Languages differ in their phoneme inventories. Some phonemes exist in more than one language but others exist in relatively few languages. More specifically, English Language has some sounds that Arabic does not have ...Languages differ in their phoneme inventories. Some phonemes exist in more than one language but others exist in relatively few languages. More specifically, English Language has some sounds that Arabic does not have and vice versa. This paper focuses on the perception of the English bilabial stops/b/and/p/in contrast to the perception of the English alveolar stops/t/and/d/by some Saudi linguists who have been speaking English for more than six years and who are currently in an English speaking country, Australia. This phenomenon of perception of the English bilabial stops/b/and/p/will be tested mainly by virtue of minimal pairs and other words that may better help to investigate this perception. The paper uses some minimal pairs in which the bilabial and alveolar stops occur initially and finally. Also, it uses some verbs that end with the suffix/-ed/, but this/-ed/suffix is pronounced [t] or [d] when preceded by /p/ or /b/ respectively. Notice that [t] and [d] are allophones of the English past tense morpheme/-ed/（for example, Fromkin, Rodman, ＆ Hyams, 2007）. The pronunciation of the suffix as It] and [d] works as a clue for the subjects to know the preceding bilabial sound.展开更多
文摘Languages differ in their phoneme inventories. Some phonemes exist in more than one language but others exist in relatively few languages. More specifically, English Language has some sounds that Arabic does not have and vice versa. This paper focuses on the perception of the English bilabial stops/b/and/p/in contrast to the perception of the English alveolar stops/t/and/d/by some Saudi linguists who have been speaking English for more than six years and who are currently in an English speaking country, Australia. This phenomenon of perception of the English bilabial stops/b/and/p/will be tested mainly by virtue of minimal pairs and other words that may better help to investigate this perception. The paper uses some minimal pairs in which the bilabial and alveolar stops occur initially and finally. Also, it uses some verbs that end with the suffix/-ed/, but this/-ed/suffix is pronounced [t] or [d] when preceded by /p/ or /b/ respectively. Notice that [t] and [d] are allophones of the English past tense morpheme/-ed/（for example, Fromkin, Rodman, ＆ Hyams, 2007）. The pronunciation of the suffix as It] and [d] works as a clue for the subjects to know the preceding bilabial sound.
