CHAPTER 2 THEORETICAL BACKGROUND In this chapter, the writer gives the theoretical descriptions from the viewpoint of experts which related to this research. They are Production of Speech Sound, English Vowels, Diphthong, Triphthong, and previous studies of Production and Perception of English Vowels. 2.1. Production of Speech Sound According to Roach (2000, p. 8-10), human speech is produced by the organs presented in Figure 1. The sounds that human made are the result of muscle contracting. Almost all speech sounds were made by all the muscle that we use for breathing in the chest. First, the air will pass through the larynx, then vocal tract, and ends at the mouth and nostrils. Figure 1. The Articulators by Peter Roach, 2000) 1 Here are the explanations about the articulators: a. Pharynx Pharynx is a tube which is located above the larynx and it is 7 cm long in women and 8 cm long in men. Pharynx has two parts, the first part is located at the back of the mouth and the second part is at the beginning of the way to nasal cavity. (Nasal cavity is located behind the nose). b. Velum or Soft Palate Soft palate can be touched by tongue if we make sounds /k/ and /g/. Automatically the tongue makes contact with the lower side of the velum. Velum allows air to pass through the nose and mouth. c. Hard Palate Hard palate is also called as roof of the mouth and it can be touched with tongue. d. Alveolar Ridge Alveolar Ridge is located behind the upper teeth and it is covered with little ridges. Sounds that can be pronounced are /t/ and /d/ and it is called alveolar. e. Tongue Tongue is divided into five parts. See figure 2 to see the parts of the tongue. 2 Figure 2. Subdivisions of Tongue by Peter Roach, 2000) f. Teeth (upper and lower) Teeth are located behind the lips. Many speech sounds are made when the tongue is in contact with upper teeth and it is called Dental. g. Lips Sounds that can be made with lips such as /p, b, f, v, and u/. When lips are touching each other, the sounds that come out called Bilabial while the lips touched the teeth, it is called Labiodental. 2.2. Vowel Since the study is about one of the English vowels type, first, the writer will give explanation about English vowels based on the experts. Roach (2000, p. 10) states, “The most common view is that vowels are sounds in which there is no obstruction to the flow 3 of air as it passes from the larynx to the lips.” Ladefoged (2005, p. 201) states, “Vowel is a sound at a center of syllable in which there is no obstruction of the vocal tract.” According to Roach (2000, p. 14), lip rounding is one of the most easily classified vowel quality. There are three shapes and lips position that are considered as vowel. (1) Rounded. The corners of the lips are brought towards each other and the lips pushed forwards. Just like the sound /u/. (2) Spread. The lips are forming like a smile. Just like in the sound /i/. (3) Neutral. The lips are both rounded or spread. Like when people say “er”. Todd (1987, p. 30-33) states, there are 20 vowels in British English language which divided to 12 monotphongs. The 12 monopthongs are /i/, /ɪ/, /ɛ/, /æ/, /ɑ/, /ɒ/, /ɔ/, /ʊ/, /u/, /ʌ/, /ɜ/, and /ə/. Figure 3. The positions of the 12 Monophthongs by Loreto Todd, 1987) 4 According to Roach (2000, p. 13-15, 18-19), /ɪ/, /e/, /æ/, /ʌ/, /ɒ/, and /ʊ/ are English short vowels, while /i:/, /ɜː/, /ɑ:/, /ɔ:/ and /u:/ are English long vowels. For the sound /a/, it is included as Primary cardinal vowel which means vowels that are most familiar to the speakers and cannot stand independently. Figure 4. English Short and Long Vowels (Taken from English Phonetics and Phonology by Peter Roach) 2.3. English Vowels In this research, the writer only focuses on some vowels that are used in Triphthong sounds. There are /e/, /ɪ/, /ə/, /ʊ/, /ɔ/, and /a/. Explanations of each vowel are below based on Roach (2000), Zapata (2009) Akmajian, Demers, Farmer, and Harnish (2001) and Todd (1987): 1. /e/ This is a mid front unrounded vowel. To produce this vowel, the lips must be slightly spread and wide. The front of the tongue must be between the half-open 5 and half-close positions. The tongue is tense. Words containing this type of vowel are get, men, merry, etc. 2. /ɪ/ This is a close front unrounded vowel. To produce this vowel, the tongue tip must be behind the lower teeth. The center of the tongue is nearer to center mouth in a half-close position. The lips are loosely spread. Words containing this type of vowel are bit, pin, sit, etc. 3. /ə/ This is a mid central unrounded vowel. This vowel is also called as ‘schwa’. To produce this vowel, the position of the tongue between half-open and half-close. The tongue tip position is behind the lower teeth. The lips are in a neutral position. Words containing this type of vowel are ago, rose, comma, etc. 4. /ʊ/ This is a close back rounded vowel. To produce this vowel, the lips must be in a round position. The center part of the tongue is raised to half-close position. Words containing this type of vowel are put, book, full, etc. 5. /ɔ/ This is a mid back rounded vowel. To produce this vowel, the lips must be in a medium round position. The tongue is raised between the half-open and halfclose positions. Words containing this type of vowel are all, saw, raw, etc. 6 6. /a/ This is open front unrounded vowel and included as cardinal vowel. This vowel is unable to stand independently and needs another vowel. This type of vowel is only for Diphthong and Triphthong because both of them have more than one vowel to be pronounced. To produce this vowel, the tongue position is at the bottom of the mouth and below the lower teeth. The jaw is open when pronounce this vowel. Words containing this type of vowel are light, time, etc. 2.4. Diphthong Roach (2000, p. 20) states, “RP has a large number of Diphthongs, sounds which consist of movement or glide from one vowel to another.” According to Dardjowidjojo (2009, p. 33), Diphthong is a combination of two vowels which belong to the same syllable and the stress must be on the first vowel. Fromkin, V., et al (2001, p. 693) state that Diphthong is “Vowel represented as sequence of vowel symbols because the tongue and / or lips move from one position to another.” Roach (2000, p. 20-22) divides Diphthongs to 8 types which divided into the centring and closing part. Centring part is subdivided to three Diphthongs which ended with /ə/. They are /ɪə/, /eə/, and /ʊə/. Closing part is subdivided to five Diphthongs which ended with /ɪ/ (/eɪ/, /aɪ/, and /ɔɪ/) and /ʊ/ (/əʊ/ and /aʊ/). 7 Figure 5. Diphthong by Peter Roach, 2000) Examples of Diphthong in words: 1. /ɪə/ in the words ‘ear’, ‘fear’, ‘fierce’, etc. 2. /eə/ in the words ‘aired’, ‘cairn’, ‘scare’, etc. 3. /ʊə/ in the words ‘during’, ‘cure’, ‘tour’, etc. 4. /eɪ/ in the words ‘pain’, ‘bait’, ‘laser’, etc. 5. /aɪ/ in the words ‘light’, ‘time’, ‘buy’, etc. 6. /ɔɪ/ in the words ‘coil’, ‘boil’, ‘voice’, etc. 7. /əʊ/ in the words ‘load’, ‘boat’, ‘go’, etc. 8. /aʊ/ in the words ‘out’, ‘cow’, ‘house’, etc. 8 2.5. Triphthong Dardjowodjojo (2009, p. 33) states, “Occasionally we also have Triphthongs, that is, combination of three vowels within a syllable.” According to Roach (2000, p. 23), Triphthong is type of vowel that most complex, difficult to understand and recognize because it is all produced rapidly and without interruption. It can be seen that Triphthong made of 5 Diphthongs with /ə/ added on the end. 1. /eɪ/ + /ə/ = /eɪə/ This type of Triphthong sound is a combination of three vowels /e/, /ɪ/, and /ə/. To produce this Triphthong sound, first of all, the lips must be slightly spread and wide, the front of the tongue must be between half-open and half-close positions to produce the vowel /e/. After that, the position of the tongue tip is behind the lower teeth and the center of the tongue in a half-close position. Finally, to produce this vowel completely, moved the position of the tongue tip to behind the lower teeth and the tongue position is half-open and half-close. Words containing this Triphthong sound are ‘layer’, ‘player’, etc. 2. /aɪ/ + /ə/ = /aɪə/ This type of Triphthong sound is a combination of three vowels /a/, /ɪ/, and /ə/. To produce this Triphthong sound, first of all, the jaw must be opened, then, the tongue position must be at the bottom of the mouth and below the lower teeth. After that, the position of the tongue tip is behind the lower teeth and the center of the tongue in a halfclose position. Finally, to produce this vowel completely, moved the position of the 9 tongue tip to behind the lower teeth and the tongue position is half-open and half-close. The way of pronouncing the previous two vowels (/ɪ/ and /ə/) are similar to the first type of Triphthong vowel, /eiə/. Words containing this Triphthong sound are ‘liar’, ‘fire’, etc. 3. /ɔɪ/ + /ə/ = /ɔɪə/ This type of Triphthong sound is a combination of three vowels /ɔ/, /ɪ/, and /ə/. To produce this Triphthong sound, first of all, the lips must be in a medium round position and the tongue is raised between the half-open and half-close positions. After that, move the center of the tongue nerarer the center mouth in a half-close position, then, back to the half-open and half-close positions with the tip of the tongue is behind the lower teeth. Words containing this type of Triphthong sound are ‘loyal’, ‘royal’, etc. 4. /əʊ/ + /ə/ = /əʊə/ This type of Triphthong sound is a combination of vowels /ə/, /ʊ/, and /ə/. To produce this Triphthong sound, first of all, the position of the tongue is in half-open and half-close. After that, the center of the tongue is raised to half-close position and the lips must be in a round position. Finally, to produce this Triphthong sound completely, move the tongue in half-open and half-close position again and the tip of the tongue is behind the lower teeth. Words containing this Triphthong sound are ‘lower’, ‘mower’, etc. 5. /aʊ/ + /ə/ = /aʊə/ This type of Triphthong sound is a combination of vowels /a/, /ʊ/, and /ə/. To produce this Tirphthong sound, first of all, the jaw must be opened then the tongue is at the bottom of the mouth and below the lower teeth. After that, the center of the tongue is 10 raised between the half-close position and the lips must be in a round looks. Finally, to produce this Triphthong sound completely, move the position of the tongue to half-open and half-close and the tongue tip position must be behind the lower teeth. Words containing this Triphthong sound are ‘power’, ‘hour’, etc. 2.6. Previous Studies of Production and Perception of English Vowels In this part, the writer will give some previous research about production and perception of English vowels. The previous studies used are created by Flege, MacKay, and Meador (1999); Tsukada, Birdsong, Bialystok, Mack, Sung, and Flege (2005) and Ria Wijaya from Binus University (2007). The writer will examine the participants, instrument, data collection, and the result of the research of each previous study. 2.6.1. Native Italian Speakers’ Perception and Production of English Vowels by James Emil Flege, Ian R. A. MacKay, and Diane Meador (1999). This study is about native Italian speakers’ perception and production based on their age of arrival (AOA) in Canada and how much they continued to use Italian language. The participants of this research are seventy two Italian who were born in Italy and started to learn English in Canada and eighteen native English speakers. The participants’ mean age was 48 years old. So, the total number of participants is 90. The participants were divided to four groups based on length of residence. Native English group, native Italian early group, native Italian mid group, and native Italian late group. 11 Since there are two experiments in this research, the first instruments used in this research are a test material of written list of four words sequences which contained 10 target vowels of interests, they are /i/, /ɪ/, /æ/, /o/, /ɒ/, /ʊ/, /u/, /ʌ/, /ɜ/, and /e/. An auditory test which spoken by a male native English speaker. This auditory test is used to reduce the likelihood of spelling pronunciation. The data collection procedures of the first experiment were held at Phonetic laboratory of the University of Ottawa, Canada. The participants were required to say the four words in sequences after hearing the whole sequences. After that, Flege et al. recorded the sounds of the participants. To obscure the biases sound of consonants, Flege et al. edited the sound. The result of this research shows that English vowel spoken by Native English speakers is 94% accurate, English vowel spoken by the native Italian in early group is 92% accurate, English vowel spoken by the native Italian in mid group is 87% accurate, and English vowel spoken by native Italian in early group is 67% accurate. It means that the longer the person lives in Canada, the more accurate the pronunciation of English vowels. In the second experiment, the participants are similar to the first experiment. The instrument used is a stimuli in English which spoken by five female English native speakers and another stimuli which spoken by five female Italian native speakers. The data collection procedure of this experiment was the participants were required to click the button if they heard one vowel which is different from the other vowels. 12 The result of the second experiment is second language vowel production accuracy depends on how the second language vowels are perceived rather than how vowels in first language are perceived. 2.6.2. The Correlation between the Accuracy of English Vowel Perception and Production by Eighth Semester Students of English Department at Bina Nusantara University by Ria Wijaya (2007). This study is about the perception and production accuracy of eight semester students of English department at Bina Nusantara University of English vowels. The participants of this research were 30 students from eight semester students at Bina Nusantara University. The instruments used for this research are two test material and questionnaires. The test materials consist of English vowel perception and English vowel production test. Each test consists of 36 selected words from the twelve vowels /i/, /ɪ/, /æ/, /ɑ:/, /ɒ/, /ɔ:/, /ʊ/, /u:/, /ʌ/, /ɜ/, /e/ and /ə/. The 36 words include 21 words of short vowels and 15 words of long vowels. The questionnaires are distributed to five students of eight semester students in order to find out the reason of inaccuracy of production and perception of English vowels. The others questionnaires are given to the three related lecturers to find out the solutions for the inaccuracy of the production and perception of English vowels. For the data collection procedure of this research, first of all, Ria Wijaya distributed the test materials to the students between June 27, 2006 and July 3, 2006. 13 After distributing the test materials, students were required to do the production and perception test. After that, Ria Wijaya distributed the questionnaires between Jan 8, 2007 and Jan 12, 2007. Finally, after collecting the data, Ria analyzed it using Pearson’s product moment coefficient of correlation to find out the correlation between the production and perception of English vowels. The results of the research are, for the average score of perception, students get 69 score. For the average score of production, students get 75 score. Ria also finds that there is a positive relation between the students’ English vowel perception accuracy and production accuracy. The students’ English vowel perception and production accuracy increased as it were increased and the students’ English vowel perception decreased as it were decreased. 2.6.3. A Developmental Study of English Vowel Production and Perception by Native Korean Adults and Children by Kimiko Tsukada, David Birdsong, Ellen Bialystok, Molly Mack, Hyekyung Sung, James Flege (2005). This study is about the accuracy between the adults Korean native speakers and children Korean native speakers. There are three experiments. For the first experiments, Tsukata et al. ask three males and five females with average age 31.4 years who had loved in English speaking country for around 6 to 11 months. The instrument used for the first experiment is a stimuli produced by an adult male Korean native speaker consists of 8 English vowels /i, ɪ, e, æ, ɑ, ʌ, u/. Another instrument is a questionnaire to find out the background of the language. The data 14 collection procedures of the first experiment is the participants were required to fill the questionnaire to find out the background of the language, then, the participants tested individually. After that, the participants were required to identify the stimuli in term of one of the eight English vowels by clicking the Hangul character displayed on the screen. The result of the first experiment is native Korean speakers could not classify either /e/ or the /ɛ/ tokens consistently and made the both vowels were mapped onto multiple Korean vowel. The second experiment is conducted to compare the discrimination of English vowels by native Korean adults and children to native English adults and children also with the age already matched. Total of participants are 108 and divided to six groups which has 18 participants in each group. 72 participants are native Korean who had immigrated to North America and 36 participants are native English. Half of them are adults and the rest are children. The instruments used are similar to the first experiment. The data collection procedures of this research is the participants were required to identify the stimuli, then, respond the trial. The result of the second experiment has shown that, native Korean children get higher score than native Korean adults in all four English vowels (ɛ- æ, e- ɛ, i-ɪ, ɑ-ʌ). Native Korean children with the length of residence of 3 years discriminated English vowels less accurately than the native English children. Native Korean children are in process of learning to perceive English vowels in native English way. 15 The third experiment is conducted to test the English vowels /i, ɪ, e, æ, ɛ, ɑ, ʌ/. The participants are similar to the second experiment. The instrument used is an auditory stimuli spoken by an adult male native English speaker which consists of 7 vowels in 21 words given. For the data collection procedure, the participants were required to produce vowels which are familiar to the participants including for children. The results of the third experiments are native Korean children produced the vowels more accurately than the native Korean adults do. Native Korean adults production’s score is larger than the native English adults do. Native Korean children production’s score is larger contrasts than the native Korean adults who are matched for length of residence 3 years and did not different significantly from the native English children and the last result is native Korean children production and perception are similar to native English children than the native Korean adults 16