Акустичний аналіз англійського мовлення словаків- білінгвів

Abstract

The article discusses pitch, intensity and pause variation in Slovak/English bilinguals’ interfered English speech, received during acoustic analysis, compared to Standard British English speech. The relevance of the present topic is determined by orientation of modern linguistic research in order to identify mechanisms of non-speakers’ speech production and to identify cognitive, psychological and socio-cultural factors of the production that highlight features of the transferred elements of phonetic system existing in their native language into English. Actuality is also confirmed by the necessity to sign the interfered impact of the Slovak language and ethno-socio-cultural characteristics of interfered English speech produced by bilingual Slovaks living in the UK. During acoustic analysis, it was found that most of the studied Standard British English expressions and interfered bilinguals’ English expressions are characterized by extended range and increased mid-level tone of the beginning and low ending in intonation groups. This is justified by the fact that the speaker is trying to convincingly express the meaning and its pragmatic common sense. Speaking of bilinguals with low, medium and high levels of phonetic interference, their English expressions are characterized by medium-high or high tonal levels beginning of intonation groups. Their terminal tone and medium-low or medium-high levels of completion coupled with frequent use of narrow tonal range of intonation group conveys uncertainty, anxiety, fatigue, irritability that sometimes affect the transfer of pragmatic common sense. At the same time, basic parameters of the interfered phonetic system of Slovak bilinguals’ English speech on suprasegmental level were allocated and codified. The peculiarities of intonation in Slovak bilinguals’ English speech were found, namely the modulation of voice volume, pitch variation and pauses.