05 A Gender-Based Acoustic Analysis of English Lexical Stress by Khowar Speakers

Abstract

The nature of English lexical stress is quite unpredictable and at the same time this supra segmental feature of English cannot be ignored by its foreign learners due to its dominant presence in the language. Because of such inherent nature, foreign learners of English generally find it hard to produce lexical stress of English correctly. The present study was carried out to analyze acoustic differences between the male and female speakers of Khowar language in the area of English lexical stress after they had studied it for one month. The researchers selected 6 commonly used English words to be pronounced by a sample of 20 Khowar/Chitrali speaking students studying at Diploma level in the Department of English, National University of Modern Languages, and Islamabad, Pakistan. The study sample (N=20) was equal in gender-wise distribution. The study sample was audio recorded in a language lab.