Acoustic analysis of the unstressed vocalism modifications in the English speech of Ukrainians

Abstract

The methodology of unstressed vocalism prosodic features research presupposes acoustic analysis of vowels
in
weak positions, pronounced by the native speaker and Ukrainians with different levels of English were studied
for stating speech deviations in connected speech. At the stage of acoustic analysis in order to compare how
naturally the speech sounds and if it corresponds received pronunciation, the frequency diapason of rhythmic
groups and the words, selected for analysis was investigated. Also, indexes of unstressed vowels spectral
characteristics were analyzed in the speech of Ukrainians with different levels of English. As a result of phonetic
experimental research, it was proved that in foreign speech speakers without special education and enough
experience of speaking a foreign language, refer to phonetic rules of their native language, assimilating
the pronunciation of unstressed sounds to similar sounds of the native language. So, it can be stated, that native
speakers of Ukrainian will have common deviations in the system of unstressed vocalism. The received data
persuasively prove the assimilation of the pronunciation of unstressed vowel phoneme allophones in the English
speech of Ukrainians to their full variants of the native language. Such deviations, in their turn, influence
prosodic characteristics of speech, making the understanding of the content more difficult. During the research
the dependence of the number and level of speech deviations on the level of language acquisition, education and
the experience of communication was stated. Thus, the set of speech deviations on the segmental level specific
for Ukrainian speakers was identified and their influence on prosodic features of the English speech was proved.