OT Analysis of Vowel Sounds of RP and GA

Abstract

This study is dedicated to explain the pronunciation differences between Received Pronunciation (RP) and General American(GA). The pronunciations of vowels of RP and GA are compared by the means of the constraints of Optimality Theory (OT). This study focuses on three sets of vowels from RP and GA: /A/ and /&/ as in class, /Q/ or /O/ and /A/ as in hot or thought, and /ju/ and /u/ as in tune. To explain the surface representations of each set in each of RP and GA, OT constraints and their relative ranks were constructed.