constraint ranking

This study examines the pronunciation errors of English consonant clusters among Iraqi EFL learners through the lens of Optimality Theory (OT).  For this aim, 40 first-year university students of different majors aged 18-25 years were selected from beginner and lower-intermediate levels based on their scores on Oxford Placement Test. Using different instruments, such as reading instruction and read-aloud test, and being informed from the category of major pronunciation problems by Arabic learners presented by Yavaş (2011), an Optimality Theory-based analysis was adopted in the research. Findings indicated that in pronouncing initial clusters of two consonants, *COMPLEX onset as the high-ranked constraint is frequently violated in Iraqi Arabic (IA), because in IA there are many words started with #CCV. Also, *#CCC is never violated in IA. Since constraints are universal, languages differ only in how they rank them. In pronouncing a coda cluster consisting of two consonants, although *CCcoda is never violated in IA, this constraint is not permuted in the pronunciation of the participants. However, to pronounce words with the structure of VCCC(C)#, it seems that the two low-ranked constraints, namely *CCCCcoda and *CCCcoda in English are permuted to high-ranked constraints in the pronunciation of IA learners.