Suprasegmental Errors In English Language

Segmental and Suprasegmental Errors in the Pronunciation of Non-English Department’s Pashto Speaking Students at NUML, Islamabad campus.

1.1 Introduction A person can learn or acquire a second language after acquiring the basic system of the first language. The errors, learners make when learning a second language is an area of interest for researchers. Whether an L2 is learnt or acquired, errors are indispensable. The errors learners make interest researchers because they are believed to contain important information about a specific language.

English, being an international language, has become extremely important. It is these days a language of diplomacy, technology, international trade, communication and business. Thus, a fluent English speaker carries an advantage over the one, who lacks it. Besides other skills like expertise in grammar and writing, accurate pronunciation is also of great importance. A weak

“Suprasegmentals”, sometimes called “prosodic forms” including stress, intonation, rhythm, pitch, and juncture while segmentals are the vowels and consonant units (phonemes and allophones) of a language (“Tim Riney and Janet Anderson-Hsies”, May, 1993). According to Seferoglu (2005), “segmental aspects of the sound system include individual vowels and consonants” (Seferoglu (2005) cited in A. P. Gilakjani (2012) p.122). “Because segmental phonology is relatively more easily explained and taught than the suprasegmental features” (Coniam, 2002, cited in A. P. Gilakjani (2012) p. 122). Some studies focus on studying segmental phonology in preference to suprasegmental features. Segmental features belong to sounds at the very micro level. They include specific sounds within different words of language, e.g. /l/ as in lamp, /r/ as in ramp and /a/ as in hat. “Phonemes are sounds that, when pronounced incorrectly, can change the meaning of the word” (burns, 2003, cited in A. P. Gilakjani (2012)