The Acoustics of Gender and Regional Variation in Pakistani English: A Sociophonetic Analysis of Long Close Front Monophthong [i:]

Abstract

This study provides an extensive sociophonetic investigation of the high front tense monophthongal vowel /i:/ properties in Pakistani English (PakE), by considering their spectral (F1, F2) and temporal (duration) characteristics across two genders and thirteen (13) regional variants. Speech data were achieved from 208 undergraduate students (104 males, 104 females) from major geographic areas of Pakistan. Vowel segments were automatically timed to the Montreal Forced Aligned Transcription of the data. Subsequently, the aligner (MFA) was followed by acoustic derivation on the basis of custom PRAAT scripts. To adjust for cross-speaker physiological disparity, formant and duration values were z-score normalized separately by gender. Statistical investigation used descriptive measures, two-way ANOVA (Region × Gender), and Tukey HSD post-hoc tests. The findings indicate that /i:/ is a highly acoustically stable sound in Pakistani English, with strong gender effects in spectral and rather weak gender effects in duration. Regional variation, even though statistically significant, is phonetically modest, evidencing the categorization of /iː/ as a stable and socially prominent vowel in Pakistani English influenced by prestige alignment and limited substrate impact.