International Journal of English Linguistics; Vol. 13, No. 2; 2023 ISSN 1923-869X E-ISSN 1923-8703 Published by Canadian Center of Science and Education 21 Acquisition of Voice Onset Time for Voiced Plosives of English by Adult Learners of Balochistan Nasir Abbas Syed 1 , Sultan Melfi Aldaihani 2 & Shah Bibi 1 1 Department of English Language and Linguistics, Lasbela University of Agriculture, Water and Marine Sciences, Balochistan 2 The English Department, College of Basic Education, Ardhiya, Kuwait Correspondence: Sultan Melfi Aldaihani, The English Department, College of Basic Education, Ardhiya, Kuwait. Received: November 30, 2022 Accepted: January 16, 2023 Online Published: February 7, 2023 doi:10.5539/ijel.v13n2p21 URL: https://doi.org/10.5539/ijel.v13n2p21 Abstract This study focuses on two experiments conducted with Eastern and Western Balochi speakers. In Eastern Balochi, voiceless stops have aspirated features, but in Western Balochi, they are unaspirated. Eighty-four native speakers of both dialects of Balochi participated in this study. Participants of the first experiment produced words of their L1 in a picture naming task, and those of the second experiment read words in English. VOTs of the L1 and L2 voiced stops elicited from recordings of the productions. Results show that speakers of Western Balochi transfer their L1 negative VOTs to L2 English-voiced stops. However, Eastern Balochi speakers produce English-voiced stops with VOTs, significantly different from their L1 VOTs. Though they could not produce English-voiced stops with native-like accuracy, they produced English stops with significantly longer pre-voicing duration than their L1-voiced stops. Therefore, the study concludes that speakers of those languages with stops with negative VOT ranges face more difficulty acquiring L2 voiced stops of short-lag positive VOTs than those learners whose L1 does not have such stops. The speech learning model is used in this study to analyze all results. Keywords: voiced, voice onset time, adult learner, English 1. Introduction 1.1 Introduction and Background Languages of the world have different laryngeal settings for the stops. These settings are defined through phonological features like voicing or aspiration. Both are acoustically defined using voice onset time (VOT), along with some other paradigms, as standard correlates for the classification of plosives (Abramson & Whalen, 2017). There are different ranges of VOT for stops in the world languages. Long lag VOT is an acoustic correlate of aspirated stops, and post-burst short lag VOT defines voiceless unaspirated stops (Cho & Ladefoged, 1999). Voiced stops have different VOT ranges depending on the laryngeal setting of languages. Some languages have voiced stops produced with negative VOT, while others have voiced stops with short-lag positive VOT. Languages like German and English have positive VOT for voiced stops, but those like French, Arabic, Japanese, etc., have voiced stops with negative VOT. VOT is measured in negative values when the vocal fold vibration starts before the burst of stops, and positive VOT means the voicing of the vowel following a stop starts shortly after the burst. The languages which have pre-burst lead voicing are called (truly) voicing languages, and those which have short-lag post-burst voiced stops are called aspiration languages (Honeybone, 2005; Iverson & Salmons, 1995). Pakistani English (PakE) has developed under the influence of the indigenous languages of Pakistan during the last seven decades (Rahman, 2020). Most of Pakistan’s languages are voicing since they have truly voiced stops produced with lead-voicing. Resultantly, under the influence of L1s, English-voiced stops are also produced generally with negative VOT by Pakistani learners (Syed, Ansari, & Gopang, 2017). Previous research has studied the acquisition of English-voiced stops by speakers of voicing languages. Most of the previous studies have concluded that the acquisition of voiced stops of aspiration languages is problematic for adult learners who speak truly voicing languages. The current study is a step forward in this direction.