Cardinal Vowels

Presented by
Marwa Mahmoud Abd El Fattah

Under the supervision of:

Dr Afaf Abd El Hamid
Cardinal vowels:
They are an accurate standard reference system for vowels (CV’s), devised by Daniel
Jones (1881-1967). They are accurate in the sense they locate the place of vowels
articulation and standard because they are fixed. The cardinal vowels are a reference
system for the vowels of any language. They aren't the vowels of any particular
language but general broad categories through which we can describe and analyze the
vowels of any language. Thus learning them does not mean one is learning English
vowels but learning about the rangier of vowels humans can produce using their
articulatory system and also learning a useful way of describing, classifying, and
comparing vowels.

There are two main criteria which determine 8 primary cardinal vowels:

1- The degree of height of the tongue inside the mouth producing the pair open-close.
Open is the least height of the tongue while close the highest position for the tongue.
2- The part of the tongue participating in the production of the vowel whether the front
of the tongue or the back part
A third criterion may be added which is the degree of lips rounding :rounded and
unrounded

Jones proposed a set of 8 reference vowels. Two “anchor points” - the highest, frontest
possible vowel (Cardinal Vowel 1) and the lowest, backest possible vowel Cardinal
Vowel 5). the front of the tongue is raised as close as possible to the palate without
friction being produced for the cardinal vowels [i] No 1, and the whole of the tongue is
as low as possible in the mouth with slight raising for the back for the cardinal vowel
[ ] cardinal no. 5. The lowering of the tongue was halted at 3 points the space seems to
be equidistant between each vowel and the following. On the other axis the same
happened three auditory equi-distant points were established from the lowest to the
highest position.

The front series [ ] and [ ] are pronounced with spread or open lips,
whereas he remaining three members of back series have different degrees of lips
rounding (they are rounded).
A set of Secondary Cardinal Vowels with the same tongue positions but opposite values
of lip rounding are also proposed. This secondary series can be obtained by reversing the
lip position e.g. lip rounding applied to [i] or lip spreading applied to [u].
Primary description secondar IPA description
IPA y
cardina
l 9 [y] close front rounded

1 [i] close front unrounded vowel 10 [ø] close-mid front rounded

2 [e] close-mid front unrounded11 [œ] open-mid front rounded

3 [ɛ] open-mid front unrounded12 [ɶ] open front rounded

4 [a] open front unrounded vowel 13 [ɒ] open back rounded

5 [ɑ] open back unrounded vowel 14 [ʌ] open-mid back

6 [ɔ] open-mid back rounded15 [ɤ] close-mid back

7 [o] close-mid back rounded16 [ɯ] close back unrounded

8 [u] close back rounded vowel 17 [ɨ] Close central

18 [ʉ] Close central rounded

Using the Cardinal Vowel system

The primary and secondary cardinal vowel categories provide a suitable framework for
comparison for many languages .This scale is very useful because: a) the vowel qualities
are unrelated to particular values in a certain language, b)the set is recorded so that
reference may be always made to a standard invariable scale. (Gimson 1962) (E.g. a
vowel close to CV 1; a vowel a little lower and more retracted than CV 2, a vowel
halfway between CV 8 and CV 9, etc.).
A visual representation of these vowel relationships is given on a chart which is based
on the cardinal vowels tongue positions. The internal triangle corresponding to the
region of central or [ ] type vowel sounds is made by dividing the top line into three
approximately equal sections and drawing parallel line to the sides.

Criticism
Some criticism was directed to this notion of cardinal vowels as to the fact of
equidistance being not accurate enough, yet it is a remarkable fact that auditory
judgments as to vowel relationships made by Daniel Jones earlier have been largely
supported by recent acoustic analysis. In fact a chart based on acoustic analysis of
cardinal vowels qualities corresponds very well with traditional cardinal vowel figure.
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