II. PHONOLOGY 2.1. Phonology and Phonemes According to Gleason (1961:11) phonology deals with phonemes and sequence of phonemes. Therefore if one writes the phonology of a language, he describes its phonemes. Gleason (1961:261) explains further that "a phoneme is a class of sounds which are phonetically similar and show certain characteristic patterns of distribution in the language or dialect under consideration". Francis (1958:127) defines a phoneme as a group of one or more phone?types that are phonetically similar and in complementary distribution, i.e. they occur in a predictable way in the language and fit together in the mind of the speaker as one unit. Phonemes can be segmental or supra-segmental. Some languages do not have supra-segmental phonemes, such as Indonesian. But English has. In English the stress is phonemic. It means that certain words might change their meanings if the position of the stress is changed. Another definition of a phoneme A phoneme is a group of phone?types which are phonetically similar and either in complementary distribution or in free variation (Francis, 1958). Or a phoneme is a speech sound that signals a difference in meaning (Stageberg, 1967). Pike( 1968) gives four sound premises (idea, statement) as follows: 1. Sounds tend to be modified by their environments 2. Sound systems have a tendency toward phonetic symmetry 3. Sounds tend to fluctuate 4. Characteristic sequences of sounds exert (use) structural pressure on the phonemic interpretation of suspicious segments or suspicious sequences of segments. (patterns of sound sequence are used to interpret suspicious segments or suspicious sequences of segments). When we speak, there are some organs used to produce the sounds. This study belongs to phonetics. There are three branches of phonetics: 1) Articulatory Phonetic: the study of how the sounds are produced and what organs are used,, 2) Acoustic phonetic: how the sounds are transmitted from the mouth/nose of the speaker, 3) Auditory phonetics: how the sounds are received by the hearer through the ears (Verhaar, 1996). The first study belongs to physiology and the second and the third belong to physics. The organs that are used to produce the sounds are called speech mechanism/organs which consist of lung, larynx (vocal cords), pharynx (epiglottis, uvula), mouth cavity (velum, palate, alveolar ridge, upper teeth, upper lip, tongue root, tongue back, tongue front, tongue blade, tongue tip, teeth, lips), and nasal cavity. The air comes out from the lungs through the larynx and the vocal cords vibrates (for voiced sounds). The air passes the pharynx entering the mouth or the nasal cavity. The mouth form the sound by making certain handicap or making certain form of the passage of the air. The vocal cords can have four positions; 1) open widely when we breath, 2) rather wide when pronounce voiceless sounds such as [h], 3) open a little when we pronounce voiced sounds such as [b] or the vowels, and 4) closed when we produce glottal stop [?]. Glottal stop is produced by closing the vocal cords suddenly. Diagram of speech organs 1 upper lip (labial) 13 uvula (uvular) 2 upper teeth (dental) 14 pharynx (pharyngeal) 3 alveolae (alveolar) 15 mouth cavity 4 palate (palatal) 16 nasal cavity 5 velum (velar) 17 vocal cords 6 lower lip (labial) 18 larynx 7 lower teeth (dental) 19 lungs 8 tip of the tongue (apico, apical) 9 the blade and front of the tongue (laminal, fronto, medial) 10 back of the tongue (dorso, dorsal) 11 root of the tongue 12 epiglottis 2.2 Classification of Sounds Phonemes can be divided into consonants and vowels. A. consonants are classified: 1. based on voice: voiced, and voiceless 2. based on articulator: 6 3. based on point of articulation: 10 4. manner of articulation: 7 Voiced consonants such as /b/, /d/, /g/, /j/, and /l/ are produced by vibrating the vocal cords, while the voiceless ones such as [p], [t], [k], and [s] are produced without vibrating them. Based on articulator consonants are divided into labial, dental, tip of the tongue (apico), blade of the tongue (blade), front of the tongue (fronto), and the back of the tongue (dorso). Based on the points of articulation they can be labial, dental, alveolar, alveopalatal, palatal, velar, uvular, pharyngeal, and glottal. Based on the combination of the articulator and the points of articulation, the consonants can be: 1) bilabial means the sound is produced by raising the lower lip to the upper lip. 2) labiodental means the sound is produced by raising the lower lip to the upper teeth. 3) apico dental means the sound is produced by raising the tip of the tongue to the upper teeth. 4) apico alveolar means the sound is produced by raising the tip of the tongue to the alveolar. 5) blade alveolar means the sound is produced by raising the blade of the tongue to the alveolar. 6) blade alveolar palatal means the sound is produced by raising the blade of the tongue to the alveolar palatal. 7) fronto palatal means the sound is produced by raising the front of the tongue to the palate. 8) dorso velar means the sound is produced by raising the back of the tongue to the velum. 9) uvular means that the sound is produced by the uvular. 10) pharyngeal means that the sound is produced at the pharyngeal cavity. 11) glottal is produced by closing the vocal cords suddenly. |