An acoustic investigation of vowel quality and length in Ghanaian English

Abstract

Discourse on the existence of Ghanaian English (GhE) has provided several works on the description of GhE pronunciations, especially vowels (for example, Bobda, 2000; Huber, 2008; Lomotey, 2010; Ofori, Duah & Mintah, 2014). But the major challenge is that most of these studies, impressionistically, have provided different numbers of the English monophthongal vowels used in the Ghanaian context and often deny the existence of any long vowel or certain English vowels like /ʊ ʌ ə ɜ: ɔ:/ in GhE. Another alternative to the study of vowels is through instrumental perspective which appears more objective than the auditory approach. Consequently, the present study makes another attempt through the lenses of acoustic approach to investigate the English pure vowels employed by Ghanaians in their spoken English. The vowels were studied within three different contextual realisations: in citation, in sentences and in spontaneous speech. Forty educated Ghanaian speakers provided the data for the study. The results of Praat acoustic measurements in relation to formant frequencies (F1/F2) and vowel length indicated that Ghanaian speakers of English realise the RP vowels /i:, ɪ, e, a, a:, ɒ, ɔ:, ʊ, u: ʌ, ə/, except /ɜ:/ which is fronted and /æ/ which is rendered /a/. It must be emphasised that some of the vowels did not occur in the expected environments (words) and subsequently some also alternated with other vowels in the same words. Length was not a major issue in the identification of GhE vowels. Based on these findings, the study recommends that Ghanaians should consider the codification of GhE for pedagogical purposes and for official use instead of using the RP as the norm.