Besides, there is a list of representative symbols used for phonological rules of stop deletion discussed in the analysis Chapter 4; section 2. They are used for
the underlying and surface representation of the deletion. To be precise, they are presented as below.
Table 4.
Representative Symbols for Deletion Rule Adapted from O’Grady et al
., 2005: 92; Giegerich, 1992: 298; Soltan, 2012
Symbol Representation
→ __
+
Ø {}
becomes is rewritten as changes to in the following environment
position of the input relation to the other element in the phonological environment e.g. before after
word boundary syllable boundary
morpheme boundary deletion zero
option multiple context
B. Related Studies
In relation to the topic of the study, there are at least five studies which are closely related to this research. The first study is conducted by Peters 2012. She
focuses her study on letter silencing in English which is challenging especially for teachers from linguistically diverse background. On her study, it is estimated that
60 of English words have the so-called letter silencing. In this case, the paper tries to clarify the causes for English having letter silencing in most of words, how
having letter silencing in English beneficial to its users, and what various types of letter silencing are in English.
The goal of the research is to be able to identify them and be able to understand the purpose so that the students can make sense of
them while attempting to learn English.
The result of the study above shows that English has many silent letters because in the past, Old English OE was 90 phonemic. Meaning to say, words
sounded the same as they looked and in OE there are many stop -e clusters. However, started from 15
th
century, English began to borrow words from other languages. Since other languages have different grammar and usage rules, the
words which were adopted into English did not follow the same rules that were used to pronounce words in English. As the result, the pronunciation change as it
kept the old spelling or it added letters to the words to make the spelling more Latin or French. Nevertheless, she argues that although letter silencing is
problematic in some way, they have proven some advantages for the users. That is, letter silencing may show the differentiation between words that sound similar
or homophone such as whole and hole, plum and plumb, or hour and our. Similarly, they can help us to determine which words is being used in the context
like in the phrase the whole thing and the hole in the ground. Moreover, letter silencing can show the behavior of the vowel in the words, whether it is long or
short as in ride and rid where i in the word ride [ra d] is a long vowel diphthong [a ] but i in the word rid [r d], it is a short vowel [ ]. Likewise, for the same
pronunciation [ ɡest], we cannot differentiate the meaning, but when we come to
the written form guest and gest, we could know that they are different words.
Besides, Peters differentiates the types of letter silencing. In the study, she distinguishes the types based on the function of the letters. That is, it can be
classified as auxiliary letters and dummy letters. Here, she focuses mainly on terms of the function of the letters dealing with the sound appears in
pronunciation. Firstly, she defines auxiliary letters as a letter which is combined
to with another letter and constitutes a diagraph. That is, two letters are combined
to represent a single morpheme. The examples are the words show [ ʃ], sing [ŋ],
lock [k], thing
[θ] and then [ð]. Secondly, she characterizes dummy letters as
letter which bearing no relation to the neighboring letters and no correspond in pronunciation. This is typically the same in some senses with the thing that will be
examined in this thesis. That is, the words which keep the silent letter, such as
resign which coming from the root word resignation where the [g] is pronounced.
Also, the other examples are in the words answer [w], honest [h], island and subtle
[b]. The second study is the research conducted by Zapata 2009. He studies
what he terms as silent consonant letters in English. In his study, he notes the letter silencing for all consonant in general. That is, he observes at least seventeen
letters silencing in consonants. They are silent p, silent b, silent t, silent d, silent c, silent k, silent g, silent f, silent th, silent s, silent
z, silent h, silent ch, silent m, silent n, silent l and silent w.
Here again, the concern is mostly on the letters, not the sounds. In this extent, his study is focus more on variation of silent h. That is, he notices that silent h
can be in the form of content words e.g. vehicle [ˈviːəkəl], honest [ˈ ːnəst],
rhyme [ra m], function words personal pronouns and auxiliaries especially in
unstressed position; her [ ər], him [ m], have [əv], had [əd], in the combinations
of -gh, -ght, kh- neigh [ne ], caught [k
h
ɔːt], khaki [ˈk
h
æki], word-initial
unstressed syllables e.g. an hotel [
ən‿oʊˈt
h
el], and before j particularly when
the semivowel is followed by ‘u’ human [ˈjuːm ən], humor [ˈjuːmər].
Besides, he discusses slightly about the phenomenon of the t omission after the
letter ‘n’ in American English. In the point, it is identified that in fast American English speech, people usually tend to drop the t when the letter t is
after the letter n and when the letters combination nt is preceded by stressed vowel followed by an unstressed vowel or a syllabic consonant. The examples of
this t omission are in the words center [ˈsenər] or [ˈsentər], fantasy [ˈfænəsi]
or [ˈfæntəsi], mental [ˈmen ] or [ˈment ], twenty [ˈtweni] or [ˈtwenti], wanted [ˈw ːn ḍ] or [ˈw ːnt ḍ], and winter [ˈw nər] or [ˈw ntər]. In addition, it is
assumed that silent k
is usually before ‘n’ as in knee [niː] and silent g is usually before n or m as in foreign [
ˈfɔːrən] and paradigm [ˈp
h
ær əda m].
The third study is done by Kaplan 2006. The study is also related to consonant deletion in the cluster, especially in rapid pronunciation. The paper
presents the more phonological view related to the deletion. That is, it studies two cases of postnasal stop deletion nt and nd clusters. The study tries to refine
the formulation of them. That is, comparing the two clusters, it is examined that
the postnasal stop deletion mostly occurs on nt cluster. For example, the
deletion is observed in the words center [ˈsenr], hunt [hʌnt], and hunting [ˈhʌn ŋ]
but not in the words containing nd cluster such as tender
[ˈtendr], fund [fʌnd], and funding
[ˈfʌnd ŋ]. Moreover, she surveys the other postnasal cluster such as mp cluster trumpet
[ˈtrʌmpət], dump [dʌmp], dumping [ˈdʌmp ŋ], mb cluster
amber [ˈæmbr], ŋk cluster trinket [ˈtr ŋkət], dunk [dʌŋk], dunking
[ˈdʌŋk ŋ], and ŋg cluster anger [ˈæŋɡr]. It is recognized that in these clusters, the postnasal does not trigger the stop deletion.
At this point, Kaplan argues the markedness of nt configuration. That is, it seems to happen in the flapping environment and the case of voicing and status
of t that is voiceless is also essential. Likewise, the feature of [+coronal] affects the deletion of t in the postnasal stop cluster. It is assumed that such evidences
trigger deletion in nt cluster. On the one hand, d in nd cluster is perceptually motivated to be pronounced in the word. That is, the postnasal stop
deletion rarely occurs in nd cluster.
The possible reason is that because if d is deleted in [nd], it will be difficult to differentiate it with the pair-words with [n] only. It is confirmed by the
experiment on six nonsense words containing [nt], [nd], and [n] sound in medial and final which are recorded by American English female speaker. They are [an],
[ana], [and], [anda], [ant] and [anta]. Subjects of the study are nine American English native speakers. The result of the study shows that [nd] cluster is more
difficult to be perceived in word-finally [and] only 39 successfully identified. In addition, it is noticed that English has no word-final or syllable-final of [mb]
and [ŋg] sounds. Historically, they are now realized as [m] and [ŋ] only such as in the word dumb [d
ʌm] and song [s ŋ]. The fourth study is conducted by Börschinger, Johnson, and Demuth 2013.
They examine the occurrence of word segmentation and phonological variation for English word-final t-deletion. This study is more on computational linguistic
study. Here, they notice the common phenomenon of t-deletion in certain spoken English context. The instance is in the word west which is pronounced as [wes].
This phonological variation is somehow occurs in natural speech. In the study, they analyze how their computational model handles such t-deletion on a large
corpus of transcribed speech and show how the joint model can operate word segmentation and recover underlying ts.
In this extent, computational models of word segmentation are beneficial to resolve the problem of breaking an unsegmented stream of sounds segment into
individual words, That is, it attempts to solve the matter of pronunciation variation as happens in the word west that may be pronounced as [west] or [wes]. They
choose t-deletion as the case because the phenomenon is common and well- studied.
Furthermore, the t-deletion can be found in the so-called child-directed speech CDS and the distribution is noticeably the same as the adult-directed
speech ADS. For example, in the orthographic I don’t intend to. The idealized
form is a do ʊnt ntend tʊ and the t-drop version is a doʊn ntend tʊ where the
t in the word don’t is deleted. The result shows that t-deletion is relatively a
frequent phenomenon with nearly 29 of all underlying ts being dropped from 48,795 utterances; around 285, 795 words. Likewise, they assume that this model
is simple and transparent in terms that they can be easily modified and extended. The last study is conducted by Yuliati 2014 who observes English final
consonant clusters simplification in Indonesian context. She notices that Indonesian learners usually do simplification of final consonant clusters in
English. The problem is that, Indonesian does not have the consonant cluster ending such as plural form s, z, and past form t, d. Consequently, these
endings are habitually absent in their speech. The speakers mostly fail to produce them correctly in their pronunciation although they aware the presence of this
suffixes in the words.
Moreover, Indonesian has very limited consonant clusters compared to English. The examples are the word contexts
[ˈk
h
nteksts], wasps [w sps] and
past [p
ːst]. Indonesian speakers encounter difficulties in pronouncing these
words. As a result, they usually delete some later consonants to become [k ɔntek],
[w ɔs], and [pas] one final consonant only. In this case, the study notes that
Indonesian learners of English are difficult to perform such consonant clusters. Then, it is further clarified that this difficulty is mostly caused by the distinctive
characteristics and nature between English and Indonesian, especially in correspond to the type of consonant clusters or clusters allowed.
As can be seen from the five studies that have been mentioned above, those studies discuss comparative topics dealing with deletion. However, the focus of
the five studies is discussing the matter of deletion in general, especially when dealing with letter silencing only. There is no intact discussion on how it may be
different in terms of phonology when comparing with the occurrence of letter silencing with sound muting.
In the study presented in this thesis, the difference between sound muting and letter silencing is used prominently as a parameter to classify types of deletion
into permanent, non-permanent, and variant-dependent deletion. Moreover, the related studies above do not mention particular type of deletion that being studied.
They just discuss the occurrence of deletion as a phenomenon in general that happens in English. In this extent, this study examines more about the particular
kind of deletions in English that is stop deletion. It tries to find the relations between the consonant clusters to the occurrence of stop deletion. Likewise, it
tries to figure out the phonological rules that may be applied to the deletion. These
two matters are the basic distinctions that can be generated on this study compared to the above related studies that have been presented.
C. Theoretical Framework
