Name : Mohammad Rizki Utomo

NIM : 1817404070

Class : 5 TBI B

Phonology

A. Stress

In English, four phonetic variables appear most significant as indicators of stress:

intensity, pitch variation, vowel quality and vowel duration (see Table B6.1).

1. Intensity
in physiological terms is the greater breath effort and muscular energy associated with
stressed syllables. It’s closely related to what is perceived by the listener as loudness.
2. Pitch variation
appears to be, as far as English is concerned, the most important single factor in
determining stress. In English, higher pitch tends to be associated with stronger stress.
We shall come back to discuss pitch and intonation in more detail in Section B7.
3. Vowel quality
i.e. whether a vowel is central or peripheral (see Figure A6.15, Section A6), also
determines stress. Take the English vowels in the noun present /Bprezent/ as opposed to
the verb (to) present /preBzent/. The stressed syllables contain the peripheral vowel
dress /e/, whereas the unstressed syllables have a central vowel /e/. (Note that in the first
word it is possible for the vowel in the unstressed syllable to be further reduced to a
syllabic consonant. in the second word some speakers may use another non-peripheral
vowel, kit.) Diphthongs have a less clearly discernible glide.

B. Pitch

Pitch refers to human perception, i.e. whether one perceives sounds as ‘high’ or ‘low’. The
most important physical factor in determining pitch is the frequency (i.e. speed of vibration) of
the vocal folds; in general terms, the higher the frequency, the higher the perceived pitch, and
vice versa.

Many students find it difficult to judge whether pitch is rising or falling; the following simple
analogy may help. The engine of a motor car when ‘revving up’ to start produces a series of
rising pitches. When the car is cruising on the open road, the engine pitch is more or less level.
On coming to a halt, the engine stops with a rapid fall in pitch.
 C. Tone

Pitch variation has an important role to play in communication, supplying meaning additional to that
conveyed by the segmental phonemes. We can distinguish two significant ways in which pitch functions,
namely (1) (lexical) tone and (2) intonation. In many languages, it is possible to use pitch differences to
distinguish the dictionary meaning of words. This function of pitch is known as tone and such languages
are termed tone languages. Tone languages may make use of different numbers of pitch levels. Two
levels (high and low) or three (high, mid and low) are common.

Languages like these, which use a tone system of two or three significant pitch levels, are
called register tone languages. In the Far East, contour tone languages are more common. These
chiefly employ falling and rising pitches; examples are to be found in the languages of China,
including the most widely spoken variety, Mandarin Chinese.

D. Intonation

Most European languages do not use pitch to indicate dictionary meaning. For instance, you can say
the English word yes on a number of different pitch patterns: Yet it continues to mean yes and can’t be
made to mean anything else. Moreover, we can’t distinguish homophones, such as English hare, hair;
French foi, foie, fois ‘faith, liver, time’; or German Rat, Rad ‘advice, wheel’ by means of pitch. In English
(and the vast majority of European languages), pitch variation is confined to intonation. Intonation tunes
operate over an extent greater than a single word, usually over complete clauses or sentences.
Intonation is crucial to human communication, supplying types of meaning additional to what is supplied
by the words themselves. Think how often you hear people come out with statements like: ‘It wasn’t so
much what he said – it was more the way he said it.’

Intonation works differently in different languages. One of the first things one notices about a
French person speaking English is that the intonation sounds very characteristically French (and
therefore non-English). A classic TV series, The Muppet Show, revived in a film version in 2012, features
a comic character, the ‘Swedish cook’, where the whole joke is based on stereotypical mock-Swedish
intonation. Furthermore, each accent of a language has its own particular intonation. If you are at all
familiar with the British Isles, you’ll probably already be aware that accents such as Welsh English,
Birmingham English, Geordie (north-east) and Irish English all have different and easily recognisable
types of intonation. Worldwide, we find the same thing over and over again. To give just two examples:
many people are aware that the English of the southern states of the USA differs strikingly from General
American in terms of intonation; less well known perhaps is that in New Zealand English there are
distinct intonation differences between some South Island varieties.