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Tài liệu An investigation into common errors in pronouncing non-continuant consonants made by the second year english-majored students at cantho university

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CAN THO UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF SOCIAL SCIENCES AND HUMANITIES ENGLISH DEPARTMENT AN INVESTIGATION INTO COMMON ERRORS IN PRONOUNCING NON-CONTINUANT CONSONANTS MADE BY THE SECOND YEAR ENGLISH-MAJORED STUDENTS AT CANTHO UNIVERSITY B.A. Thesis Researcher:Nguyễn Thị Bích Trâm Supervisor: Nguyễn Hồng Quí, M.A. Student Code: 7107013 Class: NN1054A3 Course: 36 Can Tho, May 2014 DECLARATION The research entitled “An investigation into common errors in pronouncing non-continuant consonants made by the second-year English majored students at Can Tho University” was conducted under the supervision of Dr. Nguyen Hong Qui, an educational consultant at the English Department, Can Tho University. I hereby declare that this thesis is my own original work and effort. Where other sources that I have used and quoted, they have been acknowledged and listed in the references. I certify that this study has not been submitted anywhere for any degree. Can Tho, May 2014 Nguyễn Thị Bích Trâm i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The current study has been completed by the helps and support from a lot of individuals. I would like to express my deep appreciation to all of them. First and foremost, I would like to give my deepest gratitude to my supervisor – Mr. Nguyen Hong Qui- for his valuable support and constructive suggestions during the planning and development of this research work. During the period of writing the thesis, he enthusiastically devoted his precious time to read and then give me a lot of useful critiques and patient guidance to improve my research paper. This study would not be successfully complete without his impressive contribution. In addition, I would like to express my very special thanks for the contribution in the interview, and recoding completion of all the second-year English-majored students at Can Tho University. It is obvious that my thesis would not be a reality if lacking their useful data. Moreover, I wish to thank the staff in Learning Resource Center for enabling me to borrow related books for my thesis. Besides that, I also acknowledge to all of the teachers who have raised me up with their knowledge and to all the respectful researchers who have provided me a lot of practical materials. Finally, I am especially grateful for the spirited encouragement coming from all my parents, my siblings, and my friends; who always tried their best to facilitate my research work, gave me helpful ideas and empowered me to face my research’s challenges. ii ABSTRACT The purpose of this research is to examine the most problematic non-continuant consonants encountered by the second-year English majored students at Can Tho University as well as uncover the factors that influence the accurate pronunciation of the students. The data of the students were gathered by using the tape recorder for recording the students’ actual speech and the questionnaire for collecting the students’ attitude and opinions on possible causes of inaccurate pronunciation. The findings from the participants’ recordings show that they have tendencies in deletion or substitution non-continuant consonants foreign with other familiar ones in term of articulation and position variants. The data collated from the questionnaire reveal eight main reasons, which negatively and strongly affect the quality of the students’ intelligible pronunciation. The findings then are discussed to give some practical suggestions and ideas for further research in order to improve the problems. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page DECLARATION ......................................................................................................................... i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ....................................................................................................... ii ABSTRACT................................................................................................................................ iii TABLE OF CONTENTS .......................................................................................................... iv LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES ........................................................................................ vi CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................. 1 1.1. Rationale ....................................................................................................................... 1 1.2. The research aims ......................................................................................................... 2 1.3. Research Questions: ..................................................................................................... 3 1.4. Research Hypotheses .................................................................................................... 3 1.5. The significances of the study ...................................................................................... 3 1.6. Organization of the thesis ............................................................................................. 4 CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW ................................................................................. 5 2.1. Pronunciation ................................................................................................................ 5 2.1.1. Definition ................................................................................................................ 5 2.1.2. Pronunciation in English ........................................................................................ 5 2.1.3. Consonant sounds ................................................................................................... 7 2.1.4. Non-continuant sounds in English .......................................................................... 8 2.1.4.1. Stop consonants or plosives .............................................................................. 9 2.1.4.2. Nasals.............................................................................................................. 11 2.1.4.3. Affricates ........................................................................................................ 12 2.1.4.4. The variations of non-continuant consonants ................................................. 12 2.1.4.4.1. The variations of the plosives ................................................................... 12 2.1.4.4.2. Incomplete plosion: Stop + Stop or Stop + Affricate ............................... 13 2.1.4.4.3. Nasal plosion: Stop + Nasal...................................................................... 14 2.1.4.4.4. Lateral plosion: Stop + Lateral ................................................................. 14 2.1.4.5. The consonant clusters containing the stops, the nasals or the affricate ........ 14 2.2. Comparison between Vietnamese and English non-continuant consonants .............. 15 2.3. English non-continuant consonant errors made by Vietnamese learners ................... 20 2.4. Factors affecting to learning pronunciation ................................................................ 26 2.4.1. The native language .............................................................................................. 26 2.4.2. Age........................................................................................................................ 27 iv 2.4.3. Aptitude ................................................................................................................ 27 2.4.4. The amount of exposure ....................................................................................... 28 2.4.5. Motivation and attitude ......................................................................................... 29 2.4.6. Personality ............................................................................................................ 30 2.4.7. Learning strategies ................................................................................................ 31 CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY .......................................................................................... 33 3.1. Participants ................................................................................................................. 33 3.2. Instruments ................................................................................................................. 33 3.3. Procedures .................................................................................................................. 35 CHAPTER 4: RESULTS ......................................................................................................... 36 4.1. Errors from the interview ........................................................................................... 36 4.1.1. Initial and medial single consonant ...................................................................... 37 4.1.2. Final single consonant .......................................................................................... 39 4.1.2.1. Errors by omission .......................................................................................... 40 4.1.2.2. Errors by substitution...................................................................................... 41 4.1.3. Consonant Cluster................................................................................................. 43 4.2. The results from the questionnaire ............................................................................. 46 4.3. Discussions and suggestions ....................................................................................... 52 4.3.1. Discussions ........................................................................................................... 52 4.3.2. Suggestions ........................................................................................................... 54 4.3.2.1. Suggestions for students ................................................................................. 54 4.3.2.2. Suggestions for teachers ................................................................................. 56 CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSIONS .............................................................................................. 58 5.1. Summary of key findings ........................................................................................... 58 5.2. Limitations .................................................................................................................. 59 5.3. Recommendations for further research ....................................................................... 59 REFERENCES ......................................................................................................................... 61 APPENDICES ........................................................................................................................... 66 APPENDIX A...................................................................................................................... 66 APPENDIX B ...................................................................................................................... 67 v LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES LIST OF TABLES Page Table 2.2: Classification of English consonants ........................................................ 9 Table 2.3: The plosive consonants ........................................................................... 10 Table 2.4: Classification of non-continuant consonant in English .......................... 16 Table 2.5: Classification of Vietnamese non-continuant consonants…….…….…16 Table 2.6: Vietnamese ending consonants ................................................................ 18 Table 4.1: Classification of final consonant errors……………………………… ..40 Table 4.2: The length of English learning ... ………………….................................47 Table 4.3: Students’ attitude toward English pronunciation……………………….48 Table 4.4: Results from the questionnaire ................................................................ 48 LIST OF FIGURES Figure 2.1: Various features of English in pronunciation ........................................... 6 Figure 4.1: Errors from the wordlist ......................................................................... 37 Figure 4.2: Errors from the passage ......................................................................... 37 Figure 4.3: Errors of non-continuant consonants . .................................................... 39 vi CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION 1.1. Rationale From 1980s, the communicative approach has been considered as the most effective method that could satisfy the individuals’ goal in learning English as a second language (L2), when it has been changed its sake from “an emphasis on form into an emphasis on communication” (Cook, 2003). Consequently, communicative competence has attracted more attention in language classrooms. From this point, many promising teaching and learning techniques were adapted to accomplish the aim of being good at foreign language communicative competence. In order to qualify in communication, the intelligibility of pronunciation is truly a crucial element of this competence that students have to fulfill (Morley, 1991, as cited in Celce-Murcia, Brinton, & Goodwin, 1996). Nonetheless, pronunciation is regarded as one of the most difficult areas to acquire by English non-native teachers and learners. Therefore, errors in pronunciation are unavoidable for most English learners. In the Mekong Delta, most students could not interact with others in English, although they have learned English for years, since English is a core subject taught in public high schools from the grade six. The existence of this problem is due to traditional teaching methods still maintained in the English classroom. As a result, communicative skills are obviously ignored as well as pronunciation skills. This causes a serious problem that Vietnamese learners of English in higher proficiency level acquire pronunciation in difficulties. Like others, students at Can Tho University (CTU), majoring in English still have their own challenges in learning pronunciation. In fact, many English teachers share that there are a certain number of students, whose pronunciation is too weak to express their content of the message effectively. Besides that, they suppose that this leads to greater negative impacts on quality in speaking, listening, and reading skills. Like Levelt (1989), he emphasizes that the preparation of the sound patterns of the words plays an extremely important position in controlling L2 oral capacity (as cited in Carter & 1 Nunan, 2001). In listening aspects, the phonological proficiency of the L2 is considered as a serious base in understanding spoken language. (Magiste, 1985, as cited in Carter & Nunan, 2001). Frankly, the students themselves also acknowledge that their pronunciation is one of the major reasons leading to misunderstand teachers’ instructions, spoken language in tape recorders in listening tasks. Above all, it is pronunciation that is the biggest barrier for them to communicate in English environment. Realizing the learning pronunciation difficulties and concern that the students at Can Tho University (CTU) have been struggling in the academic years, the researcher determines that it is very necessary to conduct the current study to investigate pronunciation problems and its possible causes. From practical findings, the researchers could suggest helpful solutions for both teachers and learners to improve English pronunciation teaching and learning process. Nevertheless, due to limitation of time and the diversification of pronunciation errors relating to consonants, vowels, word or sentence stress, intonation... the researcher decided to underscore just only on consonant errors, namely errors of non-continuant consonant sounds, made by the second year students majoring in English. Another reason for this choice is that non-continuant consonant sounds are very important in conveying meaning of speech and they seem to be very complicated to being accurate by Vietnamese learners. This study will focus on non-continuant consonants in British English sounds. 1.2. The research aims The study would like to fulfill the following purposes. - The research is implemented with the purpose of determining common noncontinuant consonant errors leading to inaccurate pronunciation of the second-year English majored students at Can Tho University. - Basing on the data analysis, the study will figure out the current causes of the problems and learning pronunciation strategies that should be employed. 2 - The study definitely puts forward appropriate solutions to solve the problems for both teachers and learners in their teaching and learning consonant pronunciation. 1.3. Research Questions This study is conducted to seek answers to the following questions: 1. What are the most common non-continuant consonant errors that the second year English-majored students in the Department of Social Sciences and Humanities usually encounter? 2. What are possible causes of pronunciation problem? 3. What are some essential strategies that can be employed by teachers and learners to overcome the problems? 1.4. Research Hypotheses The hypotheses being tested here are: - The students get more difficult to pronounce non-continuant consonants that are foreign from Vietnamese consonants in terms of articulation and distribution variants. - Students themselves cannot realize the seriousness of errors while speaking and they still ignore the importance of non-continuant consonants in English sounds. Consequently, the students have inefficient learning strategies in practicing pronunciation. 1.5. The significances of the study This study is carried out with the hope that can help to point out the noncontinuant consonant errors in pronunciation of the English-majored sophomore and possible causes leading to the problem. Especially, the results of this study will get more attention and be beneficial for both English teachers and students in the future. Hopefully, it can help teachers to further their understanding of their student’s obstacles so that they will adapt promising teaching methods to solve the difficulty and motivate their student’s proficiency in consonant pronunciation. On 3 the other hand, the students themselves are also aware of their problem to structure helpful pronunciation learning strategies to overcome the challenges. In addition, this research will be a useful foundation material for future researchers who would like to conduct further research concerning pronunciation. 1.6. Organization of the thesis The thesis consists of five chapters: Chapter I: Introduction, introducing the rationale, the objectives, the research questions, the hypothesis, the significances, and the organization of the research paper. Chapter II: Literature Review, giving a general view of literature relating to non-continuant consonant sounds and the findings of previous studies. Chapter III: Methodology, showing a detail description of subjects, instruments, and steps in collecting and analyzing data. Chapter IV: Results, presenting the results from synthetic work, figures out the errors and then research findings are discussed to find solutions for the problem. Chapter V: Conclusion will conclude the research and presents current limitations of the study. In addition, it is recommendations that are suggested for further research, basing on the findings. 4 CHAPTER 2 LITERATURE REVIEW This chapter will generally review several previous theories on the subject. This section explains various aspects related to the topic. Therefore, it will start with a brief description of pronunciation, non-continuant consonants as well as the previous studies relating to non-continuant consonant errors findings and the sources of difficulty in order to support more to the current thesis. 2.1. Pronunciation 2.1.1. Definition When talking about pronunciation, there are a great number of definitions dealing with what pronunciation means In the simplest way, pronunciation refers to the way in which a language or a particular sound is pronounced or how a word or sound is produced (Cambridge Advance Learner’s Dictionary, 2008). Sound plays an extremely important role in life. Dalton and Seidhofer (1995) confirm there are the two main significant roles of pronunciation or sound. First of all, sound is significant because it is the code of a particular language, this feature can make a language distinctive from others. In this sense, pronunciation is known as the production and perception of speech sounds. Second, sound is important because it stands for speech act’s reference used as a tool to achieve meaning in contexts of language use. Carter and Nunan (2001) also have the same statement about the roles of pronunciation. Pronunciation means the production and perception of the significant sounds serving for accomplishing meaning in language use. 2.1.2. Pronunciation in English English pronunciation is unpredictable because of its complex features and its variation. According to linguists, pronunciation is sub-divided into two main features: segmental and supra-segmental. Moreover, each kind of features consists of many elements. It is clear that phonemes (consonants and vowels) are referred as 5 segmental feature, while linking, intonation and stress are all belonged to suprasegment one. These aspects build up the system of pronunciation in English. Figure 2.1: Various features of English in pronunciation (adapted from Gilakjani, 2012) The emphasis of the communicative approach is that help learners can use English in practice. In other words, the learners can communicate or interact with others after acquiring English. Therefore, getting fluency and accuracy in speaking skills is paid more attention and pronunciation, of course, is also another important element that all teachers and learners have to fulfill to ensure that English can be used in daily life. However, it seems that having a native-like pronunciation as British or American is an unrealistic goal with the exception of very few highly gifted and motivated individuals; therefore, intelligible or acceptable pronunciation is more emphasized (Celce-Murcia, et al., 1996). However, in fact, many linguists show that the aspects of pronunciation are acquired subconsciously, so it becomes a big barrier for those whose English is not their mother tongue. As a result, teachers in the English classroom feel that getting a good pronunciation is overly difficult to accomplish. Clearly, learners themselves also have many troubles in mastering English. That is the reason why it is believed 6 that pronunciation in English is one of the most difficult tasks to achieve due to its complexity and variations (Carrasquillo, 1994). This paper concerns only non-continuant consonant errors, so the next section will depict more deeply about the non-continuant consonants and errors in producing non- continuant consonants in British English made by Vietnamese learners. 2.1.3. Consonant sounds Firstly, it is crucial to seek answers to the question what consonant means. In a common way, it is understood that consonant is a segmental sound that is produced with the partial or complete obstruction of the air stream in the vocal tract. (Nguyen, 2009). In order to pronounce English consonants, an English speaker has to use the air stream from the lungs, if it is completely blocked, consonant stops or affricates are produced (stops: /p/, /b/, /t/, /d/, /k/, /g/; affricates: /tʃ/, ʤ/); if it is partially blocked we can pronounce a lateral /l/ or with an audible fiction, fricatives (/f/, /v/, /θ/, /ð/, /s/, /z/, /ʃ/, /ʒ/) are formed. With nasal consonants /m/, /n/, /ŋ/, the air stream is blocked in the oral cavity, but allowed to escape through the nose (Nguyen, 2009). English has 24 consonants (consisting of 2 semi-vowels) (Roach, 2002) and they are classified based on the three cardinal dimensions: the degree of vocal cord vibration, the place of articulation and the manner of articulation. (Celce-Murcia, et al., 1996; Roach, 2002). All of these dimensions can be expounded that: - The degree of vocal cord vibration: that shows whether the sounds are uttered with the vibration of vocal tract or not. - Place of articulation: that is, where in the vocal tract, the obstruction of the consonants occurs. - Manner of articulation: that is a further look into how the consonants are articulated by the interaction among various speech organs. Besides the way to describe the sounds as mentioned above, phonetic features are other characteristics that can be used in order to distinguish one sound with 7 another. When using the phonetic features, learners can recognize not only the description of sounds but also the sounds’ distinction. There are many phonetic features used to describe the consonant sounds such as sonorant, consonantal, continent, strident, nasal, lateral, labial, anterior, and coronal. Each sound described is a combination of various phonetic features. For example [tʃ] is [continuant, -voiced, +coronal, +anterior]. In this paper, the researcher just pays most attention to the consonant sounds containing the feature [-continuant] or we can call non-continuant consonant sounds in English. In order to go insights in the non-continuant sounds, the next section will present these sounds in a detailed way with the hope that everything will be clear to all readers. 2.1.4. Non-continuant sounds in English From the term of the manner of articulation, continuant is one of the features used as a criterion to classify and distinguish deeply the differences between sounds of a language. According to phonological features, a continuant is a sound during whose production the air stream is not blocked in the oral cavity. In contrast, a non-continuant sound refers as a sound that is uttered with an obstruction in the vocal tract before sounds are released. From this view, the noncontinuant sounds include stops (oral and nasal) and affricates (Roach, 2002). However, there are still some researchers, who suppose that nasal ones do not belong to this category. According to Roach (2002), sounds that are produced in which the soft palate is raised to prevent the airstream from escaping through the mouth by forming the complete closure at the same time, then the air is released out through the nose is what used to describe nasals. Similarly, Avery and Ehlrich (1998) also defined that “Nasal sounds are made with the air passing through the nose and the air is blocked in the mouth in the same way as it is for stop consonants”. Thus, Nguyen (2009) confirms that nasals are non-continuant oral stops. Basing on these reliable statements, it can be concluded that nasals are considered as sounds belonging to the non-continuant class. Therefore, English has eleven non-continuant sounds in terms of the plosives /p, b, t, d, k, g/, the nasals 8 /m, n, ŋ/ and the affricates /tʃ, dʒ/. (Table 3: Phonetic features of English consonant, Nguyen, 2012). English has 24 consonant sounds, while the non-continuant ones make up 11 namely the plosives, nasals and affricates. To have a detailed view about the English consonant, as well as the non-continuant consonants and the way in which they are classified, the table presenting the English consonant classification should be included following (adapted from Roach, 2002). Table 2.2: Classification of English consonants Manner of articulation Stop voiceless voiced Fricative voiceless voiced Affricate voiceless voiced Nasal voiced Liquid voiced Glide voiced Place of articulation Bilabial Labiodentals Dental p b Alveolar Palatal t d f v θ ð s z Velar Glottal k g ʃ ʒ h tʃ dʒ m ŋ n l w r j The next section will present a detailed description of stops, nasals and affricates in which how they are formed and their possible variations in the speech. The following information is entirely consulted from many kinds of materials relating to English language, phonetics and phonology (Nguyen, 2009; Nguyen, 2012; Roach, 2002). 2.1.4.1. Stop consonants or plosives A plosive is a consonant produced with the involvement of the three following stages: 9 - The first stage is called as the closing phase. In this phase, two articulators will move against each other to form the stricture for the plosives and prevent the air stream to escape from the vocal tract; - Then, the air hold in the vocal tract is compressed to create the complete obstruction; this stage may be accompanied by voice or devoice. These phenomena are all in the compression or hold stage. - The release or explosion stage is structured when the air is allowed to escape from the vocal tract after the obstruction. If the sounds are voiced, the vibration will continue at this stage and vice versa. Under the pressure of the previous stage, the voiceless sounds will be released suddenly with a puff of air audible- it is known as aspiration; while the voiced ones are not aspirated. There are only six stop consonants which are in the same manner of articulation, but are different in places of articulation namely bilabial plosives /p, b/, alveolar plosives /t, d/, and velar plosives /k, g/ Each pair above contains a voiceless consonant and a voiced one. The table below will present generally the plosives in both places of articulation and voicing. Table 2.3: The plosive consonants Voiceless Voiced Bilabial Alveolar Velar p T k b d g Bilabial plosives /p, b/: are produced when the two lips suddenly open with an outward explosion of air after the air is blocked in the oral cavity by firming lips. If the sound is pronounced without the vocal cords’ vibration, the voiceless bilabial stop /p/ is formed. In contrast, the voiced bilabial stop /d/ is formed because of the vibration of the vocal cords. Alveolar plosives /t, d/: instead of the lips, the air is stopped by holding the tongue. When the tip of the tongue moves against the alveolar ridge. A sudden 10 removal of the tongue pronounces /t/ without the vocal cords vibrating and /t/ is a voiceless alveolar stop and vice versa, /d/ is a voiced alveolar stop. Velar plosives /k, g/: This pair is constructed when the back of the tongue is raised and against the velum, which allows the air to escape from the mouth instead of the nose. The vocal cords do not vibrate to create /k/ and /g/ is produced with the vibration of the vocal cords. All the plosives can occur in the beginning of a word (initial position), in medial sounds (medial position), and at the end of a word (final position). 2.1.4.2. Nasals One of the most characteristic used for distinguishing the nasals from the others is that the air stream escapes from the nose. To pronounce the nasals, the airstream must be allowed to escape through the nasal cavity instead of the oral one as the others. To produce nasal consonants, the soft palate must be lower to permit the air released through the nasal. English has only three nasal consonants: /m, n, ŋ/ known as the bilabial nasal, alveolar nasal, and the velar nasal respectively. They are all voicing consonants. Bilabial nasal: /m/ is constructed when the lips are firmly kept together, while the soft palate is lower in order to permit the air escape through the nose. Alveolar nasal: To produce /n/, the tip of the tongue moves against the velar ridge to prevent the air releasing from the mouth. Meanwhile, the end of the soft palate is also lowed to push the air passing out the nasal cavity. Velar nasal: /ŋ/ is formed when the back part of the soft palate is pressed against the soft palate, and then the air is definitely escaped through the nose on the condition that the position of the soft palate is lower /m, n/ occur rather freely in words, while /ŋ/ seem to be restricted than the others. This sound never occurs in initial position. In medial and final position, it appears quite frequently. However, it is very different to the others that the distribution of /ŋ/ at the end of the word only occurs after a vowel that is not a long or diphthong one. 11 2.1.4.3. Affricates The affricates are complex consonants for almost foreign learners because they are not common in many languages. Additionally, the manner in producing each of them also requires a lot of complexity, because every affricate begins as a stop and almost instantaneous transition to a fricative with the same place of articulation. /tʃ/ and /dʒ/ are post-alveolar affricates or alveolar-palatal affricates and this is a pair of voiceless and voiced consonants respectively. The former is made up of the voiceless alveolar stop and followed by the voiceless palatal fricative, and the latter is the combination of the voiced counterparts. Voiceless post-alveolar affricate /tʃ/: is pronounced by the pressing of the tip of the tongue against the back of the tooth ridge while the air is obstructed as producing the sound /t/. Then the air is immediately released from the mouth when the tip of the tongue lowers from the tooth ridge after its backward moving to the hard palate to allow the air escaping /ʃ/. To produce this sound, the vocal cords do not vibrate during its pronunciation. Voiced post-alveolar affricate /dʒ/: the tip of the tongue also presses against the back of the alveolar ridge and the air is completely stopped at several points. The sound is formed in which the air is allowed to release from the mouth and the tip of the tongue moving more backward to the hard palate is lowered from the roof of the mouth to create a narrow opening. During the stage of producing this sound, the vibration of the vocal tracts also happens. The affricates’ distribution is also varied as the stops; they can appear in syllable-initial, syllable-medial and syllable-final positions of words. 2.1.4.4. The variations of non-continuant consonants 2.1.4.4.1. The variations of the plosives As mentioned above, the plosives have varied environments in a word such as syllable-initial, syllable-medial, and syllable-final positions. Depending on the position, the way in which we pronounce a plosive can change a lot. 12 Initial position: All /p, t, k/ and /b, d, g/ are produced silently in the stage of closure. During the compression stage, the plosives /p, t, k/ and /b, d, g/ are pronounced with no voice and voice respectively. However, when the voiceless plosives /p, t, k/ are released out of the mouth in the explosion stage, usually they are accompanied with a stronger puff of air that are audible. This phenomenon is known as “aspiration”. Meanwhile, the aspiration never occurs when pronouncing the others /b, d, g/. The aspiration is the most noticeable and important difference between the voiceless plosives and the others when they are in the initial position of a word. For example, to pronounce the following words: ten, pen, king as native speakers of English, we must be aspirated as [then], [phen], [khiŋ]…respectively. However, when /s/ precede the sounds /p, t, k/ at the beginning of words, the aspirated voiceless stops will be replaced by the unreleased ones [po, to, ko]. For example, the words span, scan, sting are produced as [spoæn], [skoæn], and [stoiŋ]. Medial position: In this position, the pronunciation of these sounds depends strongly on the syllables preceding or following them. In other words, the voiceless plosives are only aspirated when they are in stressed syllables as in words oppose [əˈphəʊz], accompany [əˈkhʌm.pə.ni]… In contrast, there is a replacement of the unreleased [po, to, ko] found in weak syllables, for example, taper [ˈteɪ.poər], matter [ˈmæto.ə r], poker [ˈpəʊ.koər]. Final position: At the end of words, the voiced plosives are produced with a little voicing and there, obviously, are not voicing to the voiceless stop consonants. Differently, the plosion of these sounds at the end of the words is very weak, but the voiceless plosives can be aspirated in several contexts (Roach, 2002). Following is the presentation of some variations of the stops or plosives in within a word or in connected speech. 2.1.4.4.2. Incomplete plosion: Stop + Stop or Stop + Affricate When a stop is followed by another, as in [ˈbʊk.keɪs] or [kept], the closure of the speech organs is still made for the second stop, while the closure for the first one is 13
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