CHAPTER II THEORETICAL APPROACH AND FRAMEWORK

This is the theoretical approach of the research entitled " A Comparative Study between Mandarin and English Phonological System.

CHAPTER II
THEORETICAL APPROACH AND FRAMEWORK

A. Theoretical Approach
Based on the reason for choosing the subject, there are many points of problems. To make the research focus, the researcher takes phonological aspect as the basic knowledge background; or in other words, the researcher uses phonological approach to analyze some problems in this research paper. It is understood that phone is speech sound which is symbolized by [ ], and then phonetics is the study of the sounds of human speech. It is concerned with the actual properties of speech sounds (phones), and their production, audition and perception, as opposed to phonology, which is the study of sound systems and abstract sound units (such as phonemes and distinctive features). Phonetics deals with the sounds themselves rather than the contexts in which they are used in languages (“Segments”, 2007: par.6).

Shortly, phonetics is the study of speech sound as sounds in any human language; and phonology is the study of sound system or sound pattern. Then, what is phoneme? Phoneme is the theoretical representation of a sound. It is a sound of a language as represented (or imagined) without reference to its position in a word or phrase (“Phoneme”, 2007: par.1). In short, phoneme is stock of sounds units in each human language. It is symbolized by / /.

It is known that English and Mandarin are different in language family; English is from Indo-German family and Mandarin is from Sino-Tibetan family language. Because the research compares two languages which are in different family in language, the researcher uses contrastive approach. According to Poedjosoedarmo (unpublished: 49), contrastive analysis is a research which compares two languages by opposing the language element of two languages. The researcher analyzes the phonological system, so that this research is done by analyzing the consonant, vowel, and also suprasegmental phoneme.
According to Mahsun (2005: 240-245) There are some steps to do the research:
1. To compare all of the phenomena which can be applied in each category
In this step, there are two activities which will be done; writing (coding), giving commentary to the writing by comparing it.
2. To integrate the category and the feature
The researcher compares the phenomena which appear with the characteristic of the data which are produced in the first step.
3. To limit the scope of the theory
The researcher must be able to limit some theories which are formed in two steps above based on the relevance and then put it into a category and the wider characteristic.
4. To write the theory
The researcher must hold a seminar to discuss the theory before the researcher writes it and publishes it.
From the explanation above, it is known that this analysis will find a cyclic relation between collecting data and analyzing data.


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