The Role of Interference, Prominence and Theory of Distinctive Features in Detecting Wrong Pronunciations of Consonants: A Case Study of Arab Learners of English

2014
المجلد الأول
العدد الأول
مجلة العلوم الإنسانية

The objective of this study was to examine the role of interference, prominence and the theory of distinctive features in detecting mis- pronunciations  of consonants and their drawbacks at the lexical level. Female Arab learners of English  incorrectly pronounced certain consonants; the errors led not only to defects in spelling but also to meanings of words. The results illustrated  that  a number of consonants constituted areas of difficulty. The sources of those errors were either intralingual or interlingual. The consonants pronounced incorrectly by the maximum number of learners were regarded the most prominent of all; however, the consonants pronounced wrongly by the least number of learners were counted as the least prominent and so on. The results also illustrated that any change in the correct pronunciation of any  consonant meant a change of its distinctive features  which  led to an error in spelling and meaning of the word

Volume 23- No.1-97-119.pdf
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