Phonetic interference in English speech of Chinese preschoolers

The current paper aims to identify and classify phonetic deviations resulting from language interference in Chinese preschoolers learning English. The material of oral speech was obtained from preschooler subjects going to the “Mother Goose” Early Childhood Development Center (Yiwu, China). An auditive analysis and acoustic analysis were performed using Praat. The results show that 100% of the subjects displayed various patterns of phonetic interference: underproduction, reinterpretation, resegmentation. The most frequent interference phenomena were: (i) substitutes of unfamiliar sounds by familiar ones, nondistinction of tense and lax monophthongs, problems with producing the necessary degrees of tongue raising as a result of underproduction; (ii) substitution of /r/ by /ә/, /r/ by /l/ as a result of reinterpretation. Epenthesis and epithese involving the addition of extra vowels at the end and in the middle of the words after or between consonants as a result of resegmentation were less frequent. The least frequent phonetic deviation in vowels was the substitute of open /æ/ by the diphthong /ai/ and in consonants – substitutes differing in locus, e.g. /k/→/p/, /n/→/m/, /v/→/b/ and /d/→/ɡ/. No substitutes of voicedvoiceless consonants were found.