By WAHYU ADI PUTRA GINTING

BACK-VOWEL LENGTHENING PROCESS

IN AMERICAN-ENGLISH PRONUNCIATION

  Presented as Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Sarjana Sastra in English Letters

  

By

WAHYU ADI PUTRA GINTING

  Student Number: 034214122

  An “A” is not a purpose. It’s an effect. Wahyu Ginting ( ) You will never be able to think about the earth when you are still preoccupied by a chrysanthemum called PARADISE. (Wahyu Ginting) That is the trap of a scientific research. One interesting thing will carry you away to many other interesting things. What you have to do is to insist on your original topic despite other interesting enticing ones. (Dr. Fr. B. Alip M. Pd. M. A.)

  

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  First of all, let me express my highest gratitude to God the Almighty for all of the invisible but touchable guidance and for all blessings during the years I spent in finishing my study. I also would like to thank my sponsor, Dr. Fr. B. Alip M. Pd. M.

  A., for all of the corrections, suggestions, challenges, cautions, and guidance which had been helping me in the process of writing my thesis. I would like to thank my co- sponsor, Dra. B. Ria Lestari M. S., for performing a precise correction to my written report. I thank M. Luluk Artika W., S. S., my thesis examiner, for her questions and appreciation helpful for my thesis.

  My best gratitude also goes to Mr. Paul Boersma and Mr. David Weenink who have intelligently established such a complete, accurate, and easy-to-utilize program of conducting the analysis of acoustic phonetics as Praat program. Thank you for letting all people around the world download your masterpiece freely from www.praat.org.

  I thank also Mas Ernest for giving me a short practical course in understanding how to use SPSS for my statistical calculation. You saved me from the trap of those frustrating manual numeric statistical formulations.

  Particularly, I would like to thank Budi Permana and Eston Wesley, who kindheartedly showed me how to re-record the data using Cool Edit Pro. 2. You two had been a big help for me and my thesis. I would never forget the help given by my brother and sister, Lae Palmer and Ito Novita Debora, who had lent me a copy of Longman Dictionary of American English, the source of my data, when mine was thank Mbak Nik who had been so patient serving me with helpful answers for all my questions about the administrative procedures when writing this thesis. All of the lectures of the Department of English Letters of Sanata Dharma University deserve my thankful expression since they have always been one of my best sources of knowledge from the time I got myself involved in this institution. Thanks to the library of Sanata Dharma University and the library of Gajah Mada University for the books which helped me find the appropriate theories.

  I thank friends in Sastra Mungil, the community where I started my real social life. The desired people in A Streetcar Named Desire also deserve my best desired gratitude. Pals in Media Sastra, by providing a vast space of discussion, had indirectly assisted me in doing my thesis. I thank you people for that.

  I would like to express a gigantic gratitude to a woman with whom I have been experiencing many varieties of emotion, Desy “Ringgi” Pramusiwi. You have been the unpredictably twisted waving acoustics of one long chapter of my life.

  Lastly, I give my gratitude and affection to my parents: Jamal Ginting and Yusmiati Sembiring, brother: Tri Aginta Ginting, and sisters: Silva Astari Ginting and Aprilla Malriati Ginting, to whom this thesis is dedicated.

  WAHYU ADI PUTRA GINTING

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

TITLE PAGE …………………………………………………………… i

APPROVAL PAGE …………………………………………………………… ii ACCEPTANCE PAGE …………………………………………………… iii

  iv

  MOTTO PAGE ……………………………………………………………

  Lembar Pernyataan Persetujuan Publikasi Karya Ilmiah ……………………….. v

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENT …………………………………………………… vi TABLE OF CONTENTS …………………………………………………… viii ABSTRACT …………………………………………………………………… xi

  …………………………………………………………………… xii

  ABSTRAK

CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION …………………………………………… 1 A. Background of the Study …………………………………………… 1 B. Problem Formulation ……………………………………………

  5 C. Objectives of the Study …………………………………………… 5

  D. Definition of Terms …………………………………………… 5

  CHAPTER II: THEORETICAL REVIEW………………………………….. 7 A. Review of Related Studies………………………………………........ 8 B. Review of Related Theories………………………………………….. 13 B.1. Articulatory Phonetics………………………………………

  13 B.1.a. Speech Sounds Production ……………………….

  13 B.1.b. The Nature of Speech Sounds …………………… 15 B.1.c. The Back Vowels of American-English …………. 18 B.1.d. The Stop Consonants of American-English ……... 22 B.2. Acoustic Phonetics …………..…………………………......

  25 B.2.a. Sound Waves ……………………………………..

  25 B.2.b. Pitch and Frequency ………………………………

  28 B.2.c. Loudness and Intensity …………………………… 29 B.2.d. Spectrographic Analysis ………………………….

  30 B.3. Vowel Lengthening Process ……………………………….. 32 B.3.a. A Controversial Debate …………………………..

  32 B.3. Longman Dictionary of American English ………………… 44 B.4. The Ideal Data ……………………………………………… 47

  C. Method of the Study………………………………………………….. 50 C.1. An Empirical Research……………………………………… 50

  C.2. Data Collection ……………………………………………

  51 C.3. Statistical Data Analysis …………………………………… 56 C.3.1. The T-Test ………………………………………..

  56 D. Null Hypothesis ……………………………………………………..

  60 CHAPTER IV: ANALYSIS…………………………………………. 62

  A. The Influence of Voiced and Voiceless Stop Consonants on the Length of the Preceding Back Vowel ………………………………

  62 A.1. High Back Lax Rounded Vowel ……..……………………

  63 A.1.a. [][t]-[][d] ……………………………… 64 A.2. High Back Tense Rounded Vowel ………………………..

  68 A.2.a. [u][p]-[u][b]………………………………. 68 A.2.b.

  [u][t]-[u][d]………………………………. 72 A.3. Mid Back Lax Rounded Vowel …………………………...

  75 A.3.a. [][k]-[][]………………………………. 76 A.3.b.

  [][t]-[][d]………………………………. 79 A.4. Mid Back Tense Rounded Vowel …………………………

  82 A.4.a. [o][k]-[o][]…………………………… 83 A.4.b.

  [o][p]-[o][b]…………………………… 85 A.4.c. [o][t]-[o][d]…………………………… 88 A.5. Low Back Tense Unrounded Vowel ……………………...

  91 A.5.a. [][k]-[][]……………………………… 92 A.5.b.

  [][p]-[][b]……………………………… 95 A.5.c. [][t]-[][d]……………………………… 98

  A.6. Statistical Conclusion ……………………………………. 101

CHAPTER V: CONCLUSION …….……………………………………….. 102

  App.I.C. T-Test of [u][t] - [u][d] ………………………… 112

  App.I.D. T-Test of [][k] - [][] ………………………… 113

  App.I.E. T-Test of [][t] - [][d] ………………………… 114

  App. I.F. T-Test of [o][p] - [o][b]……………………… 115

  App.I.G. T-Test of [o][t] - [o][d] ……………………… 116

  App.I.H. T-Test of [][k] - [][] ………………………… 117

  App.I.I. T-Test of [][p] - [][b] …………………………. 118

  App.I.J. T-Test of [][t] - [][d] …………………………. 119

  App. II. The Spectrographic Analyses of the Attachment of Back-Vowels to Voiceless and Voiced Stop Consonants ……….. 120

  App.II.A. The Attachment of Back-Vowels to Voiceless Stop Consonants ……………………………………… 121 App.II.A.1.

  []-[t]……………………………………. 122 App.II.A.2. [u]-[p]…………………………………….. 136 App.II.A.3. [u]-[t]…………………………………….. 145 App.II.A.4. []-[k]…………………………………….. 160 App.II.A.5. []-[t]…………………………………….. 169 App.II.A.6. [o]-[k]…………………………………… 181 App.II.A.7. [o]-[p]…………………………………… 184 App.II.A.8. [o]-[t]…………………………………… 199 App.II.A.9. []-[k]…………………………………….. 214 App.II.A.10.

  []-[p]…………………………………… 229 App.II.A.11. []-[t]…………………………………… 244

  App.II.B. The Attachment of Back-Vowels to Voiced Stop Consonants ………………………………………. 259 App.II.B.1.

  []-[d]……………………………………. 259 App.II.B.2. [u]-[b]…………………………………….. 274

  

ABSTRACT

  WAHYU ADI PUTRA GINTING. Back Vowel Lengthening Process in American-

  

English Pronunciation. Yogyakarta: Department of English Letters, Faculty of

Letters, Sanata Dharma University, 2008.

  As a means of human communication which uses speech sounds as its main message-transferring media, language cannot be separated from its dependency on discourses discussing about human’s speech sounds. Phonetics and phonology are two branches of linguistics – the scientific study of language – undergoing discussions about sounds. Moreover, those two discourses will help non-native speakers improve their ability to utter a correct pronunciation upon, in this case, English words. The importance of speech-sounds is what stimulates the present researcher to analyze a particular topic involving sounds as its focus of discussion.

  This research is done under the awareness of continuing a previous study conducted by Kartika Kirana, a graduate of English Letters Department of the Faculty of Letters of Sanata Dharma University, Yogyakarta. Her thesis, entitled The

  

Influence of Voiced and Voiceless Stop Consonants and Their Place of Articulations

on the Length of the Preceding Front Vowel in American English Pronunciation, has

  inspired the present researcher to extend the scope of the object of the study: from

  

front vowels to back vowels. Though, the influence of the places of articulation of the

  stops on the length of the preceding vowel is not discussed since the data being utilized in this present study are not applicable to the analysis of that particular theoretical issue.

  In this study the present researcher focuses his observation on the American- English pronunciation. More specifically, the nucleus of the analysis is on the process of vowel lengthening, particularly English back-vowels. This research bases its concept of thinking on the theory suggested by O’Grady saying that “English vowels are long when followed by a voiced obstruent consonant in the same syllable” (1997: 107). Therefore, this study is aimed to figure out how voiced and voiceless stop consonants influence the duration of the preceding back vowels’ lengthening.

  The method used in this research is to obtain the duration of the back-vowels

  In the end of the study, the present researcher figured that the result of the analyses for the formulated problem justifies the theories used as the bases of the research. All back vowels are pronounced longer when attached with voiced stop consonants than with the voiceless ones.

  

ABSTRAK

  WAHYU ADI PUTRA GINTING. Back Vowel Lengthening Process in American-

  

English Pronunciation. Yogyakarta: Jurusan Sastra Inggris, Fakultas Sastra,

Universitas Sanata Dharma, 2007.

  Sebagai alat komunikasi manusia yang menggunakan bunyi sebagai media utama penyampaian pesan, bahasa tidak dapat dipisahkan dari ketergantungannya terhadap wacana-wacana yang membahas tentang bunyi kata. Fonetik dan fonologi adalah dua cabang linguistik – kajian ilmiah yang mempelajari bahasa – yang membahas tentang bunyi. Lebih lagi, kedua diskursus ini dapat membantu penutur tidak asli mengembangkan kemampuan mereka melafalkan kata-kata, dalam hal ini, bahasa Inggris. Pentingnya penggunaan bunyi dalam bahasa inilah yang membuat penulis tertarik untuk meneliti topik yang melibatkan bunyi sebagai fokus diskusinya.

  Penelitian ini dilakukan sebagai usaha melanjutkan penelitian pendahulunya, yang dikerjakan oleh Kartika Kirana, seorang mahasiswi Jurusan Sastra Inggris Fakultas Sastra Universitas Sanata Dharma, Yogyakarta. Skripsinya, yang diberi judul The Influence of Voiced and Voiceless Stop Consonants and Their Place of

  

Articulations of the Length of the Preceding Front Vowel in American English

Pronunciation, telah mengilhami peneliti untuk melanjutkan lingkup objek

  penelitiannya: dari vokal depan ke vokal belakang. Namun, pengaruh dari perbedaan tempat pelafalan dari konsonan henti pada panjang vokal belakang tidak dibahas karena data yang digunakan di penelitian ini tidak memungkinkan dilakukannya analisis terhadap isu teoretis itu.

  Dalam penelitian ini, penulis memusatkan penelitiannya pada pelafalan bahasa Inggris-Amerika. Lebih spesifik lagi, inti dari analisis penelitian ini adalah proses pemanjangan bunyi suara vokal, dalam hal ini vokal belakang dalam bahasa Inggris. Penelitian ini mendasarkan konsep pemikirannya pada teori yang dirumuskan oleh O’Grady yang mengatakan bahwa “Bunyi vokal dalam bahasa Inggris akan menjadi panjang ketika diikuti oleh bunyi konsonan bervibra dalam suku kata yang sama” (1997: 107). Maka dari itu, penelitian ini ditujukan untuk mengetahui bagaimana konsonan henti-getar dan konsonan henti-tak-getar mempengaruhi durasi berupa perangkat-lunak audio Realtek AC 97. Sementara itu, instrumen yang digunakan untuk mendapatkan tampilan spektrografik dari setiap datum adalah program Praat yang digunduh dari situs internet www.praat.org. Setelah mendapatkan durasi bunyi vokal untuk setiap kata yang digunakan, uji-t digunakan untuk menganalis durasi tersebut. Pada akhir penelitian, penulis menemukan bahwa hasil dari analisis rumusan permasalahan adalah pembenaran terhadap teori yang digunakan sebagai landasan penelitian. Semua vokal belakang diucapkan lebih panjang ketika diikuti oleh konsonan henti-getar dari pada yang henti-tak-getar.

CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION A. Background of the Study Language, as a means of human communication, can be scientifically

  analyzed into five kinds of prominent partitions, namely: phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, and semantics. The first part, phonetics, is the lowest layer of a language analysis. It studies the most common utility of producing utterances in human communication: sounds. Meanwhile, the other four are more developed language discussions. They are described as the bread and butter of the study of language due to their function as linguistic phases which form the phonemic structure of particular tongues (Aitchison, 1978: 17).

  Two out of five linguistic studies, phonetics and phonology, share the same ingredient of specified discussion: sounds. While phonetics discusses “the speech sounds that are utilized by all human languages to represent meanings”, phonology grounds its focus on the way sounds construct a kind of conventional “system and linguistically significant in a particular language” (Wolfram and Johnson, 1982: 5). Sounds, being “linguistically significant”, are understood as having distinctive (read: phonemic) characteristics, which make the existence of those certain sounds significant, and, therefore, prominent in a “particular language”. Scrutinizing more in the noun phrase “particular language”, one should be brought to a comprehension that not all languages occupy the same sounds, and also sound-patterns, as their means of message-transferring. Simply saying, there are several specific sounds which will honestly separate English from French, for example. Interestingly, this fundamental phenomenon does not only happen in the discussion of the external relationship of a particular language (the relationship between English and French is one of the examples of an external relationship of a language), but also in the internal one, meaning that the relationship of a particular language with its own variants. English is one of those languages experiencing this particular phenomenon.

  As a global language, now English can be considered as a general language (not as a particular one). English is recently very much globalized that many of its variants come up to the surface. Those variants are commonly based on the speaking

  The fact that different languages should consist of different sounds contributes difficulties for people who intend to learn a foreign language. The constraints will particularly be on the matter of pronunciation. This is true realizing that there are sounds in English which do not exist in some other languages and vice versa. This fact results in another fact that people, since they are frustrated by those sounds that do not fit their tongue, tend to choose to replace those unfamiliar sounds their own local sounds which share similar (but exactly not the same) distinctive features with those in foreign sounds. For example, many Indonesians pronounce English

  

/ri/into simply /tri/because the sound // does not exist in Indonesian

language.

  Still related to the problem of difficulties in pronunciation, the individual factors can not be neglected since those factors contribute significant influences in pronouncing sounds correctly. Not only on the regional social dialect do the exact settings of the larynx that can be regarded as producing “normal voice” depend, but also on the individual factors (Laver, 1968, as cited in Clark and Yallop, 1990: 61). The case mentioned in the previous paragraph is simply a matter of the individual’s they are asked to pronounce sounds in the form of a word. Ordinarily, the problem occurs because they do not recognize the phonological effects created by a certain sound to the sounds preceding or following it. In English pronunciation, being more specific, the same phenomenon occurs in a sound string in which a final voiced or voiceless consonant influences the preceding sounds. Related to the topic of this research, the preceding sounds that are to be analyzed are vowels. It has widely been known that a vowel is more likely to be lengthened whenever it precedes a voiced consonant. Though, some phoneticians doubt this phenomenon’s phonemic quality.

  This particular issue is what interests the present researcher.

  This research is a continuation of a former research conducted by Kartika Kirana, a graduate of English Letters Department of Sanata Dharma University, Yogyakarta. The research was done in the year of 2003, and was reported in the form of an Undergraduate Thesis which had been defended in the same year. Kirana utilized English front vowels

  /, æ, , e, i/ as the preceding sounds that were to be analyzed in her research. Meanwhile, the consonants occupied were the stop consonants

  /p, t, k, b, d, /. The specific focus of her research was to analyze the the phonetic alphabets will be presented in the American English version, which are /, u, , o, / (taken from Longman Dictionary of American English). In addition to that, stop consonants are still used to be analyzed as the sounds following the back vowels. This writing is to prove the practical theory saying that, ordinarily, a vowel will be lengthened whenever it is followed by a voiced consonant. In relation to the speakers’ competence in acknowledging English, Gordon and Wong assert that if this phonological phenomenon is not done, it will create a non-English rhythm which leads us to recognize the speaker’s incompetence mastering English (1961: 14).

  B. Problem Formulation

  In this research, there is one problem to answer. That particular problem is:

  1. How do the voiced stop consonants and the voiceless ones influence the length of the preceding back vowels in American English pronunciation?

  C. Objective of the Study

  Referring to the problems formulated above, this study is obviously conducted to discover how voiced and voiceless stop consonants influence the duration of the preceding back vowels’ lengthening. those specific technical terms. Thence, the present researcher provides their definitions, which are taken from some reliable sources, as described below:

  1. Stop consonants are consonants that are made with a complete and momentary closure of airflow through the oral cavity, for example: [p] and [b] (O’Grady, Drobrovolsky, and Aranoff, 1989: 21).

  2. Back vowels are vowels that are produced with lip rounding, for example: [u] and [] (Wolfram and Johnson, 1982: 30), except [], whose pronunciation does not involve active labial movement (Prator, 1951: 100).

  3. Voiced sounds are sounds which are pronounced with vibration of the vocal cords, for example: [] and [d] (Jones, 1969: 544).

  4. Voiceless sounds are sounds which are pronounced without vibration of the vocal cords, for example: [s] and [f] (Jones, 1969: 544).

  5. Length is the “auditory property of a sound that enables us to place it on a scale that ranges from short to long” (O’Grady, Drobrovolsky, and Katamba, 1997: 719).

CHAPTER II REVIEW ON LITERATURE This chapter will be divided into four major parts, namely: review on related

  studies, review on related theories, theoretical framework, and hypotheses. A short description about those four divisions will be depicted in the rest three of these introductory paragraphs.

  The first sub-chapter – review on related studies – is to review one previous study conducted by Kartika Kirana, the study which inspires this present one. The review covers a brief discussion about the topic, the problem formulations, the object of the study, the method of conducting the study, problematic findings figured out in the analysis, the conclusion made, and how the study is different from the present one.

  A review on related theories will be loaded in the second sub-chapter. There are four partitions in this sub-chapter. They are articulatory phonetics, acoustic phonetics, vowel lengthening process, and phonological processes. Each of them will steps done in analyzing the data. Meanwhile, the hypotheses part consists of tentative answers for the research’s problems.

A. Review on Related Studies

  As already mentioned in the first chapter of this report, the present researcher conducts this study based on the awareness of continuing the previous study done by Kartika Kirana in the year of 2003. Therefore, a brief review will be committed on the research report written by Kirana. This review is done to give a clearer basic knowledge of what has been done by the former researcher. By having the description of the former study, the present researcher can emphasize his area of study – to ensure readers that there are distinctions isolating the topic of the present research from the previous one.

  The title of the former research’s report is The Influence of Voiced and

  

Voiceless Stop Consonants and Their Place of Articulations on the Length of the

Preceding Front Vowel in American-English Pronunciation. This research was

  conducted by Kartika Kirana – a student of English Letters Department of Sanata Dharma University Yogyakarta – and was approved and successfully defended in the prove the theory, Kirana held a field research using American English native- speakers as her respondents. She was also eager to find out whether the places of articulation of the stop consonants will contribute influences to the vowel lengthening process or not. For the latter, she based her thought on the theory asserted by Clark and Yallop saying that “if a consonant involves tongue movement, more time will be needed to establish the consonantal articulation, and the adjacent vowel will be longer. Thus, vowels are likely to be longer before alveolars or velars than before bilabials, for example” (1990: 72).

  Kirana formulated two problems for her research, namely:

  1. How do the voiced and voiceless stop consonants influence the length of the preceding front vowel?

  2. How do the different places of articulation of the stop consonants influence the length of the preceding front vowel? These problems were answered by working on the data of the research: recordings of sound-strings pronounced by the respondents of the research. Obviously, the sound- strings utilized in the study were those which contained the phonologically-patterned- diagram showing the display of the sounds is called spectrogram. Later on, the collected data would be observed further using the Praat program. This analysis was aimed to measure the duration of time needed by the speaker in pronouncing a sequence of sounds. Finally, the data of the observation results would be tested statistically using the T-test and Friedman test.

  The samples used as the source of the data were four American native- speakers: two of them were males and the other two were females. Though, Kirana did not try to enhance her research into a broader analysis, for example: the implication of sex-difference to the research’s findings.

  The phonemic-sound-sequences were gathered from dictionaries, and then administered to the respondents in order to be pronounced. The recording activity was done during the act of pronouncing the sounds. The recording was then transferred into the computer to be analyzed.

  What is interesting in Kirana’s research is the use of hypotheses. She wrote her hypotheses, her tentative answers for the problems, before starting to observe the data. She assumed that the duration of the lengthening of the vowel followed by not indicate the influence of different places of articulation of the stop consonants to the front vowel lengthening process.

  In the end of her research report, Kirana admitted that the weakness of her study, which caused the rejection to what the theory of vowel lengthening regarding to the places of articulation as asserted by Clark and Yallop suggests, laid on the unrepresentative respondents. Apparently, not all of those four American-English native speakers produced sounds affirmative to the theory. One of them kept pronouncing the vowels shortly no matter they were followed by voiced or voiceless stops. This condition is what the present researcher tries to fix. Instead of using human respondents, the present researcher will utilize the recordings recorded from Longman digital dictionary of American-English. Recordings from a certain dictionary are chosen because the data will be more general and, thus, applicable.

  What is meant by being more “general” here is the data’s having no specific regional dialect barrier which may result in technical problems when working on each datum.

  For there is no guarantee to have the same distinctive characteristics in each regional dialects is conclusively obvious. For instance, if the respondents are American-

  The present researcher will use the same analytic method of research as Kirana did. The spectrographic analysis is still going to be used. The data will also be analyzed in a computerized checking system using Praat program. Statistical analysis is going to be used as well. The T-test will show the result of the data analysis answering the problem formulated. However, besides the different source of the data being used, the very basic distinctive element that differentiates the present researcher’s study to Kirana’s is the preceding vowels to be analyzed. The present researcher decides to use English back vowels,

  /, u, , o, /, as the sound unit experiencing the phonological phenomenon – the vowel lengthening process as the effect of regressive assimilation of the following stop consonants.

  Previously, being the same as what Kirana did, the present researcher also intended to analyze the influence of different places of articulation of stop consonants on the length of the vowel, in this case the back vowels, immediately preceding it. Nonetheless, the data provided by Longman Dictionary of American English are not applicable for the Friedman-test. It is because, in Friedman-test, the sounds used as the samples should be pronounced by the same person(s). Meanwhile, the recordings

B. Review on Related Theories

  The related theories reviewed in this sub-chapter will be divided into four divisions according to their practical quality. Some theories are used as a means to describe the subject matter of the research. Such theories are loaded in the “Articulatory Phonetics” sub-chapter. Another sub-chaptering is done to load the theories describing the technical process of the spectrographic analysis. That particular sub-chapter is entitled “Acoustic Phonetics”. A specified sub-chaptering will be given to the theories of vowel lengthening processes since they are the nucleic discussion of the study. The theories are presented in the “Vowel Lengthening Processes” sub-chapter. Meanwhile, some other theories are presented as the practical ones to apply in the process of analyzing the data. Those theories are collected and, then, presented in the “Phonological Processes” sub-chapter. This is done in the awareness of being structurally systematic in putting the theories in a properly ordered turn. Each descriptive theory will be clustered into one sub-chapter, and the same thing will also be done to the practical ones.

  B.1. Articulatory Phonetics the continuous flow of speech to what we regard as isolated sounds; it is helpful to examine exactly how sounds are produced” (1982: 12). The following paragraphs are to describe the production of sounds.

  In accordance with the need of communication, some parts of humans’ biological organ structure are designed to accomplish the production of speech sounds – since sounds are the most common means used for human communication. A simultaneous activity is done by a group of anatomical organs that collaborate to produce speech sounds. However, none of those anatomical organs is designed exclusively to produce speech sounds. It means that there are other original biological functions possessed by those organs, for instance, nose and mouth are meant to inhale and exhale the air. Meanwhile, producing speech sounds is a kind of “minor function” because those organs should be combined when producing sounds – they cannot be used to produce speech sounds when being individual, for example, we will not be able to produce the fricative sound articulated in the palatoalveolar area

  [] by counting on the use of lungs alone. There is a collaboration of tongue, palate, glottal, velum, and lungs which activate their own auxiliary activity so that the sound can be

  1. The respiratory system, whose parts are the lungs, the bronchial tubes, the trachea, diaphragm, and various muscles whose function is to help move the air through the system.

  2. The larynx, whose ability is to provide voice for speech sounds. Larynx also provides an additional function, which is to give protection to the lungs by “sealing them off” when the sounds production process is being done.

  3. The articulatory system (vocal tract), which includes the lips, teeth, tongue, and other parts of the mouth.

  B.1.b The Nature of Speech Sounds

  In English, all sounds are produced by pulmonic egressive airstream mechanism. The sounds are produced by using the air that comes from the lungs, so it is called pulmonic. The process of creating sounds in human communication is mostly done by pushing the air from the lungs out of the body through mouth and nose. To produce phonemic sounds by inhaling the air from outside of the body into the lungs is practically a difficult, tiring activity. This is what makes the egressive manner produce speech sounds (Fromkin and Rodman, 1988: 34). a voiceless sound is uttered, there will not be any vibration that can be felt from the vocal folds. The voiced sounds are produced “when the vocal folds are brought close together, but not tightly closed, air passing between them causes them to vibrate…” (O’Grady et al, 1997: 22). There will be vibration that can be felt from the vocal folds when examining a voiced sound. A whisper will be produced when the vocal folds are “adjusted so that the anterior (front) portions are pulled close together, while the posterior (back) portions are apart (O’Grady et al, 1997: 23). This position of the vocal folds results in the voicelessness of a whisper. A murmur, or whispery voices, in terms of the glottal configuration, is produced quite similarly with the process of producing a voiced sound. Yet, though the sound is voiced, the vocal folds are more relaxed to “allow enough air to escape to produce a simultaneous whispery effect” (O’Grady et al, 1997: 23).

  As stated in the second paragraph of this sub-chapter, the air from the lungs is pushed out of the body through nasal and oral cavity. The choice of the cavity where the air will be flowed out will cause different sounds. When the air is pushed out through the oral cavity, oral sounds will be produced and vice versa (nasals). In the pass through the nasal cavity. This happens when sounds like [m], [n], [] are pronounced (Fromkin and Rodman, 1988: 37).

  Another condition that can differentiate the sound and the quality of the sound produced is the shape of the mouth. Inside the oral cavity (the mouth), there are several speech organs supporting each other to produce speech sounds. They are lips, tongue, teeth, palates, and jaws. Lips are the last part of the oral cavity that can be used to produce different sounds. Two basic treatments can be done to shape different lips positions, namely to shut and to hold apart. Shutting the lips will prevent the air- stream from escaping at all. The sounds produced by this treatment can be found in the initial sounds of post and boast. Alternatively, by lowering the soft palate, the air- stream can be directed to the nose like in the initial sound of moose. Meanwhile, when the treatment done to the lips is to hold them apart, there will be six positions shaped. They may be held sufficiently close together over all their length that friction occurs between them, held so sufficiently far apart so no friction to be heard (spread position), held in a relaxed position with a medium lowering of the lower jaw (neutral position), held relatively wide apart, without any marked rounding (open position), or airflow. Alveolar ridge and the velum are with which the tongue experiences a full contact creating a complete obstruction blocking the airflow. The tongue itself has three parts. They are the front part which “lies opposite the hard palate”, the back part which “faces the soft palate”, and the centre part “where the front and back meet” (Indriani, 2001: 5). Specifically for the pronunciation of vowels, those parts will distinguish the vocalic sounds produced. The sounds formed by the involvement of the front part of the tongue will clearly be different from the ones formed by the involvement of the back or centre part.

  B.1.c The Back Vowels of American English “Vowels are sonorous, syllabic sounds made with the vocal tract more open than it is for consonant and glide articulations” (O’Grady, Drobrovolsky, Aronoff,

  1989: 26). Vowels’ being sonorant means that they are pronounced louder in terms of the volume of the voice. Vowels can also be pronounced longer since there is no blockage from the other speech organs, as the theory says that “while consonants are typically produced with some sort of constriction or stoppage in the oral cavity, vowels are produced without radical constriction” (Wolfram, 1982: 27). part of the body of the tongue on a horizontal scale” (1982: 27). It means that, being oppositional with the status of the vertically highest part of the tongue body, a vowel can be classified into three positions, namely front, central, and back.

  Supporting the height and backness dimensions, another point can be added to help describe the articulatory processes of different vowels. The dimension meant is tenseness. Vowel tenseness is defined as “the degree to which the root of the tongue is pulled forward and bunched up” (Wolfram, 1982: 28). According to the tenseness status, vowels can be stratified into two statuses: tense and lax. Tense vowels are produced “with a greater degree of construction of the tongue body or tongue root than are certain other vowels” (O’Grady et al., 1989: 29). Comprehensively, there will be a kind of motion experienced by the tongue when a certain vowel is pronounced. Lax vowels are made “with roughly the same tongue position but with a less constricted articulation” (O’Grady et al., 1989: 29). It means that the tongue will be more relaxed when a lax vowel is sounded. Tense and lax vowels tend to correlate with the tongue height status because the vertical position of the tongue will influence the tenseness status of a vowel. For example, the vowel sounds in beat

  [bit] (tense)

  (rounded) compared with pit (unrounded). Thus, all English back vowels are rounded except the low, back, lax vowel [] as in hot (Fromkin and Rodman, 1988: 50).

  Back vowels are vowels that are produced with lip rounding (Wolfram and Johnson, 1982: 30) except

  [] (Prator, 1951: 100). Five back vowels that exist in American-English are

  /, u, , o, / (Longman Dictionary of American English)

  a) Low back tense unrounded vowel []

  This vowel is sounded with a remarkable separation of the jaws. With “a slight muscular effort”, the lower jaw is moved down “more than it would be in a normal relaxed position.” As the result, the lips are forced to be wide open (i.e. one inch across and one inch from top to bottom), and the consequence of this condition is the occurrence of the unrounded status. To a certain point, the tongue tip lightly reaches a spot on the floor of the mouth, “so low that in compensation the back of the tongue must be raised just a little in the throat” (Prator, 1951: 100).

  b) Mid back lax rounded vowel [] remains in approximately the same position as for [], but is ‘bunched’ a little toward the back of the mouth” (Prator, 1951: 101).

  c) Mid back tense rounded vowel [o]

  This vowel is uttered by shaping the lips into the form of the alphabet o. It means that the lips need to be “protruded” and “rounded” more than that of []. The diameter of the lip-rounding for this vowel is about one inch. “The jaw has been raised still a little more, and the ‘bunching’ of the tongue in the back of the mouth is greater.” Moreover, there is a probability that the tongue tip does not touch the floor of the mouth anymore. One distinctive feature that belongs to the pronunciation of this particular vowel is that “it is frequently diphthongized.” For instance, in pronouncing words like boast and boat, in which the back vowel [o] acts as the nucleus, “the complete vowel begins as a pure [o], and moves on to a brief

  []” (Prator, 1951: 101).

  d) High back lax rounded vowel []

  If compared with [o], in the production of the vowel [], the lips are rounded e) High back tense rounded vowel [u]