67
3. Students’ Pronunciation of Words with -ity Suffix
From this point onward, two students withdrew from the oral test because they simply did not realize that the test items were divided into four suffixes.
Twenty ity-suffixed words appeared in the oral test. These words were activity, authority, capability, clarity, community, divinity, equality, fraternity, gravity,
humanity, infinity, maturity, necessity, originality, penalty, reality, royalty, simplicity, sustainability, and unity.
The problem that still persisted until this point was the substitution of the vowel æ with e in many examples of ity-suffixed words, as was the case in the
word activity
[ækˈtɪv.ə.t|i, -ɪ.t|i, US -ə.t̬|i]
. Besides, they were unable to articulate ɪ
properly so that they used i ː andor i instead, as seen in the mispronunciations of
the second and third syllables. Nineteen students pronounced it accurately while the other 75 students mispronounced it andor misplaced the stress. Nine students
stressed the first syllable whereas three students stressed the penultimate syllable. One thing to note is that -ity suffix always places the stress antepenultimately. It
means to say that the other 82 students stressed activity appropriately although only 19 managed to pronounce it correctly. In addition, four students did not pronounce
the first syllable at all, thus making it sound [
ˈtɪv.ə.t|i
]. In the next word, authority, the researcher discovered that there was a
reoccurring mistake the students made, as in the use of a ʊ or oʊ in the first
syllable instead of ɔː, ː or ə. This case was very similar to the previous ones
where they pronounced it by mimicking the closest sound of their first language.
68 This Indonesian way of pronouncing did not stop here because the researcher found
out that many students, except the 19 students who pronounced it correctly, could not pronounce the consonant
θ. What many students did was unsurprising – they used a consonant t instead, to compensate what they could not pronounce.
Silencing the first syllable also occurred here, although the researcher discovered only one instance. Most students, 89 in numbers, stressed authority appropriately,
while four students stressed the initial syllable. The correct pronunciations of authority are [
ɔːˈθ r.ə.t|i, ə-, -ɪ.t|i, US əˈθɔːr.ə.t̬|i, ː-, ɔː-]. Stress was not a problem for most students, as proved by 72 of them when
they stressed capability [ˌkeɪ.pəˈbɪl.ə.t|i, -ɪ.t|i, US -ə.t̬|i]. This does not mean that
the word was readable because there was no correct pronunciation at all. The cause was, students were unable to articulate capability properly. Among those who
stressed antepenultimately, none paid attention to what the word represented phonologically. In a word, none was able to articulate the first syllable properly, as
it was mispronounced as ke or kæ most of the time. Three students misplaced the stress by assigning it to the fourth syllable; three others assigned the stress to the
first syllable while 15 others stressed the second syllable. Other poor mispronunciations included [k
æˈbəl.ɪ.ti], [ke.bɪl.iː.ti], and even [kəˈpæs.ə.ti], which was realized as capacity.
In contrast to capability, the word clarity received 63 correct pronunciations – the highest among all words under the -ity suffix category. Students managed to
pronounced it correctly as [ˈklær.ə.ti, -ɪ.ti, US ˈkler.ə.t̬i, ˈklær-]. The number of the
antepenultimate stress was 91, while the number of the penultimate and the ultimate
69 stress was two and one respectively. Mispronunciations were mostly on the first
syllable, where students pronounced kl ːr-, kl r-, klʌr-, or kleːr-. One student
mistakenly muffled the penultimate syllable; as a result, [ ˈkler.ti] existed. In
addition, several minor mistakes occurred in the second syllable, in which students replaced the
ə with the i or with the silent schwa ᵊ. The second highest in number in terms of correct pronunciation was
community [k əˈmjuː.nə.t|i, -nɪ-, US -nə.t̬|i], in which 62 students succeeded in
pronouncing it accurately. Stress placement was not a big issue since 86 students stressed appropriately while seven others stressed penultimately and one student
stressed the initial syllable. Minor articulation mistakes included the use of vowel or
ɔ in the first syllable and ʊ or j insertion in the second syllable. The penultimate syllable also had its vowel replaced with i in some recordings. Thus,
mispronunciations such as [k ˈmjə.nə.ti], [kɔˈmjuː.ni.ti], and [kəˈmʊ.ni.ti] were
common among 32 students. A major difference in quality surfaced when only eight students succeeded
in pronouncing divinity [d ɪˈvɪn.ə.t|i, də-, -ɪ.t|i, US -ə.t̬|i]. The number of correct
pronunciation compared to community, was much lesser. This happened due to the change of vowel quality in which there was a tense diphthong a
ɪ in the antepenultimate syllable of divinity. Compared to the word divine in which its
ultimate syllable is of a tense vowel, divinity has a less tense vowel, namely ɪ, a
vowel that occurs in the mid position. Most students pronounced [d ɪˈfaɪn.nɪ.ti],
substituting consonant v with f. They did this because they were unable to articulate a voiced consonant v and instead, replaced it with an Indonesian v that
70 was voiceless and was similar to English f. Other common mispronunciations
included [da ɪˈfɪn.ni.ti] and [dɪˈvaɪn.nɪ.ti]. Eighty-six students stressed the
antepenultimate syllable while three others each stressed the first and penultimate syllable.
Pronouncing equality was rather problematic for most students since there were only 29 of them who pronounced it accurately. Many mistakes such as stress
misplacement, syllable shortening, syllable extension, and of course, mispronunciation of English sounds occurred. For example, four students stressed
antepenultimately but with a separation of the second syllable. Thus, they made it into a five-syllable word [i.k
ʊˈ ː.li.ti]. Another syllabic problem that occurred was silencing the penultimate syllable done by three students. It was as if it had been
written as equalty, without the letter i. Clearly, equality is very different in spelling and pronunciation from quality but one student did not articulate the first syllable
so that the word became [ ˈkw ː.lə.ti].
Since there were 88 appropriate stresses of equality – from which there were
seven invalid stresses due to syllabic problems mentioned earlier, one can infer that the remaining 81 students knew about the stress shift. Equality
’s base is none other than equal, which has a penultimate stress. There is a change of vowel quality in
equality where the first syllable has an i instead of an i ː although some speakers
would still prefer to maintain the i ː. Equality should have been pronounced
[iˈkw l.ə.t|i, iː-, -ɪ.t|i, US -ˈkw ː.lə.t̬|i, -ˈkwɔː-]. In normal conditions, according to Roach 1998, stress falls on syllables having the most distinctive vowel quality p.
86. That is why the antepenultimate syllable of equality bears the primary stress.
71 What most students could not pronounce was the antepenultimate syllable, as there
were several common variations of it such as -kwæ-, -kw əl-, -kʊal-, -k l-,
kj ʊa-, -kwel-, kʊ ː-, and -kʊəl-.
The word fraternity [fr əˈt ː.nə.t|i, -ɪ.t|i, US -ˈt ː.nə.t̬|i] is of Latinate origin.
Therefore, the base does not exist in English. However, one can assure that fraternity is a suffixed word because its root is fraternus, which means
‘fraternal’ Miller, 2006: 30. As with the previous articulation problem, fraternity was
pronounced based on its spelling. Almost all students were unaware of its phonological element. Consequently, they did not pronounce the first syllable as
fr ə-. Instead, most students mispronounced it as frʌ-, fre-, or fræ- and some of
them mispronounced the second syllable mostly as -t ər- or -tʃər-. The number of
first-syllable and penultimate stress was five and eight respectively, while the antepenultimate stress was 79 in total
– although one student silenced the first syllable when stressing the antepenultimate syllable. Against all odds, one student
pronounced this word successfully with the appropriate stress. Students had a hard time pronouncing the initial syllable that consisted of a
vowel æ because only ten accurate pronunciations prevailed among 91 appropriate stresses in gravity
[ˈɡræv.ə.ti, -ɪ.ti, US -ə.t̬i]. In Indonesian, there is no difference in how a and æ sound because they all represent the same vowel. Almost all
students mispronounced the antepenultimate syllable as grev-, gref- or græf-. Again, another problem that persisted was the improper articulation of v, which
most students regarded as a voiceless consonant. Two students stressed the penultimate syllable so that it sounded like graffiti [gr
əˈfiː.ti].
72 Like what happened before, students misarticulated the first syllable of
humanity since they merely pronounced it according to how it was spelled, which was realized as [h
ʊ]. Some even muffled the h and replaced it with j so that [j
uːˈmæn.ə.ti] was somewhat common. Poldauf 1984 regards this as the exception in which an unstressed syllable maintains its vowel quality p. 15. The
antepenultimate syllable had 85 students stressing it, even though most of them mispronounced it as -men- or -m
ən-. The penultimate syllable had six students stressing it while the other three stressed initially. Students should have pronounced
it [hjuːˈmæn.ə.t|i, -ɪ.t|i, US -ə.t̬|i].
So far, students who managed to stress correctly continued to do so when they encountered the word infinity [
ɪnˈfɪn.ə.t|i, -ɪ.t|i, US -ə.t̬|i]. The number of the antepenultimate stress was 88, while the initial and the penultimate syllable gained
three responses each. Among these 88 students, 57 students pronounced it properly although one student under this category muffled the initial syllable so that it
sounded [ ˈfɪn.ɪ.ti]. The base is infinite, which has less than five pronunciations
depending on the preference of the speaker. One of the pronunciations of infinite as a noun
– church music, is realized as [ˈɪn.faɪ.naɪt] but infinity does not use -faɪ- in the second syllable and is not connected to church music. Therefore, students who
articulated the second syllable as -fa ɪ- were less aware that they were
mispronouncing. Other mispronunciations of the second syllable included -fi ːn-,
-v ɪn-, -fen-, which showed that many students mistakenly used v to replace f.
This happened because students could not identify what appropriate sound
73 belonged to the word. Besides, the researcher discovered that a few students
mispronounced the first syllable as en-. The same problem also occurred in the word maturity since there were
variations of the initial syllable such as me-, m ʌ-, mæ- and even tʃər-. One can
see that there was t ʃər- as the initial syllable. This was the mispronunciation
uttered by one student, in which the student mispronounced maturity as [t
ʃərˈtʃə.rə.ti]. Not only did some students mispronounce the initial syllable, they also mispronounced the antepenultimate syllable, of which its phonemes were
substituted with o, d ʒ, e, or uː. Originally, it should have been tʃʊə for the
common British version or t ʊr for the common American version. A unique
mispronunciation prevailed among other mispronunciations. This unique mispronunciation
– [mʌ.tʃʊˈə.rə.ti] - involved both syllable extension and poor articulation that resulted in a wrong stress placement. Twenty-three students
pronounced the word correctly although finding suggested that there were 89 antepenultimate stresses. Four students stressed the initial syllable while one
student who extended the syllable assigned the stress on the third syllable. Correct pronunciation variations of maturity include [m
əˈtʃʊə.rə.ti, -ˈtʃɔː-, -ˈtjʊə-, -ˈtjɔː-, - r
ɪ-, US -ˈtʊr.ə.t̬i, -ˈtjʊr-, -ˈtʃʊr-]. The next finding suggested that there were four distinctive
mispronunciations of necessity uttered by five students in total. These examples included [ne.s
ərsˈʊr.i.ti], [nəˈtʃes.ɪ.ti], [neˈtʃəs.ti], and [nəˈseʃ
.
ɪ.ti]. These implied that the second syllable was the syllable mostly mispronounced likely due to
students’ incautious way in reading and pronouncing necessity. Most students failed
74 to pronounce it correctly, as there were only seven accurate pronunciations. The
correct pronunciation variations of necessity include [n əˈses.ə.t|i, nɪ-, -ɪ.t|i, US
n əˈses.ə.t̬|i]. The initial and the penultimate syllables both received seven stresses
while the antepenultimate syllable received 80 stresses. Among these 80 stresses, there was a penultimate stress due to syllable shortening.
Most but twenty-four students failed to pronounce originality [
əˌrɪdʒ.ənˈæl.ə.t|i, rˌɪdʒ-, -ɪˈnæl-, -ɪ.t|i, US əˌrɪdʒ.ɪˈnæl.ə.t̬|i] accurately. Technically, there were 73 antepenultimate stresses but three students shortened the
word into originalty. Thus, they stressed penultimately. The base of originality is original, which has a penultimate stress. This instance affected three students since
they stressed the second syllable, namely -r ɪdʒ-. The root itself is origin, where
the stress falls on the antepenult. This might have caused three other students to stress the initial syllable. Six students stressed penultimately but this number
increased because there were three others who mistakenly shortened the syllable and stressed penultimately. What surprised the researcher the most was the fact that
nine students stressed the third syllable. It was quite a surprise when 44 students stressed penalty
[ˈpen.əl.t|i] penultimately. They should have stressed it antepenultimately like what 55 other
students did. However, among these 55 appropriate stresses, there were 16 correct pronunciations. Most of their mistakes covered the mispronunciations of the
antepenult and the penult. These included a closed e instead of an open e in the syllable pen-, which resulted in inaccuracy. Other variations of the first syllable
included p ɪn-, piːn-, paɪn-, pən-, peːn-, and fen- while the variations of the
75 second syllable covered -al-, -
ːl-, and -el-. One can see that there was paɪn- version, which showed that students who pronounced it this way might have falsely
confused themselves with the word pine. On the contrary, 40 students pronounced reality
[riˈæl.ə.t|i, -ɪ.t|i, US -ə.t̬|i] correctly. This does not mean that reality was easy to pronounce. In fact, many
students failed to recognize its sounds and six students even pronounced it very differently. These distinctive mispronunciations included [re
ˈ ːl.ti], [ˈre. ːl.ti] and [
ˈr ːl.ɪ.ti]. One can infer that syllable recognition remained a problem for a few students. However, almost all students 91 students knew where to stress, except
those who stressed the first syllable or shortened the syllable. It is clear that these 91 students regarded the second syllable as heavy. Therefore, they stressed it. What
makes a syllable heavy is its high sonority, according to McMahon 2002 and Kager 2007.
A seemingly easy and pronounceable word like royalty was in fact a troublesome one for almost all students. Only eight among 48 students who stressed
antepenultimately succeeded in pronouncing it accurately. It means to say that 46 students misplaced the stress. The subtle error most students made was using j to
replace ɪ in the first syllable that read rɔɪ. The reason for this was the influence
of students’ natural response to the letter ‘y’, as what happened when most students naturally inserted j to connect
ɔ in the first syllable and ə in the second syllable. Some students who used j sounded as if they read royal tea instead of royalty
because they articulated the letter ‘y’ very clearly. Two students even
76 mispronounced it as [ro
ˈ
jaːl.i.ti] and one student mispronounced it as [
ˈ
rj ɔl.ti]. The
appropriate pronunciation variations include [ˈrɔɪ.əl.t|i, ˈrɔɪəl-, US ˈrɔɪ.əl.t|i]
.
Among 85 antepenultimate stresses in simplicity, two students stressed the penultimate syllable of simplicity since they shortened the syllable. Therefore, the
mispronunciation [s ɪmˈplɪs.ti] prevailed although it should have been [sɪmˈplɪs.ə.ti,
- ɪ.ti, US -ə.t̬i]
.
It means that there were 83 correct stresses. Fifty-one correct pronunciations had been accounted for. First syllable mispronunciations included
ʃɪm- and sim
-
where students replaced consonant s with ʃ and vowel ɪ with
i. The most frequently mispronounced syllable was the second syllable, where students substituted the vowel
ɪ with e, i, iː, aɪ or ə. One student even substituted the consonant s of the second syllable with
ʃ. The word sustainability [s
əˌsteɪ.nəˈbɪl.ə.ti, -ɪ.ti, US -ə.t̬i] was perhaps the most confusing and challenging one to pronounce as it had six variations of
mispronunciation. These included [ste ɪ.nəˈbɪl.ə.ti] that could be realized as
stainability, [s
ʊ.stenˈbɪl.ɪ.ti], [s
ʌb.stei.nəˈbɪl.ə.ti], [s
ɪ.sɪ.niˈbɪl.ɪ.ti], [s
ʌbˈsteɪ.nə.bɪl.ə.ti], and [sə.steɪ.nəˈbɪl.ti]. A student uttered each of these mispronunciations except for [s
ʊ.stenˈbɪl.ɪ.ti], which was uttered by two students. Considering that four students failed to recognize the stress since they absurdly
shortened the syllable, the number of the appropriate stress was 67 including two mispronunciations mentioned earlier i.e. substainability and sisinibility. Nine out of
67 students who stressed properly pronounced this word correctly. It was also surprising when 21 students regarded that the stress was the same as that of sustain.
77 They stressed the second syllable likely because they had known the stress
placement of sustain, which is always on the second syllable. Same problem reoccurred in the pronunciation of the last word, unity where
twelve students mistakenly regarded it as phonologically related to unite. The word unite itself has its second syllable consisting of the diphthong a
ɪ stressed. Thus, they mispronounced it as [
juːˈnaɪ.ti]. In total, there were 17 penultimate stresses and 76 antepenultimate stresses. The student that previously preferred to use
θ in final syllables still used it until now. One student opted out of pronouncing unity. The
correct pronunciations were 54 in total. Those included [ˈjuː.nə.t|i, -nɪ-, US -nə.t̬|i].
As previously inferred from Figure 4.3, four students emphasized the importance of stressing English words properly since stressing changes the meaning
or the lexical category. Their lexicon allowed them to respond to the last item of the questionnaire in such a way that increased their awareness, as seen during their
oral test performance. They stressed the words under the -ity category well.
4. Students’ Pronunciation of Words with -ion Suffix