Context-Specific Variance in PakE Coronal Stop: An Investigative Study of Pakistani English Speakers

Abstract

The current study shows a new allophonic split in Pakistani English, challenging the widely accepted assumption that Pakistani English speakers produce /t/ as a retroflex [ʈ], claiming instead that they produce alveolar /t/ in [st] cluster. Speech sound utterances of 15 undergrad PakE students were recorded to test this hypothesis. The participants involved in the experiments had spent more than ten years mastering PakE. From the utterances of participants, VOT of coronal stops and F3 of the following vowels were obtained. The findings showed that PakE speakers produced English /t/ with a roughly 8–10 ms longer VOT in the words beginning with ‘st’ cluster. A significant F3 raising was also seen in the vowels after the coronal stops in ‘st’ clusters on word-initial margins. F3 raising is an indicator of the absence of retroflex gesture from the coronal stops. Based on these results, it is argued that a new allophonic split has emerged in the PakE, that is, it is produced as alveolar [t] in word-initial /st/ clusters but a retroflex [ʈ] elsewhere.