CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION

This is chapter 1 of the research report entitled "A STUDY ON THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN OBSTRUENT AND RESONANT CONSONANTS IN ENGLISH SYLLABLE STRUCTURES. In this chapter, the writer divides the discussion into six sections. They are
the background of the study, identification of the problems, limitation of the
problem, formulation of the problems, objectives of the problem, and
significances of the study.

A." Background of the Study
Humans need to communicate with other to maintain their life. Since
communication is important in human life, there appears a language as a
means of communication. Language is used by human to convey, to obtain, to
ask and to give information. Language can be defined as a the unitary system
of linguistic communication which subsumes a number of mutually
intelligible varieties (Ronald Wardaugh, 1986:29) Language role as the way of
human shows its existence and attributes and provides way of communication
with the other in the community.

As everybody knows every language has its own characteristics both in
spoken and written usage. Each of the characteristics has great influence on
the interpretation of every utterance in a language. Every language also has its
own system including its grammar, vocabulary and pronunciation. For each
speaker to know the language systems are very important since it takes great
influence toward the meaning of language used. In the other words, to know

the language well, even to master the language, one must learn all the
language aspects both in spoken and written usage.
Since all language is spoken, it has a close relationship toward
language sounds. The sound of language is including the sound system and the
sound pattern of language itself. Consequently language sounds produce in
some language is varied. Therefore, pronunciation must be a great problem for
the learner to learn a new language for example the Indonesian who learns
English as a second and foreign language.

English as well as other language in the world has its own structure.
English also has its own sound system including segmental and
suprasegmental sounds. Every language including English has its own feature
on the phonotactic that is the way of arranging phonemes to form
phonological units. Phonemes as the smallest distinctive unit (of sound) of al
language, takes very important role to the variation of language meaning.
According to Ladefoged (1982: 24) phonemes are the abstract units that form
the basis writing down a language systematically and unambiguously.
The variation of language produced by each language is influenced by
some factors including the phonological and phonotactic system or rule of that
language itself. Thus since the language are spoken, there must be phonetic
and phonology.

Through phonology one can describe the system and pattern of speech
sound in a language since it is concerned with the abstract or mental aspect of
the sound in language rather than the actual physical articulation of speech
sound. According to Ramelan (1985:3) phonology is the study of phones or
speech sounds, while grammar is the study of meaningful unit of sounds and
their arrangement into longer utterances. Meanwhile phonetic is concerned
with the physical properties of speech sound, phonology deals with the
abstract or psychological level of sounds, the level of which speech sounds are
in our mind. Different elements in sound system between the native and the
foreign language may be several kinds. One of them is the existence of a given
sound in their letter, which is not found in his language.

The phonological system of a language includes various unit plus
patterns, which are used to combine the unit into larger units. The units of
phonological system including, features, segments (sounds), syllables and
words. Generally, language sound produced by human being can be divided
into two groups namely vowels and consonants. However in English there are
also diphthongs. English has 12 vowels, 9 diphthongs, and 24 consonants.
From those language sounds, it can be form a language utterance, such as
words, phrases, and sentences. Similarly, in the phonological system,
consonants and vowels correspond to make up the bigger unit called syllable.

A syllable is a unit of organization for a sequence of the speech
sounds. It is a rhythmic unit of speech, which exists to make the speech stream
easier for the human mind to process. As a phonological system in general,
syllable also has its structure. It means that syllable made up under any pattern
and restriction. Syllable is typically made up by some element including the
essential part namely nucleus and the accompanying part namely onset and coda. The nucleus is normally a vowel while the onset and coda is normally consonant or consonant cluster. Commonly, a complete syllable simply described as CVC structure that is the initial C is the onset, V is the nucleus and the final C is the coda.

In syllable, we sometimes find a number of consonant that occur together. Those consonant are usually called consonant cluster. Just as a single consonant, consonant cluster may take any position in a syllable. They usually take the onset position and the coda position. It means that consonant cluster is accompanying the nucleus that becomes the core of the syllable. From a number of consonants in English, consonants are generally divided into two groups namely obstruent and resonant consonant. As consonant in general, obstruent and resonant consonant also has it role in the syllable structure.

They may take the onset position that is preceding the nucleus (vowel or the other sonorous element). They may also take the coda position that is following the nucleus. In order to take the onset or coda position, both obstruent and resonant may appear in the form of a single or in a cluster. However it is not easy to make up consonant cluster since there must be some restriction. Based on that phenomena, the researcher is attracted to studying those phenomena deeply, especially toward the relationship between each sound that is consonant in a syllable structures.