English Phonological System Review of Related Theories

28 2. A number of words have two different stress patterns according to whether they are verbs or nouns, e.g., absent, accent, conduct, convict, digest, separate, perfect, permit, present, suspect, transport. 3. When a suffix is added to a word, the new form is stressed on the syllable as was the basic word, e.g., a’bandon a’bandonment ‘happy ‘happiness ‘reason ‘reasonable 4. Words ending in {-tion, -sion, -ic, -ical, -ity,} almost always have primary stress on the syllable preceding the ending, e.g., ‘public pu’blicity bi’ology bio’logical con’tribute contri’bution e’conomy eco’nomical 5. If a word ending in -ate or -ment has only two syllables, the stress falls on the last syllable if the word is a verb, but on the first syllable if the word is a noun or an adjective. When stressed, the ending is pronounced [eyt], [m] [nt]; when unstressed, it is pronounced [t],[m][n], e.g.,: cre’ate de’bate in’flate lo’cate ‘climate ‘senate ‘private ‘cognate However, Giegerich 1992: 181 notes that stress in English is phonemic only to a limited extent. The main function of stress in English, he explains, is not of differentiating words. Its main function is to maintain rhythm in connected speech. For this reason, he argues, English is a stress-timed-language in which stresses occur at roughly equal timing intervals. PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI 29

2.1.8 Contrastive Analysis

Contrastive Analysis CA, Finegan 2004: 574 explains, is a method of analyzing languages for instructional purposes whereby a native language and a target language are compared with a view to establishing points of difference likely to cause difficulties for learners. CA can be portrayed from different aspects such as the following:

2.1.8.1. Historical Perspective

Sir William Jones is a linguist widely considered as the pioneer of a systematic language comparison. Declaring his research finding in a formal speech in 1786, he said: “Sanskrit bears a resemblance to Greek and Latin which is too close to be due to chance, shows rather, that all the three,’have sprung from some common source which, perhaps, no longer exists and Gothic that is, Germanic and Celtic probably had the same origin” Alatis, 1968. Following the historic speech, linguists all over Europe began to be involved in an open competition for researches in comparative linguistics. They wanted to find out if some languages were so similar that they could be put together under one language family. However, they started to compare and contrast languages for pedagogical purposes only much later. This new comparison and contrast for the betterment of teaching and learning a foreign language would be known as Contrastive Analysis henceforth referred to as CA. CA was born when descriptive-synchronic linguistics began to make a name for itself. Advancement in descriptive-synchronic linguistics is marked by the publication of Language Sapir, 1921 and Sound Patterns in Language Sapir, 1925 in which Sapir says: