47 proportion of the sample 82 retook none, although there were many
pronunciation errors uttered by most of the students of this category. Three students who retook no subject stated that first language interference
affected the quality of English pronunciation. They further added that as long as the speaker could convey the message orally and that the listener could understand it,
there should have been no problem in communicating. While this might be true, as teacher candidates, they need to help their students hear and produce appropriate
sounds. As stated by Kenworthy 1987, one of the teacher’s roles is to facilitate
the students to recognize English sounds p. 2.
B. Students’ Pronunciation of English Words with -eous, -ic, -ity, and -ion
Suffixes
This section answers the second research question. Discussed in this subchapter is ELESP students’ pronunciation of English words with -eous, -ic. -ity
and -ion suffixes in the form of recordings. Only 97 students participated in the oral test either because the other nineteen students could not be contacted or did not
submit the recording. By using two English pronunciation dictionaries and questionnaire responses, the researcher elaborates the findings.
1. Students’ Pronunciation of Words with -eous Suffix
Under this category were twenty words ending in -eous suffix. Students had to pronounce each of them. The words included advantageous, consanguineous,
contemporaneous, courageous, courteous, disadvantageous, discourteous,
48 erroneous, extemporaneous, extraneous, gorgeous, heterogeneous, homogeneous,
instantaneous, miscellaneous, outrageous, righteous, sanguineous, spontaneous, and unrighteous.
The first word to appear in the list of this suffix is advantageous [
ˌæd.vənˈteɪ.dʒəs, -v ːnˈ-, -vænˈ-, US -vænˈ-, -vənˈ-]. Many students mispronounced it as advantages because they substituted the diphthong e
ɪ in the third syllable with e or
ɪ and because they stressed the second syllable instead of the third one, as in
adˈvantages. Some even substituted the diphthong eɪ with a long vowel i:. Few students, although they stressed the word properly, substituted
the first vowel æ with ʌ and consonant v with f. Only 24 correct
pronunciations were present. This is something that Kenworthy 1987 underlines, stating that learners need to develop awareness of recognizing the appropriate stress
to avoid misinterpretations as what happened in this research. The word consanguineous [
ˌk n.sæŋˈɡwɪn.i.əs, US ˌk ːn.sæŋˈ-] was mispronounced more frequently, since there were vowel variations such as
ə in the first syllable and e or
ʌ in the second syllable. Syllable shortening was the most frequent case since the fourth and fifth syllables were joined by the students.
This is due to the fact that the word was unfamiliar to them. Therefore they speculated how to pronounce it. The last syllable varied from -n
əs, -njəs to niəs. Thirty-one students misplaced the stress by placing it on the second syllable where
it should have been on the third one, whereas only six students were able to pronounce it the right way.
49 In the word contemporaneous [k
ənˌtem.pᵊrˈeɪ.ni.əs, k n- ˌk n.tem-, US kən] were three dominant stress placements students showed. These were the fourth, the
third, and the second-syllable stresses. Although the majority was of the fourth syllable, most of the words pronounced underwent syllable shortening, making
contemporaneous sound [k n.tem.po ˈreː.nəs]. The stress should have been
antepenultimate because originally, the word has six syllables. Although 53 students stressed the fourth syllables, only nine students pronounced it correctly.
The problem with misplacing stress remained when students had to pronounce the word courageous that should have been penultimately stressed. The correct
pronunciation is [k əˈreɪ.dʒəs].
Instead of stressing the penultimate syllable, 29 students stressed the antepenultimate syllable so that the word sounded as if it were courages. Little did
these students realize that stressing the first syllable would change the part of speech. Dardjowidjojo 2009 shows how affixation can shift the stress and how
different stress can convey different lexical categories pp. 164 –166. In addition to
students’ misplacing the stress, pronouncing incorrect vowels and consonants remained a problem for most students because only 21 students pronounced
courageous correctly. There were frequent k ː- and koʊ- in the first syllable and
-re- in the second syllable. Three students pronounced the word courteous [
ˈk ː.ti.əs, US ˈk ː.t̬i-] correctly aside from the fact that this word was troublesome for the other 91
students. Two students skipped the word. The most prevalent mispronunciations were [
ˈkɔːr.tʃəs], [ˈkɔːr.təs], and [ˈkɔːr.te.ʊs]. As many as 78 students stressed it
50 correctly whereas fifteen students stressed the penultimate syllable and one student
stressed the last syllable. Students who stressed the penultimate syllable assumed that every eous-suffixed word had its penultimate syllable stressed as in
advantageous and courageous. The number of students that pronounced it correctly was only three.
The next word, disadvantageous, has several correct variations realized as [
ˌdɪsˌæd.vənˈteɪ.dʒəs, -əd-, -v ːnˈ-, -vænˈ- dɪˌsæd-, US ˌdɪsˌæd.vænˈ-, -vənˈ-]. Most students in this research had a hard time pronouncing the English consonant
v since only twenty-six students managed to pronounce disadvantageous correctly. The other twenty-six, who also stressed the word correctly, failed to
articulate vowels andor consonants, hence they pronounced [ ˌdɪs.ed.fenˈteɪ.
d ʒəs],
[ ˌdɪs.æd.fənˈtiː.dʒəs], or [ˌdɪs.æd.f ːnˈte.dʒəs].
Students who pronounced courteous correctly managed to pronounce discourteous appropriately. The correct pronunciations of discourteous are
[d ɪˈsk ː.ti.əs, US -ˈsk ː.t̬i-]
.
In total, only three correct pronunciations prevailed because as previously proven, some students stressed the penultimate syllable as in
discourˈteous. In addition, one student skipped this word. However, there was a slight increase from seventy-eight to eighty-three correct stress placement.
Common mistakes included a syllable shortening in the third and the fourth syllables and also a vowel substitution such as
ɔː for ː in the second syllable. Diphthong substitution appeared in the next word, erroneous in which many
students substituted the diphthong əʊ or oʊ for ɔː, o, ə or even ː in the
51 second syllable. The appropriate pronunciations are [
ɪˈrəʊ.ni.əs, erˈəʊ-, US əˈroʊ-, erˈoʊ-, ɪˈroʊ-]. The common mistakes in pronouncing the third syllable -ni-
included ne-, -n əs, -njəs, and -niː-. It means that syllable shortening mainly
coexisted with mispronunciations that included a vowel, a diphthong, or a consonant substitution. Erroneous should have been pronounced antepenultimately
by stressing the second syllable. There were only nine correct pronunciations out of seventy-two appropriate stresses. Thus, the other 63 students either shortened the
syllable; making the word penultimately stressed or they articulated it the wrong way.
Some students who correctly articulated the word extemporaneous shortened the syllables, making it sound extemporaness. The appropriate pronunciations of
this word are [ ɪkˌstem.pəˈreɪ.ni.əs, ek- ˌek.stem-, US ɪkˌstem.pəˈ-, ek-]. Stress
placement was of little difficulty for 71 students as they stressed the fourth syllable. However, only four students managed to stress and articulate it correctly. The most
common mistakes occurred in the third and the fourth syllables. Students tended to pronounce -po- in the third syllable and re-, -ræ-, -r
iː-, or -rʌ- in the fourth syllable. Another common mispronunciation of extemporaneous included -ne- in
the fifth syllable and - ʊs- in the last syllable.
The subtle problem that still happened in the word courteous, namely stressing the penultimate syllable, reoccurred in the word extraneous. Its correct
pronunciation variations are [ ɪkˈstreɪ.ni.əs, ek-]. Nineteen students stressed the
penultimate syllable of extraneous. As what has been suggested by Burzio 1996, the final syllable containing a semi vowel or a null vowel can attract stress if it is
52 added with -eous suffix pp. 288-289. That is why the stress of extraneous is
antepenultimate. However, most students who stressed it correctly mispronounced three syllables, hereby pronouncing it [
ɪkˈstr ː.ne.ʊs]. Syllable shortening remained common since some students pronounced it [ek
ˈstr ː.nəs]. In total, two correct pronunciations were available out of 66 correct stress placements.
Among other words under -eous category, gorgeous [ˈɡɔː.dʒəs, US ˈɡɔːr-],
was the easiest word to pronounce since there were 35 accurate pronunciations. Ninety-three students stressed it appropriately while the other three stressed the
second syllable. Common mistakes included the replacement of consonant g with ʤ in the first syllable. In contrast to the previous words that had been shortened,
this word underwent a syllable extension by having its second syllable divided into two more syllables, namely -
ʤɪ- and -ʊs-. Compared to gorgeous, the word heterogeneous was one of the most
problematic words under -eous category because there were cases where students did not articulate the third syllable, hence only pronounced -ro- instead of -ro
ʊ- or -r
əʊ-. Heteregeneous should have been pronounced as [ˌhet.ər.əʊˈdʒiː.ni.əs, US ˌhet̬.ə.roʊˈ-, -ɚ.əˈ-]
.
The correct pronunciations and the correct stresses were four to sixty-four in comparison. The most apparent problem was vowel replacement,
from ə to ʊ in the last syllable. In addition, one student pronounced
heteronegeneous and stressed the fifth syllable of that word. It seemed that most students were not aware of how English pronunciation worked since they tended to
pronounce the way they pronounce Indonesian words, i.e. pronouncing the same way according to its spelling.
53 Indonesian way of pronouncing English words remained obvious in the next
word, homogeneous. Its correct pronunciations are [ˌh m.əˈdʒiː.ni.əs, ˌhəʊ.mə-, US
ˌhoʊ.moʊˈdʒiː-, ˌh ː-, -məˈ-]. Most students pronounced the first syllable ho-, the second syllable -mo-, the third syllable -d
ʒə- or -gen-. This happened because they did not know how to articulate English sounds appropriately. From seventy
appropriate stresses, only two correct pronunciations were found. This phenomenon was due to inaccurate articulation of English sounds or a syllable shortening, as
many students shortened the last two syllables into -nj əs, -nʊs or other variations.
An interesting phenomenon occurred when students pronounced the word instantaneous
[ˌɪnt.stənˈteɪ.ni.əs], as there were three evenly distributed stress placements. The number of students who stressed the second or the third syllable
was equal: thirty-three students for each one. The least favored stress placement was the fourth syllable, containing only twenty-nine responses. This means that
instantaneous was the least familiar word since the number of stresses assigned for the second, the third, and the fourth syllables was of proximity. Common errors
besides wrong stress placement included syllable shortening and inaccurate articulation. One of the errors was putting a consonant j after a consonant n in
the last syllable, which of course, sounded unnatural in English. The reason for this was that students knew little about how a syllable is phonologically constructed.
As stated by Katamba 1996, determining how to arrange phonemes depends on the phonotactic rules. These rules govern the way each phoneme is
arranged to become a syllable or a word. In relation to this matter, most students were unaware that they violated the rules by pronouncing the words the Indonesian
54 way, especially the word miscellaneous. Its correct pronunciations are realized as
[ˌmɪs.əlˈeɪ.ni.əs, -ɪˈleɪ-]. Some of the students still shortened the last syllable and pronounced -nj
əs. This form was impermissible since the phoneme j should not have been preceded by a phoneme n. Twenty-one disyllabic stresses proved that
students were unaware of the antepenultimate stress in four or more syllables. Fifty- three students stressed the third syllable, but many students shortened the syllable
all the same and made it a penultimate stress instead of an antepenultimate one. The number of students who pronounced accurately was only six. The third syllable was
often mispronounced as -le-. For outrageous,
ɔːt- and ot- were the common syllabic errors found in the first syllable. Errors like -ræ- and -re- were found in the second syllable. Many
students extended the last syllable by adding - əs or -ʊs after the syllable -dʒi-
or -d ʒe-. Fifteen students stressed ultimately while 27 students stressed
antepenultimately. Since there was a syllable extension, the appropriate stress that should have been penultimate became antepenultimate. As a result, only nine
students managed to pronounce it correctly with appropriate stress. The correct pronunciation is [
ˌaʊtˈreɪ.dʒəs]. The word righteous can be disyllabic or trisyllabic and both have exactly the
same meaning and stress. The appropriate pronunciations for this word are [ˈraɪ.tʃəs, -ti.əs, US -tʃəs]. The stress itself always falls on the first syllable, which
means that if the speaker prefers the trisyllabic word, the stress is antepenultimate but it will be penultimate if the speaker prefers the disyllabic version. In this
research, [ ˈraɪk.təs], [ˈraɪk.tʃəs], and [ˈraɪ.toʊs] were the common disyllabic
55 mispronunciations. For the third-syllable version, [
ˈ
re.ti. əs] and [
ˈ
ra ɪk.te.ʊs] were
the common mispronunciations. Only six correct third-syllable pronunciations prevailed among the entire 31 third-syllable pronunciations. Errors included wrong
stress and articulation. There were two anomalies happening when one student mistakenly added one more syllable from the previous trisyllabic version so that the
student made it sound as [ ˈraɪ.tɪ.tɪ.əs]. Another mistake was when another student
pronounced rightness, a noun. The total correct pronunciations were seventeen and there were eleven correct disyllabic pronunciations. Overall, the number of correct
stress was seventy-five. Two students skipped sanguineous
[sæŋˈɡwɪn.i.əs] so that there were only 94 respondents pronouncing it. Similar to consanguineous, this word had various
mispronunciations. In total, 41 students pronounced it as a four-syllable word while 53 others pronounced it as a trisyllabic word sounding as consanguiness, for the
most part. What should have been a correct stress became a less accurate stress since there were only 24 correct stresses out of 57 disyllabic stresses. This
reoccurring phenomenon happened because students knew little about the nature of -eous suffix. When -eous is added to Latinate bases, it lengthens the syllable as in
courteous. Interestingly, mispronunciations such as [ seŋˈjʊ.ɪ.nəs], [sæŋ.ʤɪnˈiː.əs],
[s ʌŋˈgʊɪ.nəs.əs], and [sʌŋˈgen.ʊ.əs] showed that this word had not been stored in
students’ mental dictionary, which forced them to guess without recognizing its morphology.
Trisyllabic pronunciations were still common among students as found in the mispronunciations of spontaneous. Hardly did the students manage to pronounce it
56 correctly since there were 89 mispronunciations out of 94 total pronunciations. Two
students opted out of pronouncing spontaneous. A five-syllable version of the word spontaneous prevailed among three students who pronounced it. This was due to
the lack of speed when pronouncing the first syllable, which influenced the syllable division. Thus, instead of sp n-, they pronounced s
ə.p n-. Other irregular mispronunciations such as spontanuous
– [sp nˈte.nʊ
.
əs] and spontanuiness – [
ˈsponˈteˈnjʊi.nəs] also existed. By way of comparison, the number of penultimate stress was 31 while antepenultimate stress was 42. Spontaneous should have been
pronounced as [sp nˈteɪ.ni.əs, spən-, US sp ːn-]
.
What seemed to be a simple and pronounceable word, namely unrighteous, troubled a few students since there were mispronunciations such as outrightness,
unrightneous, uprightious, etrytess, unrightness, unrigtenous, at right news, even righteous. The aforementioned mispronunciations were what made the word
unrighteous a problematic word. The correct pronunciations are [ ʌnˈraɪ.tʃəs, -ti.əs,
US -t ʃəs]. It is very clear that there is only one way to pronounce the prefix un- and
that is ʌn
.
As Giegerich 1992 proposes, affixes and roots affect the stress placement. Had students known about the way these two parts were connected, they
would have been able to tackle their doubts about pronouncing unrighteous. Sixteen accurate pronunciations consisted of eight trisyllabic versions and eight four-
syllable versions. Most mispronunciations, whether of trisyllabic or four-syllable version, occurred due to students’ inaccurate articulation and wrong stress
placement.
57
2. Students’ Pronunciation of Words with -ic Suffix
