Vowels

Vowel Review
• Vowel articulations can be characterized along four
dimensions:
1.Height (of tongue body)
• high, mid, low
2.Front-back (of tongue body)
• front, central, back
3.Roundedness (of lips)
• rounded vs. unrounded
4.“Tenseness”
• tense/lax
The vowel space
 Other Vowel Features
• Rounding:
• are pronounced with rounded lips
• the other English vowels are not
• “Tenseness”
• a “tense” vowel is closer to the edge of the vowel space
• a “lax” vowel is closer to the center
• Ex: [i] is tense, is not.
• Nasalisation
•Rotacization
CARDINAL VOWELS
Cardinal vowels
• Cardinal vowels are a set of reference vowels used by
phoneticians in describing the sounds of languages. For
instance, the vowel of the English word "feet" can be
described with reference to cardinal vowel 1, [i], which is the
cardinal vowel closest to it.
• A cardinal vowel is a vowel sound produced when
the tongue is in an extreme position, either front or back, high
or low.
• The current system was systematised by Daniel Jones in the
early 20th century
Cardinal vowels
• Three of the cardinal vowels—[i], [ɑ] and [u]—have articulatory
definitions. The vowel [i] is produced with the tongue as far forward
and as high in the mouth as is possible (without producing friction),
with spread lips.
• The vowel [u] is produced with the tongue as far back and as high in
the mouth as is possible, with protruded lips. This sound can be
approximated by adopting the posture to whistle a very low note,
or to blow out a candle.
• And [ɑ] is produced with the tongue as low and as far back in the
mouth as possible.
• The other vowels are 'auditorily equidistant' between these three
'corner vowels', at four degrees of aperture or 'height': close (high
tongue position), close-mid, open-mid, and open (low tongue
position).
X-rays of Daniel Jones' [i, u, a,
ɑ]
• The Cardinal Vowels are not the vowels of any language;
they are reference vowels
• Central vowels only appear in unstressed syllables in
English.
• „about‟ ə
• „roses‟ ᵼ
• A problem with the cardinal vowel system is that there has been a
great deal of confusion over whether vowels are being described in
terms of tongue height or in terms of acoustic properties.
• But diagrams such as in slide 9 does not really specify the position of
the highest point of the tongue. The next Figure shows the relative
positions of the highest point of the tongue in a set of cardinal vowels.
These positions form an outline very different from that in Slide 9
http://www.phonetics.ucla.edu/course/chapter9/cardinal/secondaryvow
els/secondary.html
nasal vowels
• A nasal vowel is a vowel that is produced with a lowering of
the velum so that air escapes both through nose as well as
the mouth. By contrast, oral vowels are ordinary vowels without this
nasalisation.
• In most languages, vowels that are adjacent to nasal consonants are
produced partially or fully with a lowered velum in a natural process
of assimilation and are therefore technically nasal, though few
speakers would notice. This is the case in English: vowels preceding
nasal consonants are nasalized, but there is no phonemic distinction
between nasal and oral vowels.
• In French and Portuguese, by contrast, nasal vowels are phonemes
distinct from oral vowels, since words that differ mainly in the nasal
or oral quality of a vowel exist. For example, the French
words beau/bo/ "beautiful" and bon /bõ/ "good" differ only in that
the former is oral and the latter is nasal. (To be more precise, the
vowel in bon is slightly more open, leading many dictionaries to
transcribe it as /ɔ̃/.)