6 Sociolinguistics course is chosen because the sixth semester students are
expected to have good ability to speak in front of the class. In this course, every student should speak in their presentations. Therefore the researcher could obtain
the data from the recordings of the presentations. The researcher will only include 2009 students in the 20112012 academic year since the similarity of the
background of the participants is needed, so those who are not 2009 students will be ignored. Furthermore, the participants are categorized as having the same
background if they have taken Pronunciation Practice 1 and 2 courses and they have finished all Speaking courses in ELESP, namely Interactional Speech I,
Interactional Speech II, Transactional Speech, Public Speaking I, and Public Speaking II.
D. Research Objectives
This research aims to find out the problems in stressing verb which are encountered by the sixth semester students of English Language Education Study
Program and what the causes of the problems are.
E. Research Benefits
This research is conducted in order to give contributions to the students and the lecturers of the English Language Education Study Program, and future
researchers. 1.
The Sixth Semester Students This research shows the students’ problems in verb stress which are
encountered during their presentation in Sociolinguistics course classes C and D.
7 By knowing their problems, the students are expected to be more aware of their
speech by encouraging themselves to improve their understanding on verb stress. Hopefully, this research also helps them to develop their knowledge about word
stress, especially verb stress, so that they will not be confused anymore in placing the stress of the words and they will not make the same problems.
2. The Lecturers of the English Language Education Study Program
This research provides information for the lecturers, especially the lecturers who teach speaking and pronunciation, about students’ problems in
learning stress placement of English words, especially verb. Besides, the lecturers can also know about the causes of the problems. As a result, they can help the
students to overcome their problems in stress placement. 3.
Future Researchers This research also gives benefits to those who want to conduct further
researches related to students’ problems in word stress. The researcher hopes this research could become a good reference for them. Future researchers could
conduct an analysis on students’ problems in noun stress, adjective stress, or adverb stress. They can also analyze the sentence stress which is used by the
students.
F. Definition of Terms
This part explains the terms which are frequently used in this research in order to avoid misunderstanding. There are some terms which are considered as
important terms. The terms and their definitions are explained as follows.
8 1.
Verb Stress According to Jones in An Outline of English Phonetics, stress “may be
described as the degree of force with which a sound or syllable is uttered” 1987: 245. This force includes the energetic action of the speaker and supported by the
gestures as well. According to McMahon, stress “is a culminative property, signaled by a number of subsidiary phonetic factors, which work together to pick
out a stressed syllable from the unstressed ones which surround it” 2002: 118. Stress is only given to content words, such as verbs, nouns, adjectives, and
adverbs, while articles, determiners, or prepositions are usually unstressed. In this research, the researcher only focuses on polysyllabic verbs in sentences which are
uttered by the students of Sociolinguistics course while they are doing their presentations.
2. The ELESP Students
The participants of this research are the sixth semester students in Sociolinguistics course of the English Language Education Study Program. They
are 2009 students in academic year 20112012. The sixth semester students are chosen because they have had enough knowledge of word stress and in this
semester, they are doing their first teaching practice as a professional teacher. They have accomplished certain courses which support them to speak well in
front of many people, namely Pronunciation Practice I and II, Interactional Speech I and II, Transactional Speech, and Public Speaking I and II. Considering
their length of the study and their experiences which are not the same, those who are not 2009 students are not included in this research.
9
CHAPTER II REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE
This chapter is divided into two parts: theoretical description and theoretical framework. Theoretical description deals with many theories which
support this research. Meanwhile, theoretical framework synthesizes the theories mentioned in the previous part and tries to give a frame of how the two research
questions will be answered.
A. Theoretical Description
In this part, the researcher tries to obtain theories which support the research. The theories are used to answer the two research questions. This part has
three subtopics, namely English word stress, English verbs, and overview of problems in English stress placement. English word stress discusses stress in
general, English verbs discusses types of verbs in English and their rules of stress, and overview of problems in stress placement discusses problems in stress
placement according to some experts.
1. English Word Stress
This subtopic gives an overview of theories related to English word stress. This part discusses the stress in general and it has not focused on English verbs
stress yet. It consists of three parts, namely definition of English word stress, stress placement system in English words, and the importance of English word
stress.
10
a. Definition of English Word Stress
Stress can be described as the energy put on an uttered sound or syllable which is usually greater than the others Jones, 1972, p. 245. Furthermore,
Giegerich 1992 states that syllables which are uttered in sequences have different “degrees of prominence, or stress” p. 179. Stress and prominence are
not the same, although sometimes it is confusing to differentiate between those two terms. According to Jones 1972, “the prominence of a syllable is its degree
of general distinctness, this being the combined effect of the tamber, length, stress, and if voiced intonation of the syllabic sound” p. 246. Meanwhile, Jones
1972 explains that stress is not a combination of those three aspects but it only refers to “the degree of force of utterance” p. 246. It does not have any
relationship with length and intonation although sometimes they are combined. Most English words have one or more than one stressed syllables. When an
English word – noun, verb, adjective or adverb – has more than one stressed syllables, there will be one “main stress” and the others are “subordinated”
Giegerich, 1992, p. 179.
b. Stress Placement System in English Word
Giegerich 1992 states that English stressed syllable is produced by giving more energy in pronouncing the words where the stress is given p. 179.
The energy is produced greater than in unstressed syllables. Furthermore, Giegerich 1992 also notes that “stress in English is phonemic” p. 180. There
are some words which are “segmentally identical” but actually different in nature of stress placement, for example differ vs. defer. According to McMahon 2002,
11 there are three factors to predict stress, namely 1 stressed syllable is produced
with higher frequency so that it produces higher pitch than the other syllables, 2 stressed syllable is uttered with longer time than the other syllables, and 3
stressed syllable is produced with greater intensity so it is louder than the other syllables p. 118.
Some English words only have one stressed and one unstressed syllables. However, in the word entertainment there are two stresses in the first and the third
syllable. Both of them are pronounced with full vowels [ ] and [ei]. In that case, the third syllable of the word entertainment has the primary stress, while the first
syllable has the secondary stress. The syllable where the primary stress is taken place obtains the main stress. The secondary stress is a lesser degree of stress
elsewhere. Giegerich 1992 states that “secondary stress is stress that is weaker than the main or ‘primary’ stress but stronger than that of an unstressed syllable”
p. 179. According to McMahon 2002, there are some general rules to make
stress placement in English words become predicted, they are noun rule and verb rule p. 180. Nouns are usually stressed in the penultimate syllable if the syllable
is heavy. However, if the penultimate syllable is light, stress the antepenult. The examples are aroma, agenda, and discipline. The second rule is verb rule. Verbs
are usually stressed on the ultimate syllable if the syllable is heavy. If the ultimate syllable is light, stress the penultimate syllable. The examples are obey, usurp,
tally, and hurry. According to Carr 1993, there are some structures of the syllables which can be described as heavy syllables, namely VV, VCC, or VVC.
12 Those structures usually attract stress. Meanwhile, syllables which structures are
V or VC are called as light syllables. Some light syllables must obtain stress if no heavy syllable exists. According to Giegerich 1992, when a light syllable take
the stress, it becomes heavy through ambisyllabicity. Furthermore, he explains that ambisyllabicity is a device to make a light syllable become a heavy syllable if
there is no heavy syllable available to take the stress p.188. The examples of ambisyllabicity occur in the word develop, camera, discipline, and America.
According to Giegerich 1992, there are two possibilities of stress placement in English word, namely final stress and non-final stress p. 183.
There are predictions related to the final stress of English words. The first one is that all of final-stressed words do not end in a light syllable. The word cadet,
canal, canoe, lament, and ellipse have stress in the final syllable and all of them end in heavy syllables. There is a possibility when two-syllable words have two
stresses. It means that there are stresses in every syllable. It happens only where the first syllable is also heavy, for example, compare bamboo and artiste with
July and balloon Giegerich, 1992, p. 183. Meanwhile, verbs and adjectives are more common with final stress, for examples obey, atone, baptise, obscene,
divine, and secure Giegerich, 1992, p. 184. Kenworthy 1987 states five rules of English word stress. Rule 1 is about
placing stress in the first syllable when the first syllable is heavy p. 63. This rule is applied in most nouns and adjective. Rule 2 talks about words which have two
or three syllables and have a prefix. Most prefixes are never stressed, so that the stress for this type of word mostly falls on the second or third syllable. The
13 majority of these words are verbs, e.g. infer, invite, understand, exhaust, and so
on. Rule 3 says that suffixes are never stressed, the same as prefixes. In this
part, Kenworthy 1987 also draws a conclusion that in words with four, five, or six syllables, the stress tends to fall in the middle of the words rather than in the
first or the last syllable p. 64. There are three points which are noted in Rule 3. First point is that there are many suffixes which cause the stress falls on the
syllable before the suffix, they are –ive, -ient, -iant, -ial, -ion, -ic, -ian, -ious, -ical, -ity, iate, -iary, -iable, -ish, -ify, -ium, -ior, -io, -iar, and –ible. Second point is
about the suffix ‘-able’which does not change the position of the stress from the base word. For example in the word ‘adapt’ the stress falls on the second syllable.
When it becomes ‘adaptable’, stress will also be obtained by the second syllable. Third point occurs for words with four or more syllables. There are some suffixes
which cause the stress falls on the fourth syllable from the end of the word. The suffixes are -ary vocabulary, -ator investigator, -mony alimony, -acy
intimacy, and -ory category. Rule 4 deals with compound words. Most compound words have stress on
the first element, for example a newspaper, a grandfather, and a crossword. However, when the two words are used separately in a sentence, both obtain the
same level of stress. For example, compare these two sentences: What a beautiful blackbird
What a big black bird
14 Rule 5 talks about words whose parts of speech are distinguished by the stress
placement. Most of these words can function as a noun or a verb and, in only few cases, as a noun or an adjective. In this case, Rules 1 and 2 are applied. Most
nouns will have stress on the first syllable and most verbs will have stress on the second syllable. The examples of the words are content, increase, import, export,
and insult. Stress usually appears in spoken form of the words and it needs symbol to
represent it in written text. Kenworthy 1987 mentions some notations which are usually used to symbolize the word stress p. 29. There are some notations which
are commonly used, they are a MENtion, b mention, c m ntion, d mention, and e O o.
mention The notations above have their own advantages and disadvantages in the
usage. The first notation a is difficult to use since the users should know the boundary of the syllable of each word so he can write in capital or not. Besides, it
is not suitable for learners who are not accustomed to Roman alphabet, for example Chinese, Japanese, and Russian. The second notation b is widely used
in many dictionaries and it is easy to use. However, some dictionaries define it differently. Some of them put it before stressed syllable while some others put it
after. They who are not aware of this difference may be confused Kenworthy, 1987, p. 29. The mark ˇ is also simple, but the users have to be careful to write
it when there are two vowels in a syllable. In some other languages, putting that mark in two vowel letters means that they are pronounced separately.
15 The underline mark is also easy to be used, but it has the same problem as
the capitalization in a. The user has to know the boundary of the syllable. The last notation is easily added and it can show the stress pattern whether the syllable
is stressed or unstressed, for example o O, O o, and O o o. There is another notation to define a secondary stress. Most dictionaries use mark to note that a
syllable has a secondary stress so that it acquires less energy than the main stress but greater energy than the rest.
c. The Importance of English Word Stress
English is a language which has stress placement rules both for words and for sentences. In learning English, it is important to master word stress in order to
acquire a good English skill, especially speaking skill. English listeners will need more efforts to understand the meaning of a sentence or even a word uttered by a
non-native speaker if he pronounces it with the wrong stress pattern Kenworthy, 1987, p. 28.
In 1991, Sabater states that “stress and rhythm are suprasegmental aspects that give the overall shape to the word or sequence” p. 146. Mastering word
stress gives many advantages in learning English. Although some other languages do not put stress as a significant factor in learning language, English does not
allow learners to give stress as they like Giegerich, 1992, p. 180. Different placement of a stress could give different meaning of a word. By paying attention
16 to stress placement, people can still understand the word although they do not hear
it completely. Another consideration is that in mastering a language, learners cannot only
master one aspect. Knowing how to pronounce a word is not enough. Learners have to concern also to various components of pronunciation such as sounds,
stress, and variation in pitch Kenworthy, 1987, p. 270. Those components help the learners to understand the function of the language in order to convey
meanings.
2. English Verbs
This subtopic consists of explanation about English verbs which is divided into two parts. The first part is types of verbs which tell about many types of verbs
in English. The second part is stress placement in English verbs which gives explanation about how to put stress in English verbs.
a. Types of Verbs
This part describes about many types of English verbs according to Bergman and Senn 1987. They divide verbs into four categories. The first
category is action verbs, such as has, holds, and thought. The second is linking verbs, such as be, feel, and look. The third category is helping verbs or auxiliary
verbs, such as be, have, and do. The fourth is verb phrase, such as are talking and have been performing.
17
1 Action Verbs
A verb is important in a sentence because without a verb, words cannot be united into a sentence Bergman and Senn, 1987, p. 39. An action verb is a verb
which tells about what is performed by the subject. To make sure whether the verb is an action verb or not, there is a question to ask, What is the subject doing?
According to Bergman and Senn 1987, there are three things which can be seen in the use of action verbs, namely physical action, mental action, and
ownership p. 39. In the sentence “John holds his mother’s hand” there is an
activity which is done by the subject. The activity is holds. The example of a
sentence with mental action is “I thought about the physics test last night.”
Thought shows a mental action of the subject. While the word has in the sentence
“My little sister has a new bag” shows an ownership of the subject.
2 Linking Verbs
When there are verbs which show actions of the subject, there are also verbs which do not show actions. Those verbs are called state-of-being verbs.
According to Bergman and Senn 1987, state-of-being verbs are often used as linking verbs p. 41. Those verbs are used to make statements about or to
describe the subjects, for instance in the sentence “The movie is interesting” the word interesting describes the subject. Some examples of linking verbs are be,
namely am, is, are, was, were, be, being, and been, appear, become, feel, grow, look, remain, seem, smell, sound, stay, taste,
and turn.
18
3 Helping Verbs or Auxiliary Verbs
Bergman and Senn 1987 state that there is a possibility for an action verb or a linking verb to be used as a part of a verb phrase p. 46. In that situation,
those kinds of verbs are usually called helping verbs or auxiliary verbs. The example of most common helping verbs according to Bergman and Senn 1987
are be, namely am, is, are, was, were, be, being, and been, have, namely has, have, and had, do, namely do, does, and did, and others, for example may, might,
must, can, could, shall, should, will, and would p. 46.
4 Verb Phrases
According to Bergman and Senn 1987, “a verb phrase is a main verb
plus one or more helping verbs” p. 46. In the sentence “We are talking about you” and “The acrobats have been performing for two hours”, the verb of those
two sentences are not only a word. The first sentence has a main verb, talking, and a helping verb, are, while the second sentence has a main verb, performing, and
two helping verbs, have and been.
b. Stress Placement in Verbs
This part discusses stress placement in disyllabic verbs, trisyllabic verbs, and verbs with four or more syllables. Disyllabic verbs are verbs with two
syllables. Trisyllabic verbs are verbs which have three syllables. Meanwhile, verbs with four syllables or more are included into one category.
19
1 Disyllabic Verbs
Most disyllabic verbs have stress on the ultimate syllable Avery and Ehrlich, 1992, p. 67. However, there are some verbs which have stress on the
penultimate syllable. Giegerich 1992 states that the final syllable will be stressed if the word ends with a a heavy vowel æ and e + a consonant, for example
the word distract dɪstrækt, b a long vowel or a diphthong, for example the
word rely rɪlaɪ, c a long vowel + a consonant, for example the word assert
sɜ:t, or d a vowel + a cluster of two consonants, for example the word resist
rɪzɪst p. 184. In line with Giegerich, Roach also explains two rules about disyllabic
verbs. He notes that the penultimate syllable of the verbs will be stressed if a the final syllable contains a short vowel and has only one or no final consonant, for
example the word gather gæð and happen
hæp n, or b the final syllable contains ʊ like in the word follow
fɒl ʊ and borrow bɒr ʊ.
The second rule is the ultimate syllable will be stressed if a the second syllable of the verbs contains a long vowel or diphthong like in the word abhor
bɔ:r and imply
ɪmplaɪ, or b the word ends with more than one consonant, for example the word assist
sɪst and attract trækt.
2 Trisyllabic Verbs
According to Chomsky and Halle 1968, a verb which ends in a non-tense vowel and followed by a single consonant will have a penultimate stress p. 69.
20 For example abandon
bænd n
and
consider k nsɪd r
.
The second rule stated by Chomsky and Halle 1968 is that a trisyllabic verb can have an ultimate
stress if its last syllable contains a long and tense vowel or diphthongs and ends with more than one consonant p. 70. For example resurrect
rez rekt and correspond
kɒrɪspɒnd Roach, 1991, p. 89. Meanwhile, Levante 1869 states that stress in trisyllabic verbs can fall on the first syllable or antepenultimate
if the verbs are formed by adding affixes –ed or –ing in a disyllabic verbs, for example borrowed, watering, and comforted p. 88. The roots of those verbs have
stress on the first syllable so that the adding of affixes –ed and –ing do not change the stress.
The same condition also happens in trisyllabic verbs which obtain stress in the antepenultimate syllable. The roots of some trisyllabic verbs are disyllabic
verbs which have stress on the ultimate syllable, for example import, convict, remind, deceive, and review. According to Levante 1869, when those verbs are
added by affixes –ed or – ing, the stress is still in the same place p. 91. So, the words imported, convicting, reminding, deceived, and reviewed still have stress in
the second syllable like the stress in the root words. Levante 1869 also states that most verbs end in –ish have penultimate stress, for example accomplish,
distinguish, and astonish p. 91.
3 Verbs with Four Syllables or More
According to Kenworthy 1987, words with four, five, or six syllables tend to have stress on the middle on the words, rather than on the first or last
21 syllable p. 61. This rule also depends on the suffixes in every word because
different suffixes have different rules of stress placement. Levante 1869 has previously stated that tetrasyllabic verbs, verbs with four syllables, can have stress
in the antepenultimate syllable if the verbs are terminated by the suffix –ate, for example abbreviate, accumulate, consolidate, and investigate p. 97. Another
characteristic of verbs which obtain stress in the antepenultimate syllable is they end in –ify, for example diversify and exemplify. Furthermore, Giegerich 1992
also mentions about pre-antepenultimate syllable which is the fourth syllable from the end p. 183. Some nouns with four syllables obtain stress on the first syllable
or on the pre-antepenultimate syllables, such as application, evolution, and manufacture. However, the stress for verbs with four syllables usually falls on the
antepenultimate, such as anticipate, cooperate, accompany, and eliminate Fu, 1963, 144.
3. Overview of Problems in English Stress Placement
The difficulty of learning English, especially for Indonesian, is mainly because there is no word stress rule in Indonesian language. Wrong stress
placement will cause misunderstanding since it can refer to another word with totally different meaning or even different parts of speech. For example, record
N and record V. Native speakers will find it difficult to understand non-native speakers’ utterance if the stress placement is wrong. Meanwhile, it is difficult for
the people whose mother tongue does not have any specific rules of word stress,
22 for example, the stress falls regularly on certain syllable, to learn word stress rule
in English where stress can fall on any syllable Avery and Ehrlich, 1992, p. 106. Such kinds of problems may lead to inappropriate stress placement of English
words. Another problem is that lack of awareness from the learners about the
importance of stress pattern in English words. According to Kenworthy 1987, pronouncing English words in slightly different way could help the speaker to
convey meaning so that the addressee knows what the speaker wants to say. Stress placement rules in English actually can be predicted McMahon, 2002, p. 121.
However, there are many exceptions which should be understood by learners, especially in determining stress on borrowed words or loan words because
sometimes they have their own rules of stress placement. B. Theoretical Framework
This research summarizes many theories related to stress placement in English words, especially in verbs. In English, uttering words with correct stress
placement is very helpful in order to understand a speech. Moreover, as teacher candidates, sixth semester students have to be able to utter words correctly,
including avoid wrong stress pattern, because they must teach good English to their students.
According to Jones 1972, stress can be described as the greater energy put on an uttered sound or syllable than the others. Most English words have one
23 or more than one stressed syllable p. 245. Giegerich 1992 states that when an
English word has more than one stressed syllable, there will be one ‘main stress’ and the others are ‘subordinated’ p. 179. McMahon 2002 explains that there
are three characteristics of stressed syllable, namely 1 stressed syllable has higher pitch, 2 stressed syllable is uttered with longer time, and 3 stressed
syllable is louder than the others. Related to stressed syllables, Giegerich 1992 states that “secondary stress is stress that is weaker than the main or ‘primary’
stress, but stronger than that of an unstressed syllable” p.179. According to McMahon 2002, stress placement rule can be predicted p.
180. Noun words are usually stressed on the penultimate syllable. However, if the penultimate is light, stress the antepenult. Meanwhile, verbs usually have
stress on the final syllable. If the final syllable is light, stress the penultimate syllable. For words which have four syllables or more, there is also a rule stated
by Giegerich 1992 about pre-antepenultimate stress which is stress on the fourth syllable from the end p.188.
Avery and Erlich 1992 state that most disyllabic verbs have stress on the second syllable p. 67. However, verbs which have three syllables have two rules
of stress placement. According to Chomsky and Halle 1968, verbs which end in a non-tense vowel and followed by single consonant have a penultimate stress p.
69. The second rule is a trisyllabic verb which contains a long and tense vowel or diphthongs and ends with more than one consonant can have a final stress.
Although McMahon 2002 states that stress placement rules in English can be
24 predicted, the researcher keeps consulting the dictionary to make sure the correct
stress placement for every verb p. 121. The dictionary which is used is Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary 5
th
ed. Hornby, 1995. According to Kenworthy 1987, there are five notations which are
commonly used to symbolize the stressed syllable p. 29. In this research, the researcher uses notation to indicate the primary stress because this research will
focus on the primary stress placement on verbs. Besides, Kenworthy 1987 also states five rules of English word stress p.63. This research will focus on Rule 2,
Rule 3, and Rule 5. Rule 2 is about prefixes which are never stressed. It means that words with prefixes will have stress on the second or third syllable. Rule 3
tells that suffixes are never stressed. It can be inferred that polysyllabic words tend to have stress on the middle syllable rather than on the first or last syllable.
Meanwhile, Rule 5 is about set of words which have two parts of speech and they are distinguished by the stress placement.
The researcher categorizes the verbs according to their syllables. Bergman and Senn 1987 state that there are four types of English verbs, namely action
verbs, linking verbs, helping verbs or auxiliary verbs, and verb phrase p. 39. Action verbs, linking verbs and helping verbs are categorized based on the
number of the syllables in every word, whether they have two syllables disyllabic, three syllables trisyllabic, or four or more syllables. Meanwhile,
verb phrases are categorized based on the number of the syllables in main verbs. According to Bergman and Senn 1987, a verb phrase consists of a main verb and
25 one or more helping verbs p. 46. In this research, the researcher ignores the
helping verbs and only focuses on the main verbs.
26
CHAPTER III RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
This chapter discusses the methods of the research. It also explains steps done to obtain and analyze the data. It consists of six parts, namely research
methods, research setting, research participants, instruments and data gathering, data analysis technique, and research procedure.
A. Research Method
This research was a qualitative research. According to Ary, Jacobs, and Razavieh 2002, “Qualitative research focuses on understanding social
phenomena from the perspective of the human participants in the study” p.22. Moreover, qualitative research gives depth understanding of the phenomenon
rather than only shows numerical data Ary et al., 2002, p. 22. In conducting the research, the researcher did not make any treatment to the participants since the
purpose of qualitative research was to obtain data as natural as possible. The researcher conducted a content analysis in this research. Ary et al.
2002 mention that “Content analysis is a technique that enables writers to study human behavior in an indirect way, though an analysis of their communications”
p. 472. The documents are usually written documents, namely books, magazines articles, newspapers, novels, official documents, or pictures. However, songs,
videos, films, gestures, or speeches can also be analyzed. In this research, the researcher used data from the recordings of the sixth semester students’
27 presentation in Sociolinguistics course classes C and D. The data were used to
answer the first research question. Furthermore, to support the data which were obtained from recording the
students’ presentations, the researcher also conducted an interview. Rummel 1964 states that, “Certain facts and opinion can, of course, be obtained by mail
or telephone, but some information can only be secured in a face-to-face interview” p. 99. The interview was carried out to find out the answer of the
second research question.
B. Research Setting
