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Production of weak forms of prepositions by non-native speakers of English
Kozáková, Tereza ; Červinková Poesová, Kristýna (advisor) ; Malá, Markéta (referee)
This bachelor thesis aims to reveal and describe to which extent non-native speakers of English from different L1 backgrounds employ weak forms when producing prepositions. The theoretical part focuses on vowel reduction and its importance for the natural rhythm of English. This concept is further explored from the Lingua Franca Core perspective and its approach to teaching vowel reduction. In the practical part, the analysis of a series of recordings is carried out. The recordings were taken from the L2-ARCTIC speech corpus of non-native English (Arabic, Hindi, Korean, Mandarin, Spanish, and Vietnamese). The purpose of the analysis is to explore whether and how speakers with different L1s reduce vowels in canonically weak forms of prepositions. The focus is placed on the quality and quantity of vowels in said prepositions and their duration with regard to their occurrence in either initial or medial positions. The average vowel duration is then compared to the referential vowel duration in General British. KEY WORDS ELF, prepositions, vowel duration, schwa, vowel reduction, weak forms
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