Students’ Pronunciation of Words with -ic Suffix

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2. Students’ Pronunciation of Words with -ic Suffix

The -ic suffix category was the most problematic suffix among all other three suffixes in this research. This category covered 20 words in the oral test. These included academic, alcoholic, artistic, basic, chronic, classic, democratic, domestic, economic, enthusiastic, genetic, graphic, historic, iconic, idiomatic, magnetic, narcissistic, phonemic, problematic, and systematic. Very common were wrong stress placements for most words. For instance, in the word academic, the stress should have been penultimate but 43 students stressed antepenultimately. Therefore, the correct pronunciation is [ˌæk.əˈdem.ɪk] . Those who stressed antepenultimately thought that the word retained the stress from its base, namely academy. As ELESP final year students, they should have taken into account the derivation that shifts the stress. Fifty accurate stresses did not guarantee accurate pronunciations, for many mispronunciations included [ ək.e ˈ de ɪm.ɪk], [ek.e ˈ dem. ɪk] or [æk.æ ˈ dem. ɪk]. There were fourteen correct pronunciations for this word. Just as nearly half of the students misplaced the stress in academic, 53 students did the same thing while stressing alcoholic since they stressed the antepenult. Many of the errors involved inaccurate articulation of the first, the second, and the third syllable. Thus, mispronunciations such as al-, -k ɔː-, and ho ʊ- were apparent for the first, the second and the third syllable respectively. Among 35 penultimate stresses, only 12 were correct. The correct pronunciations of alcoholic are [ˌæl.kəˈh l.ɪk, US -ˈh ː.lɪk] . 58 Antepenultimate stresses outnumbered penultimate stresses in the third word under the -ic suffix category, namely artistic [ ːˈtɪs.tɪk, US ːr-]. In comparison, the number of antepenultimate stress was 49 while penultimate stress was only 47. Students thought that it had the same stress as its original base, artist, in which its first syllable was stressed. Since artistic is the non-deverbal adjective formed by derivation, the stress shifts to the second syllable. Indonesian way of pronouncing the first syllable remained obvious since there were some students who pronounced ar- instead of ːr-. Second syllable mispronunciations included the use of a long i ː instead of an ɪ. Also common was a vowel reduction in the first syllable as seen in the use of a schwa ə that should have been replaced by a full vowel ː. Despite previous facts, 37 students succeeded in pronouncing artistic accurately. No matter how simple the word basic seemed to students, it was surprisingly taken far too lightly because of some subtle errors such as the use of a vowel e, æ or ʌ in the first syllable. The base from which basic is derived is base [beɪs]. Students reduced the vowel quality of the first syllable as they knew little about the nature of relational suffixes that do not reduce the vowel quality. Among 95 students who stressed penultimately, one student stressed ultimately. Students who pronounced it correctly were only 14 in numbers. They managed to pronounce it as [ˈbeɪ.sɪk], the correct pronunciation . The easiest word to pronounce under the -ic suffix category was chronic because it had the most correct pronunciations – 80 pronunciations out of total 96 pronunciations. The correct pronunciations are [ˈkr n.ɪk, US ˈkr ː.nɪk] . There was no mistake in the stress placement since all students stressed it correctly. Even 59 though this was the case, there were apparent pronunciation errors – most of which were first syllable mispronunciations. These involved the use of vowels ɔː, ɔ, a silent vowel ᵊ preceding r, a consonant h replacing k, even a diphthong oʊ. A second syllable error included the replacement of vowel ɪ with i. The second most accurate pronunciation under the -ic suffix category was classic [ˈklæs.ɪk] since there were 69 correct pronunciations. All students stressed it appropriately although many of them mispronounced the first syllable as kles-, kl ːs-, klʌs-, klæʃ-, kl s-, kleɪʃ-, or klæz-. Such mispronunciations were caused by students’ unawareness of preserving the vowel quality. Both chronic and classic are of Latinate origin that had been attested from Greek, as are many ic- suffixed English words. Miller 2006 and Plag 2003 confirm that -ic suffix is a suffix that forms adjectives from non-adjectival bases. The most intriguing phenomenon in the word democratic [ˌdem.əˈkræt.ɪk, US -ˈkræt̬-] was the disyllabic stress placement, as done by 67 students. A trisyllabic stress placement was common among 28 students, while a first-syllabe stress placement was normal for one student. Most students tended to use an Indonesian vowel o to replace an English vowel ə in the second syllable. This proves that most students knew little about when to maintain the vowel quality. A vowel reduction can occur if the syllable in which the vowel resides is not stressed Crosswhite, 2004: 191. Since the stress is on the third syllable, the second syllable does not maintain a vowel quality and is replaced by a schwa. It seemed that many students were confused about this concept since the third syllable of democratic, on the other hand, underwent a vowel reduction, which should have not. That is due to 60 the fact that in the word democratic, the third syllable is a heavy syllable and a heavy syllable should bear primary stress. This means that the syllable has to maintain its vowel quality. Other unique phenomena included the pronunciations - tret- and kr əst- in the second syllable and -θɪk in the last syllable. Errors in maintaining the vowel quality also occurred in most pronunciations of domestic since 32 students stressed the first syllable, which should have been left unstressed. This improper stressing made its vowel tense. Some of the tense vowels, which should have occurred in open syllables, included o ː, ʌ, o and ɔ. However, many students who stressed it correctly also used a tense vowel in the first syllable and that was why the researcher found only 28 accurate pronunciations of domestic among 64 penultimate stresses. Common mispronunciations of the second syllable included the use of a vowel ɪ or o to replace e. The correct pronunciation of domestic is [d əˈmes.tɪk]. While one student stressed the first syllable of the word economic, 66 students stressed the second syllable so that it received the most stresses among the other syllables. In other words, 29 students stressed it appropriately although only 24 of them pronounced it correctly. The correct pronunciations included [ˌiː.kəˈn m.ɪk, ˌek.əˈ-, US -ˈn ː.mɪk] . A diphthong e ɪ was prevalent in the first syllable, where it should have been a tense vowel i ː. Most students preferred to use an e instead of an i ː and this was permissible. An apparent mistake in pronouncing this word was the use of vowels such as ː, ɔː, o, əː, or oʊ to substitute the schwa in the second syllable, which should have been unstressed. Those who mistakenly substituted the vowel also stressed the antepenultimate 61 syllable. Indonesian way of pronouncing English sounds still prevailed as there were variations of the third syllable that included -n əm-, -naʊm-, and -nom-. By Indonesian way of pronouncing, the researcher meant students’ inability to produce appropriate English sounds. To compare with, there were more inaccurate vowel articulation in the word enthusiastic [ ɪnˌθjuː.ziˈæs.tɪk, en-, -ˌθuː-, US enˌθuː-, ɪn-, -ˌθjuː-]. Most students could not address this issue since they kept pronouncing it their own way, which resulted in incorrect pronunciation. For example, pronunciations such as [en.t ʊ.si ˈ ːs.tɪk], [en.tʊs ˈ æs . t ɪk], and [en.θuː.se ˈ es.t ɪk] were normal for them. Penultimate stress was the highest in rank since 69 students stressed penultimately although evidence suggested that there were some who shortened the syllable as in [en.t ʊs ˈ æs . t ɪk]. In this case, the syllable shortening did not affect the stress but it affected student s’ intelligibility. Disyllabic stress ranked second since 20 students preferred it. Students who did this might have gotten the impression that the stress should have been the same as enthusiast, which is on the second syllable. To the other six students, enthusiastic was unfamiliar, as they stressed the third syllable. Surprisingly, 77 students stressed the antepenultimate syllable of the word genetic [d ʒəˈnet.ɪk, dʒɪ-, US -ˈnet̬.ɪk]. It was caused by the effect the word gene has – there is no stress so that the stress is automatically assigned to such monosyllabic word. Katamba 1996 points out, a monosyllabic word receives its stress on the first and only syllable p. 234. It is safe to conclude that genetic should not be stressed antepenultimately. Eighteen correct pronunciations emerged as the other 62 ones failed to show students’ intelligibility. Common mistakes included the syllables d ʒe- or dʒiː- to replace the original dʒə- and -nət- to replace -net-. The correct pronunciation of the next word, graphic, is realized as [ˈɡræf.ɪk]. An awkward stress placement for the word graphic occurred once. One student stressed the last syllable and thus it sounded [gref ˈ ɪk]. Another awkward result in pronouncing graphic involved the variations of the first syllable, to wit: gr æpʰ-, gref-, grep-, gr ʌp-, gr ːf-, grʌf-, and gᵊrʌp-. Again, this was similar to the aforementioned finding of the pronunciation of economic – most students articulated the first syllable according to how it was written in English. The same antepenultimate stress placement for ic-suffixed words remained apparent when 76 students stressed the antepenultimate syllable of historic. Had the word been history, this antepenultimate stress would have been correct. It was highly likely that the word history was very familiar to students who stressed antepenultimately because these students did not shift the stress although they knew that history and historic were different. From 20 correct stresses, there emerged 20 accurate pronunciations. Up to this point, students who performed well during the last few words managed to pronounce historic accurately. One student actually mispronounced it as history. There were three mispronunciations of the penultimate syllable, namely st ər, stʊr, and stᵊr. The appropriate pronunciations of historic are [h ɪˈst r.ɪk, US hɪˈstɔːr.ɪk] . Fourteen students who pronounced historic accurately also pronounced iconic [a ɪˈk n.ɪk, US -ˈk ː.nɪk] accurately. In total, there were 28 accurate stresses 63 and 68 inaccurate stresses. Ironically, one student mispronounced it as ironic [ ˈ a ɪ . r ɔn . ɪk] with an inappropriate stress and an inappropriate phoneme. Variations in the first and the second syllable included i- and ɪ- and -kon-, -kən-, and rounded -k ən-. Students’ familiarity with the base, icon, caused them to stress iconic antepenultimately. The word stress of the word idiom is always antepenultimate but if it is supplemented with -ic suffix, the stress becomes penultimate. Thus, idiomatic is realized as [ ˌɪd.i.əʊˈmæt.ɪk, US -əˈmæt̬-]. However, 38 students in this research stressed the antepenultimate syllable of idiomatic, which was incorrect. Five students stressed the first syllable while the other four stressed the second syllable. The fact that there were only twelve accurate pronunciations from 49 appropriate stresses showed that inaccurate articulation of English sounds remained a problem for most students. The third and fourth syllables were the commonly mispronounced syllables since in the third syllable there were variations that included -o-, - -, and -o ʊ- while in the fourth syllable there were -met, -m ːt, and -m əθ-. Another interesting fact was the use of a diphthong aɪ in the first syllable, which indicated that some students tried to spell the alphabet instead of realizing it as a part of a word. One student pronounced idiomatic as [ ˌɪd.əˈmæt.ɪk]. Most of the students in this research 77 students stressed the antepenultimate syllable of the word magnetic. They did not realize that the word had been suffixed. Thus, they should have stressed penultimately. It was due to the impression that magnet and magnetic had the same stress. In fact, they did not. The word magnet has its first syllable stressed [ ˈmæɡ.nət, -nɪt] while magnetic has its 64 second syllable stressed [mæ ɡˈnet.ɪk, məɡ-, US mæɡˈnet̬-]. Since there were four correct pronunciations from 18 appropriate stresses, it means that most students stressed inappropriately andor mispronounced the word. The researcher found out meg-, mek-, m ʌg-, mʌk-, mæ-, mæʰk-, mah-, meh, and maɪk- as the variations of the first syllable. It was obvious that pronouncing the vowel æ was difficult for most students, which led them to merely guess. As a result, they substituted it with another phoneme. In the second syllable, there were also variations that included -n ət-, -neθ- and -nek- although only the first one that appeared more frequently than the other two. One student stressed the last syllable. Narcissistic [ˌn ː.sɪˈsɪs.tɪk, US ˌn ːr-] was perhaps the only word that caused the students to slip their tongue incidentally, which resulted in mispronunciations. This also caused them to shorten the word, making it trisyllabic. For instance, the pronunciation [ ˈn ːr.sɪs.tɪk] was very common besides other unique variations such as [n ːrˈcɪs.tɪk] and [n ːrˈsiːsɪs.tɪk]. The base of the word, namely narcissist, requires that its first syllable be stressed. While that may hold true, if it is narcissistic, it should be stressed penultimately because of the effect suffix -ic has. Nineteen students stressed the first syllable while 58 others stressed the second syllable. Among those 19 students who stressed the first syllable, 18 students shortened the word so that it became a trisyllabic word. In addition, 23 students who were part of the 58 students shortened the syllable and technically, stressed penultimately. However, this penultimate stress was incorrect since the word was shortened. Sixteen accurate pronunciations prevailed among nineteen appropriate stresses. 65 While narcissistic received only sixteen accurate pronunciations, phonemic [f əʊˈniː.mɪk, US foʊ-, fə-] received no correct pronunciation. This was due to students’ inability to recognize the base quite well, namely phoneme. In Phonetics Phonology subject, students were required to go over some terms related to phonetics and phonology; one of them was phonemic. Had the students cared more, they would have been able to determine the appropriate diphthong in the first syllable, to wit: əʊ, oʊ, or ə. Instead of those, students mispronounced it as f ː- , fo-, f ɔ-, pʰ -, pæ-, pʰo-, no- or pə- for the first syllable. Phonetic, phenomenic, and nomenic were the most awkward mispronunciations since the word phonemic should have been quite readable for final-year students. Errors in the second syllable included, but not limited to - n əm- and -nem-. Even though the number of correct stress was 25, none managed to pronounce it accurately. The total of the first-syllable stress was 71. In the word problematic, 21 correct pronunciations emerged among 45 penultimate stresses. The other 24 pronunciations were actually mispronunciations, as there were many examples of -met- in the third syllable. The primary cause of students’ inaccuracy was the way they pronounced the third syllable, as there were instances where they pronounced it as -met-, -m ət-, -m ːt-, -mek-, -məθ-, or -m ʌt-. In regard to these instances, the antepenultimate stress also occurred 40 times. Forty students who misplaced the stress also mispronounced the word, and the other eleven students did the same by placing the stress on the first syllable. Not only the third, but also the first syllable was mispronounced as -pro-. The cause was, the vowel , which was difficult to pronounce for many EFL learners, was 66 substituted with the Indonesian vowel o, which resembled it. Based on CEPD 2011, the pronunciation variations are [ˌpr b.ləˈmæt.ɪk, -lɪˈ-, -lemˈæt-, US ˌpr ː.bləˈmæt̬-]. Equally interesting was the fact that the word systematic received 15 initial stresses, 38 antepenultimate stresses, and 43 penultimate stresses. In numbers, there were only 25 correct pronunciations realized as [ˌsɪs.təˈmæt.ɪk, -tɪˈ-, US -təˈmæt̬-] from 43 pronunciations with an appropriate stress. This shows that the other 18 students were unaware of their poor articulation. Moreover, those who stressed inappropriately also articulated the word poorly since there were instances where they pronounced the penultimate syllable as -met-, -m ʌt-, -məθ-, -mæθ-, - me ə-, and even -mɪk. One can see that the vowel æ still remained a challenging vowel to pronounce for most students in this research. It was so challenging that one student completely misread and therefore mispronounced it as [ ˈsɪs.tə.mɪk]. Many students who had a difficult time stressing the words under -eous category also had the same problem when stressing the words under -ic category. Three of these students, who in response to the questionnaire chose to believe that English suffixes -eous, -ic, -ity, and -ion shift the stress, affirmed that they still found difficulties in stressing. Since the researcher did not allow test takers to check the dictionary during the test, they relied on the information stored in their lexicon. 67

3. Students’ Pronunciation of Words with -ity Suffix