48 It should be noted that there are three more sound variants exist in Cantonese
consonant inventory. These sounds are allophones of the initials s, ts, and ts ʰ,
namely the fortis alveolo-palatal fricative [ ɕ], unaspirated fortis alveolo-palatal
affricate [t ɕ], and aspirated fortis alveolo-palatal affricate [tɕʰ]. The sounds
involve a new symbol which Bauer and Benedict 1997 call as “curly-tail c”; ɕ.
They convey allophone ɕ “only occurs before high, front rounded vowel [y:] as
the result of palatalization” of the alveolar fricative s. Whereas [tɕ] and [tɕʰ] can only occur, before round vowels [y:], [
œ:], and [ɵ], also as results of palatalization of ts and ts
ʰ. Other from occurring in Cantonese, this sound also exist in Mandarin Chinese, Japanese, and Catalan Bauer and Benedict, 1997: 41-42. A
chart of chief Cantonese consonantal featuring their remarks can be seen in the following Figure 2.13
49
PLACE OF ARTICULATION B
IL ABIA
L LABI
O -DEN
T AL
ALV EOL
AR P
ALA TAL
VEL AR
GLO TTA
L M
AN NER OF AR
T IC
ULATI
ON STOP
p pʰ
t t ʰ
k k ʰ
k
w
kʰ
w
NASAL m
n ŋ
FRICATIVE f
s h
AFFRICATE ts
ts ʰ
APPROXIMANT w
l j
Figure 2.13 Initial Cantonese Consonants and Syllabics. Taken from Bauer and Benedict 1997: 40
Figure 2.13 gives a clear picture on how Bauer and Benedict 1997 classify the consonants of Cantonese.
Similar to Indiani‟s 2005 version of English consonant division, the second column from the left states the five manners of
articulation according to Bauer and Benedict 1997, namely: stop or plosive, nasal, fricative, affricate, and approximant or glide. The second column from the
top reveals six places of articulation, namely: bilabial, labio-dental, alveolar, palatal, velar, and glottal. The alveolo-palatals are not included in the table as they
are but allophones of two of those initials. So, in total, there are 19 initial Cantonese consonants, and 2 syllabics pp. 31-42.
50
2.1.7 Theories on Transfer Error in Interlanguage Process
Corder 1981, concerning the study on interlanguage , believes that “the
language learner‟s language was a sort of hybrid between his L1, and the target language
… the evidence of this was the large number of errors which could be ascribed to the process of transfer” p.2. In this explanation of his, Corder 1981
implies that due to the intervention of learner‟s L1, errors do occur in the process
of language learning for learners who are naturally still dependent on their mother tongue; their L1. This is what he refers to as the transfer errors. He also
elaborates that the learner of a language is often “hampered in his attempt to use
interlanguage for communicative purposes by its rela tive simplicity and poverty”
p.3. With limited knowledge on the available features of the target language, the learner of a foreign language will have problems in their learning knowledge. The
writer believes that the term simplicity and poverty used by Corder 1981 is relevant to this research as it also can be applie
d in the Cantonese EFL learners‟ in their English pronunciation learning circumstances. The articulatory grids of
Cantonese and English show the available sound gaps that coexist interlingually. This causes pronunciation learning problem to appear. Take for example the
English fricative θ does not have its equivalent in Cantonese. Thus the lacking of
the sound is a potential problem for Cantonese EFL learners in learning this certain sound of English.
Chan 2009, in her explanation on overcoming difficulties in the production and perception of Englih speech sounds, emphasizes that
“most of the problems can be attributed to mother-tongue influence, in that segments non-existent in the
51 learner‟s mother tongue, Cantonese, are often found to have caused production
difficulties, whereas segments shared by both the native language and the target language phonemic inventories do not pose great production difficulties
” p.3. The absent sounds of the target language in the native language might cause
mispronunciation due to their misconception of the target language‟s word
pronunciation. This is natural considering the learner‟s “inability to discriminate
acoustic differences” Chan, 2009: 4. The statement is also in a positive agreement with the term simplicity used by Corder 1981.
2.2 Theoretical Framework
In this section, the writer describes and explains the relationship between the theories and the objectives of this research. Specifically, the writer will convey
the framework in terms of how far can the provided theories, which are directly related to the research‟s topic, be useful as a valid scientific basis for the analysis
necessary in answering the research problems. It should be recalled that this research has three research objectives, namely: to describe how English and
Cantonese consonants are similar and different, to discover English consonants that can be considered as problematic for Cantonese EFL learners to pronounce,
and to elaborate some possible implementations of the attained knowledge of the contrasted English and Cantonese consonants to be implemented to support
English pronunciation teaching to Cantonese EFL learners. The first research objective has to do with discovering the similarities and
differences of English and Cantonese consonants. In understanding the similarity
