Production and Perception of English Interdental Fricatives by Native Uzbek Speakers

초록

Although English interdental fricatives /θ/ and /ð/ have been extensively studied as they are considered marked sounds, their acquisition by Uzbek English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners remains unclear. The absence of interdental fricatives in the Uzbek phonemic inventory and English orthographic inconsistencies present considerable challenges for these learners. This study investigates the acquisition of these fricatives by upper-intermediate Uzbek EFL learners, comparing their performance with alveolar fricatives /s/ and /z/. Twenty adult participants completed listening discrimination and pronunciation tasks to assess their perception and production abilities. Results revealed a moderate production accuracy rate of 74.35%, with frequent substitutions of /θ/ for /s/ and /ð/ for /z/, indicating a tendency to replace interdental with alveolar sounds. Perception accuracy was lower at 70.41%, highlighting the difficulty in identifying interdental fricatives. The findings suggest that orthographic differences and the absence of interdental fricatives in Uzbek contribute to misinterpretation and mispronunciation of these sounds. In addition, the results do not support the claim in the literature that perception precedes production in language learning. This study underscores the need for targeted phonetic training to address these specific challenges of marked phonemes in the Uzbek EFL context and potentially in language learning in general.

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