THE ANALYSIS OF VOWEL INTONATION IN PHONOLOGY

Disusun Oleh
ARMI SINTA
1416232932

Detti Lismayanti, M.Hum

PENDIDIKAN BAHASA INGGRIS

FAKULTAS TARBIYAH DAN TADRIS
INSTITUT AGAMA ISLAM NEGERI(IAIN)
BENGKULU
2016

A. Background
Like many languages, English has wide variation in pronunciation, both
historically and from dialect to dialect. In general, however, the regional
dialects of English share a largely similar (though not identical) phonological
system.
Phonological analysis of English often concentrates on, or uses as a
reference point, one or more of the prestige or standard accents, such as
Received Pronunciation for England, General American for the United States,
and General Australian for Australia. Nevertheless, many other dialects of
English are spoken, which do not necessarily descend from any of these
standardised accents. Information about these standardised accents functions
only as a limited guide to all of English phonology, which one can later expand
upon once one becomes more familiar with some of the many other dialects of
English that are spoken
English is a vehicle for international comunication, which has important
role in developing human resources. It used largely by people around the world
in several fields, for example as a tool of communication among the people
that come from different countries and also can be as an information sources
such as on technology, science, and so on.
The aim of teaching English is to improve studentss skill in using
English, namely, speaking, listening, writing and reading. All of them are
important to be understood by the students. In reading comprehension, students

should understand some reading strategies to help them in their activity.

Through reading students can get a lot of information and even problem
solution. In writing skills, students should have good knowledge of grammar,
and they should also have number of vocabularies. Then, they have to
understand how to express their mind in letter well. In speaking and listening
skill, actually, the students should have the same knowledge as the two skills
above. However, in speaking and listening, good pronunciation is a crucial
thing. when someone speaks English bad or error in pronunciation, the listeners
difficult to understand what the speak is talking about.
Pronunciation is one of important skill in English. In pronunciation
subject, students learn how to say the letter well from alphabet A until Z.
Pronunciation is foundation in speaking. How we can speak fluently, if we
dont know how to pronounce the words well. English is not the same as
Indonesia language. In Indonesia, alphabet A we read /a/, alphabet B we read
/b/, and also with another words, there is no chance in reading it. But in
English, alphabet A we read // such as in bag /bg/, and some times we read
alphabet /a/ be // such as in word federal /fedrl/ and etc.
Actually Pronunciation is always taught when a teacher is teaching
English. However, problem often comes from the process of learning and
teaching. According to kelly ( 2000:13) there are two keys problems in teaching
Pronunciation. Firstly, it tends to be neglected. Secondly, when it is not
neglected, it tends to be reactive to a particular problem that has arisen in the
classroom rather than being strategically planned.
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Moreover our country, Indonesia, is rich of culture. It has many ethnic

groups who have different language in each regional area. Each regional
language has different dialect. The regional dialect itself will influence speakers
in speaking English. Trudgill (1994:2) stated that where are you from, of
course, will not be the only thing which influence how you speak. People speak
different kind of English depending on what kind of social background they
come from.
From the explanation above, it can be seen that dialect can influence
someone in producing English sounds. It is important for the teacher to know
what their students problems in pronunciation and aspects of pronunciation
learners perceive to be their needs. In this case the teachers need to teach
strategies that can use to improve their students pronunciation.
In addition, Kolokdaragh (2009:15) stated that the ESL/Efl learners own
perspectives give information to the teachers about their pronunciation needs.
Therefore, the challenge for ESL teachers, is in light of the findings on learners
own perspectives strategies to evaluate the overall effectiveness and scope of
the pronunciation instruction they provide and to assist their students in
developing those strategies that will best enable them to communicate
successfully and autonomously in the English speaking community (Derwing
and Rossister, 2002:163).
According to Ramirez (2010:80) has conducted a survey on investigate
students perception about the development of their oral skills among 4th

semester Otun University. The results of this study showed that students
perceived improvement show of their oral skills after attending and
participating the oral skills course.
However, there has not been much research to investigate about learners
perception needs. Most English teacher tech sounds individually with less
attention to suprasegmental features of the pronunciation. Besides that no
agreement between researcher and the teacher to define what aspect of
pronunciation should be fixed in teaching pronunciation (Kolokdaragh 2009).
Based on small observation, researcher found that the students come
from various regions at English program of Bengkulu. They are use their
regional language in daily communication. It appears that their regional
language had influenced in their pronunciation in English of course they needs
to overcome communication problems caused by pronunciation. Based on
descriptive background above, the researcher is interested to investigate about
The Analysis Of Vowel Intonation In Phonology

B. Problem Of The Study

Based on the background above, the problem of this research can be
formulated as follow:
1.
2.
3.
4.

What Is Intonation?
What Kins Of Intonation Are there Phonolgy?
How to use the vowel intonation?
What is/are the problems in pronouncing the vowel intonation?

C. Signicance of study

It is hoped that the result of this research will give an information and
contribution about students perception of their pronunciation needs. To
develop their pronunciation, the lecturer helps the students by giving some
activities of pronunciation. It is enable for them to communicate successfully
in English. Besides that, the researcher hope for the next researcher can
continue this research about pronunciation skill.
D. Literatur Review
1. Intonation
In linguistics, intonation is variation of spoken pitch that is not used
to distinguish words; instead it is used for a range of functions such as
indicating the attitudes and emotions of the speaker, signalling the
difference between statements and questions, and between different types of
questions, focusing attention on important elements of the spoken message
and also helping to regulate conversational interaction. It contrasts with
tone, in which pitch variation in some languages does distinguish words,
either lexically or grammatically. (The term tone is used by some British
writers in their descriptions of intonation, but this is to refer to the pitch
movement found on the nucleus or tonic syllable in an intonation unit see
Intonation in English: British Analyses of English Intonation, below).
Although intonation is primarily a matter of pitch variation, it is
important to be aware that functions attributed to intonation such as the
expression of attitudes and emotions, or highlighting aspects of
grammatical structure, almost always involve concomitant variation in other
prosodic features. Crystal for example says that "...intonation is not a single
system of contours and levels, but the product of the interaction of features

from different prosodic systems tone, pitch-range, loudness, rhythmicality

and tempo in particular
2. Phonology
Phonology is a branch of linguistics concerned with the systematic
organization of sounds in languages. It has traditionally focused largely on
the study of the systems of phonemes in particular languages (and therefore
used to be also called phonemics, or phonematics), but it may also cover
any linguistic analysis either at a level beneath the word (including syllable,
onset and rime, articulatory gestures, articulatory features, mora, etc.) or at
all levels of language where sound is considered to be structured for
conveying linguistic meaning. Phonology also includes the study of
equivalent organizational systems in sign languages
The word phonology (as in the phonology of English) can also refer
to the phonological system (sound system) of a given language. This is one
of the fundamental systems which a language is considered to comprise,
like its syntax and its vocabulary.
Phonology is often distinguished from phonetics. While phonetics
concerns the physical production, acoustic transmission and perception of
the sounds of speech, phonology describes the way sounds function within
a given language or across languages to encode meaning. For many
linguists, phonetics belongs to descriptive linguistics, and phonology to
theoretical linguistics, although establishing the phonological system of a
language is necessarily an application of theoretical principles to analysis of
phonetic evidence. Note that this distinction was not always made,
particularly before the development of the modern concept of the phoneme

in the mid 20th century. Some subfields of modern phonology have a

crossover with phonetics in descriptive disciplines such as psycholinguistics
and speech perception, resulting in specific areas like articulatory
phonology or laboratory phonology.
3. Vowel
The vowels of English differ considerably between dialects.
Because of this, corresponding vowels may be transcribed with various
symbols depending on the dialect under consideration. When considering
English as a whole, lexical sets are often used, each named by a word
containing the vowel or vowels in question. For example, the LOT set
consists of words which, like lot, have // in Received Pronunciation and //
in General American. The "LOT vowel" then refers to the vowel that
appears in those words in whichever dialect is being considered, or (at a
greater level of abstraction) to a diaphoneme which transcends all dialects.
A commonly used system of lexical sets, due to John C. Wells, is presented
below; for each set, the corresponding phonemes are given for RP (first
column) and General American (second column), using the notation that
will be used on this page.
E. Finding
1. What Is Intonation?
2. What Kind Of Intonation Are there Phoinolgy?
3. How to use the vowel intonation?
4. What is/are the problems in pronouncing the vowel intonation?

F. References
Burns, A. And Claire, S. (2003) Clearly Speaking Pronunciation in Action for
Teachers. National Centre for English Language Teaching Research
Macquarie University: Sydney NSW 2109. Retrieved May 12, 2014,
from:http://www.ameprc.mq.edu.au/docs/research_reports/Clearly_Speak
ing.pdf
Crystal, D. (2008) A Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics. Singapore:
Blackwell.
Derwing, T. M., & Rossiter, M. J. (2002) ESL Learners perception of their
pronunciation needs.University of Alberta: System, 30, 155166.Retrieved May 04, 2014 from:
http://kentlee7.com/zs/esl.learners.perceptions.needs.pdf
Gilakjani, A. P. (2012) Goals of English Pronunciation Intruction: International
Journal
of Language Teaching and Research. Retrieved May 07, 2014, from:
http://researchpub.org/journal/ijltr/number/vol1-no1-1.pdf
Hakim, M. A. R. (2012) An Analysis of Phonetic b, d, g, j, d, and into
English Pronunciation for Java Students. Bengkulu Indonesia:
International Journal of Humanities and Social Science. Retrieved May
07, 2014 from:
http://www.ijhssnet.com/journals/Vol_2_No_20_Special_Issue_October_
2012/23.pdf
Hancock, M. (1997) Pronunciation Games. Cambridge: Cambridge University.
Harmer, J. (2001) The Practice of Engish Language Teaching. Malaysia:
Longman.
Hornby. (1995) Oxford Learners Pocket Dictionary (New Edition). oxford:
Oxford University Press
Jones, D. (1986) The Pronunciation of English. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press
Kenworthy, J. (1987) Teaching English Pronunciation: New York: Longman
Kelly, G. (2000) How to Teach Pronunciation. Chalbury: Bluston Press
Kolokdaragh, V. R. (2009). ESL/EFL Learners Perception of their
Pronunciation Needs. California State University: fresno. Retrieved May
02, 2014 from: http://www.catesol.org/11kolokdaragh.pdf
Macaro, E. (2001) Learning Strategies in Foreign and Second Language
Classrooms. London: New York
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