Phonetics
vowels
vowels• free flow of air there is no blocking or constriction of air
flow• Vowels are extremely important as most of the time
syllable is built around a vowel• Languages vary as to the number of vowels in their
systems• Ubhyk a now extinct language has been analysed as
having only one, but 80 consonants!• Some languages have more vowels than consonants • Hawaiian has 8 consonants but 10 vowels, 5 long
ones and five short ones
Where are vowels made
The vowel space
• Regularised as a wonky quadrilateral
• The left is the front of the mouth
• It is sloped because the lower jaw is shorter than the upper jaw
Dividing up vowels
• Unlike most consonants where we have to make discrete muscle movements to change from one consonant to another
• The vowel space is continuous … diphthongs shows us this
• So dividing up the vowels is a bit tricky• But like consonants we can use three features to
label them • Height, tongue position, lip position
Height
• differences in vowels different positions of tongue and jaw
• It is the lower jaw that moves up and down towards or away from the fixed upper jaw.
• Different vowels of English are along this pathway• Iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa• Uuuuuuuuuuuuuuooooooooooooo• BEAT >BID>BET>BAT>(BARD)• BOOT>BIRD/SCHWA?CAUGHT>BARD/POT
Labelling height
• HIGH/CLOSE
CLOSE MID/MID_HIGH
LOW/OPEN
BEAT
BIT
DRESS
TAP
BOOT
PUT
CAUGHTBUT
POT BARD
OPEN MID/MID-LOW
BIRD SCHWA
Labelling tongue position
• Different vowels require raising and lowering of the tongue in different places in your mouth
• Say iiiiiiiiiii with your finger in your mouth
• Where do you feel pressure most from your tongue?
• What about with uuuuuuuuuu?
• Front versus back versus central
The vowel space
• FRONT CENTRAL BACK
heed
hid
head
had
food
good
caughthut
father
Lips?
• Round or spread• Like the voiced/voiceless distinction this
creates pairs of vowels• On the left on IPA vowel charts is the spread
vowel. Lips are flat.• On the right of the pair lips are rounded.• In English all the front vowels are spread • Most of our back vowels are rounded except
the BARD vowel and the BUT
English vowelsFrontunrounded
Central unrounded
Back unrounded
Back rounded
High beat boot
Lower High
bit put
Mid-high about bird
Mid-low bet but caught
low bat Bard/ ɑ
cot
The cardinal vowels
• FRONT CENTRAL BACK
Idealised vowels at the extreme points of the vowel space. All cardinal front vowels are unrounded. Back vowels are round
8
7
6
4 5
3
2
1
Other common distinctions• Long vowels • Some linguists add : to BEAT, i.e. i: as well as the
BARD< BOOT AND CAUGHT vowels to show that they are longer than the DRESS CAT BUT PUT POT Vowels
• Not really necessary. • More important for languages which distinguish long
vowels and short vowels where the mouth is exactly or almost exactly the same
• Māori he ‘a/some’ he: ‘error’
Nasalised vowels
• nasal stops block the airflow in the oral cavity but allow air out the nose in a continuous stream
• Nasal vowels allow air through the nasal cavity as well as the oral cavity
• In English vowels are nasalised if they are near nasal consonants but some languages have which are inherently nasal
• Warao, Amazon• hiha ‘your hammock’ hihã ‘kind of bird’
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