SEGMENTAL AND SUPRASEGMENTAL SOUND
Ramelan(2004:22) classifies sounds into segmental and suprasegmentals . He classifies segmental, which refer to sound units arranged in a sequential order, the example above has nine segmental feature, phonetically transcribed in the following way /gud-hεvənz/. He classifies suprasegmentals, which refer to such features as stress, pitch, length intonation, and other features that always accompany the production of segmental.
(Jones,2002:11) classifies sounds into vowels and consonants. He includes diphthongs in the vowel class. He considers length, rhythm, stress and intonation as suprasegmental sounds.
a. Vowels
According to Jones(2002:12) vowel is when the tongue takes up a vowel position, a resonance chamber is formed which modified the quality of produce by the voice, and give rise to a distinct quality or timber. He defines a vowel (in normal speech) as a voiced sound in forming which the air issues in a continuous stream through the pharynx and mouth, there being a narrowing such as would cause audible friction. According to the position of the highest point of the tongue, vowels can be classified into front vowels, central vowels, and back vowels.
b. Consonants
Consonant may be classified into voice consonant and voiceless consonant. A voiced consonant is a sound produced when the vocal cords are vibrating. While, voiceless consonants is a sound made with no vibration of the vocal cord (Dale and Poem, 2005:116).
According to Baker (2005:24) consonants is a sound, voiced and voiceless, in which the air stream is obstructed through a narrowing or complete closure of the mouth passage in the other words. The sound of a consonant depends on whether or not the vocal cords vibrate, where and how it is formed.
c. Diphthongs
Jones (2002: 22) says diphthong is when the sound is made by gliding from one vowel position to another. Diphthongs are represented phonetically by sequences of two letters, the first showing the starting point and the second indicating the direction of movement. He defines a diphthong as an independent vowel-glide not containing within itself either a ‘peak’ or ‘trough’ of prominence. What is meant by vowel glide is that speech-organs start in the position of one vowel and move in the direction of another vowel. What is mean by ‘independent’ is that the glide is expressly made, and is not merely unavoidable concomitant of sounds preceding and following. Diphthongs are classified into three, namely raising/ closing diphthong, falling students and centring diphthongs.
d. Length Rhythm
The length or quality of a sound is the length of time during which it is held on continuously in a given word or phrase (Jones,2002 : 232). Rhythm is represented by means of musical notation.
The term ‘lenght’ refers to the period of time during which a sound is produced in a given utterance (Ramelan,2004:29)
e. Stress
Stress is the degree of force with which a sound or syllable is uttered (Jones,1987:245). Stress [ ‘ ], moderate stress (no symbol ),and weak stress [ , ], for example in the word ‘unimportant’ [ Λn,Im’pכ:tn ].
Ramelan(2004:25) states that ‘stress’ meant the degree of force or loudness with which a syllable is pronounced so as to give it prominence. He said there three degrees of stress can be observed in English:
1) Strong or primary stress
2) Medium or secondary stress
3) Weak stress
As a general rule it may be said that the relative stress of the words in a sentence depends on their importance. The more important a word is, the stonger its stress will be. The more important words are usually the nouns, adjectives, demonstratives and interogative pronouns, principal verbs, and adverbs.
f. Intonation
According to Ramelan(2004:32)intonation may also be called the melody of speech. The proper use of intonation is very important since it makes speech more lively and interesting to the hearer.Intonation is divided into at least two kinds namely : rising intonation and falling intonation.