, dass die StudentInnen bemüht waren, sich wie MuttersprachlerInnen anzuhören. Nichtsdestotrotz, stellen die Substituierungen Fehler dar. Von besonderem Interesse war weiters, ob die RP- und GA-SprecherInnen konsequent die Merkmale ihrer jeweiligen Zielvariante umsetzen konnten. Was die Konsonanten dieser Kategorie betrifft, hat sich herausgestellt, dass die InformantInnen äußerst inkonsequent in ihrer Verwendung des post-vokalischen /r/s waren. Sowohl RP-SprecherInnen als auch GA- SprecherInnen artikulierten den Konsonanten an manchen Stellen und an anderen wiederum nicht. In zwei weiteren Kategorien – Flap und Yod-dropping – ergaben sich bei den RP- und GA-SprecherInnen unterschiedliche Resultate. Während die RP-SprecherInnen fast nie den jeweiligen GA-Laut artikulierten, verwendeten die GA-SprecherInnen den RP-Laut recht häufig. Jene Sprecher, die keine Zielvariante verfolgen, artikulierten in den meisten Fällen den RP-Laut. Unterschiedliche Ergebnisse wurden auch bei jenen Merkmalen beobachtet, die für deren Muttersprachlichkeit sprechen. Merkmale wie die Reduktion von Konsonantenclustern, Verstärkung und Substitution von /p,t,k,d,t R/ durch [ >], Konsonantenelision und Assimilation wurden in dem Englisch der InformantInnen häufig festgestellt. Weitere häufig vorkommenden Kategorien waren Vokalschwächung und Vokalelision. Koaleszenz, hingegen, wurde kaum beobachtet. Zusammenfassend kann gesagt werden, dass die Englischaussprache der zehn österreichischen AnglistikstudentInnen ein hohes Niveau aufweist. Die InformantInnen haben es geschafft, eine große Anzahl an typischen Fehlern zu vermeiden. Es gibt jedoch nach wie vor Prozesse, an denen sie arbeiten sollten, wie beispielsweise Stimmhaftigkeit, Übergeneralisierung und die Artikulation von /æ/. Weiters sollten jene SprecherInnen, die

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eine Zielvariante verfolgen, der Realisierung der jeweiligen Merkmale mehr Aufmerksamkeit schenken, sowie beispielsweise dem post-vokalischen /r/. Der nächste Schritt wäre nun, pädagogische Konzepte zur Verbesserung der Englischaussprache der Studierenden zu entwickeln, in dem das Hauptaugenmerk auf die in der Arbeit festgestellten Problembereiche gerichtet wird. ProfessorInnen, die am Anglistikinstitut der Karl-Franzens Universität, Graz, Englische Aussprache unterrichten, könnten spezielle Übungen entwickeln, die eben diese Bereiche inkludieren. Weiters könnte ein Versuch unternommen werden, nicht nur auf die Produktion von Lauten, sondern auch auf deren Perzeption zu fokusieren. Wie bereits erwähnt, nimmt der Lernende immer nur jene Laute wahr, die in seiner oder ihrer Muttersprache vorkommen. Spezielle Perzeptionsübungen könnten die Fähigkeit, auch die fremden Laute der Zielsprache wahrnehmen zu können, verbessern, und schlussendlich dazu führen, dass die Studierenden diese Laute auch produzieren können.

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List of Tables

Table 1. The monophthongs of RP Table 2. The diphthongs of RP Table 3. The consonants of RP Table 4. The monophthongs of Standard German Table 5. The diphthongs of Standard German Table 6. The consonants of Standard German

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List of Illustrations

Chart 1. Devoicing of /d Y/ Chart 2. Devoicing of /d/ Chart 3. Devoicing of /z/ Chart 4. Devoicing of / Y/ Chart 5. Devoicing of /v/ in word-final position Chart 6. Plosivisation of / C/ Chart 7. Substitution of [ D] or [e] for /æ/ Chart 8. Monophthongisation and diphthongisation Chart 9. Post-vocalic /r/ Chart 10. Linking /r/ Chart 11. Flap Chart 12. Yod-dropping Chart 13. / @9 / vs. /æ/

Chart 14. /
/ vs. / @9 / or / N9 / Chart 15. Glottal stop Chart 16. Elision of consonants Chart 17. Partial and total assimilation

Figure 1. Concordance in WordSmith

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Appendix

Pronunciation Categories

Abbreviation Meaning

Categories unrelated to target variety

Consonants

DV01 devoicing of /d Y/

DV02 devoicing of / C/

DV03 devoicing of /b/

DV04 devoicing of /g/

DV05 devoicing of /d/

DV06 devoicing of /z/

DV07 devoicing of / Y/

DV08 devoicing of /v/

NDV01 no devoicing of /d Y/

NDV02 no devoicing of / C/

NDV03 no devoicing of /b/

NDV04 no devoicing of /g/

NDV05 no devoicing of /d/

NDV06 no devoicing of /z/

NDV07 no devoicing of / Y/

NDV08 no devoicing of /v/

AS01 aspiration of /p/

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AS02 aspiration of /k/

AS03 aspiration of /t/

LE01 lenition of /p/

LE02 lenition of /k/

LE03 lenition of /t/

LE04 lenition of /s/

LE05 lenition of /f/

LE06 lenition of / S/

AF01 affrication of /d/

AF02 affrication of /k/ (+ /x/ or / B/)

AF03 affrication of /t/

PL01 plosivisation of / C/

PL02 plosivisation of /t R/

PL03 plosivisation of /d Y/

PL04 plosivisation of / S/

PL05 plosivisation of / R/

FR01 fricativisation of /t R/

FR02 fricativisation of /d Y/

FR03 fricativisation of /k/ (/x/ or / B/)

CL01 cluster problems with / S/

CL02 cluster problems - /vz/

CL03 cluster problems - /Cz/

CO01 consonants – substitution of [f] for / S/

CO02 consonants - insertion

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CO03 consonants – substitution of [ S] for /d/

CO04 consonants – substitution of [v] for /w/

CO05 consonants – substitution of [w] for /v/

CO06 consonants – substitution of [ C] for /d/

CO07 consonants – substitution of [ S] for /s/

CO08 consonants – substitution of [s] for / R/

CO09 consonants – substitution of [x] for /h/

CLL substitution of [l] for [4]

DAL substitution of [ 4] for /l/

ALT alveolar trill [r]

Vowels

VO01 vowels – substitution of [D] or [e] for /æ/

VO06 vowels – substitution of [
] for / U/

VO07 vowels – substitution of [ D] for / ?/

VO08 vowels - insertion

VO09 vowels – substitution of [æ] for / D/ or /e/

VO10 vowels - substitution of [ H] for /æ/

VO11 vowels – substitution of [i] for / H/

VO12 vowels – substitution of a vowel for / ?/

VO13 vowels – substitution of [ @9 ] for / N/

VO14 vowels – substitution of / ?/ for a vowel

VO17 vowels – substitution of [e] / [D] for / H/

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VO18 vowels – substitution of [i 9] for / H/

VO20 vowels – substitution of [ U] for / @9 /

VO21 vowels – substitution of [u 9] for / T/

VO22 vowels – substitution of [ 2] for / D/ and /e/, respectively

DIPH diphthongisation of monophthongs

DIPHNE diphthongisation - non-English diphthongs

MONO monophthongisation of diphthongs

MONONE monophthongs – non-English monophthongs

VOD01 vowel deletion in / ?n/

Categories related to target variety

Consonants

PR post vocalic /r/

LPR lack of post-vocalic /r/

LI01 linking /r/

LLI01 lack of linking /r/

FL flap [ 3]

LFL lack of flap [ 3]

YOD yod-dropping - elision of /j/ after /t,d/

LYOD lack of yod-dropping - addition of /j/ after /t,d/

Vowels

VO02 vowels – substitution of [æ] for / @9 /

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VO03 vowels – substitution of [@9 ] for /æ/

VO04 vowels – substitution of [ @9 ] or [ N9 ] for /
/

VO05 vowels – substitution of [
] for /@9 / or / N9 /

VO19 nasalisation of /æ/

Categories accounting for native-like speech

Consonants

GL01 glottal stop – reinforcement of /p,t,k/ and /t R/

GL02 glottal stop – substitution of [ >] for /p,t,k,d/

CCLRE consonant cluster reduction

ELC elision of consonants

ASS01 partial assimilation

ASS02 total assimilation

BOD breathed onset deletion

COA01 coalescence of /t,d,s,z/ with /j/

Vowels

VRE vowel reduction (weakening)

VOD vowel deletion (elision of vowels)

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