Acoustic Characterization of Singaporean Children's English: Comparisons to American and British Counterparts

Abstract

We investigate English pronunciation patterns in Singaporean children in relation to their American and British counterparts by conducting archetypal analysis on selected vowel pairs. Given that Singapore adopts British English as the institutional standard, one might expect Singaporean children to follow British pronunciation patterns, but we observe that Singaporean children also present similar patterns to Americans for TRAP-BATH spilt vowels: (1) British and Singaporean children both produce these vowels with a relatively lowered tongue height. (2) These vowels are more fronted for American and Singaporean children (p 0.001). In addition, when comparing / / and /ε/ productions, British speakers show the clearest distinction between the two vowels; Singaporean and American speakers exhibit a higher and more fronted tongue position for / / (p 0.001), causing / / to be acoustically more similar to /ε/.

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