TapTrill Laterals Manner of Articulation

65 The possible sequences of sounds in a syllable, Finegan asserts 2004: 126, differ from language to language and are limited within each language. As illustrative examples, Finegan points to some Polynesian languages such as Samoan, Tahitian, and Hawaiian which have only CV and V syllables. Japanese, the linguist ascertains, also allows syllables basically of the forms CV and V. What a pleasant surprise for the present writer to know that such simple syllable structures are similar to those of Nataia, which also has only CV and V syllables. It is also worth noting that all the five languages have another unique linguistic feature in common i.e., all their words always end in a vowel phoneme. This feature clearly indicates that they are vocalic languages, which do not tolerate any consonant phonemes in the final position of their words. Learning a foreign language whose syllable structure differs from one’s native tongue, Finegan asserts, speakers tend to impose the sequence constrains of their native syllables onto the foreign words. English words such as baseball and strike, Finegan explains, have been borrowed by Japanese speakers as beesubooru and sutoraiku, forms that obey the sequence contraints of Japanese 2004: 128. In the present writer’s observation, an English word such as royal ‘belonging to a king or queen’ Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary of Current English, 1974: 741 has been borrowed by Nataia speakers as roza ‘extravagant’, the form of which obeys the sequence constraints of Nataia. This simple illustrative example clearly indicates that the vocalic nature of Nataia may become the first potential difficulty for a Nataia speaker in learning English phonology. Furthermore, the syllable structure of Nataia which is mostly of CV type may become the second potential difficulty for a Nataia speaker in learning English phonology. The reason is that 66 English has a wide variety of syllable types such as CCV, CCCV, etc Finegan, 2004: 127.

4.2 English Segmental Phonemes with Potential Difficulties

This is Section Two in which the list of consonant phonemes of Nataia is juxtaposed with that of English. In this way, the writer can pinpoint which segmental consonant phonemes of English are potentially difficult for a Nataia speaker in learning English phonology. The result of the juxtaposition will lead to the answer to the second research question of this thesis: What segmental phonemes of English may cause difficulties for Nataia speakers in learning English phonology?. A careful and detailed phonological analysis of English and Nataia in the preceding pages has opened the way for the present writer to make a comparison and contrast of the consonant phonemes of the two languages. The comparison and contrast below is done class by class. Table 4.19 Comparison of English and Nataia Consonant Phonemes consonant English Nataia Stops p √ √ t √ √ k √ √ b √ √ d √ √ g √ √ ß - √ ɗ - √ ğ - √ Nasals m √ √ n √ √ ŋ √ √ Fricatives f √ √ v √ √ θ √ - ð √ - s √ √