DIFFERENT VOICING PATTERNS BETWEEN BRITISH ENGLISH AND KENYAN ENGLISH PLOSIVES

Abstract

This paper is about the VOT characteristics of the six English plosive
consonants as they are realised in the non-ethnically marked Kenyan
English pronunciation. This is compared with the General British (GB)1
pronunciation. The data analysed in the paper was obtained from reading
of the Boy Who Cried Wolf passage by a sample of 14 university lecturers,
who served as speakers. Half of the sample was female and the other half
male. The passage was phonemically transcribed using the Phonetizer*
software. The output of transcription was further cross-checked using the
Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary. The pronunciation of four token
words containing the six GB plosives occurring in syllable onset was
analysed using Praat (a speech analysis software developed by Boersma &
Weenink, 2016). Quantitative data on segment duration was analysed
using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS). The study found
that the non-ethnically marked KenE pronunciation, unlike GB, typically
does not aspirate voiceless plosives where they are expected to be
aspirated, i.e. in initial stressed syllables, while it fully voices their voiced
counterparts.