In phonetics Phonetics is a branch of linguistics that comprises the study of the sounds of human speech. It is concerned with the physical properties of speech sounds (phones): their physiological production, acoustic properties, auditory perception, and neurophysiological status. Phonology, on the other hand, is concerned with abstract, grammatical, a vowel is a sound Sound is a travelling wave that is an oscillation of pressure transmitted through a solid, liquid, or gas, composed of frequencies within the range of hearing and of a level sufficiently strong to be heard, or the sensation stimulated in organs of hearing by such vibrations in spoken language Language is a term most commonly used to refer to so called "natural languages" — the forms of communication considered peculiar to humankind. By extension the term also refers to the type of human thought process which creates and uses language. Essential to both meanings is the systematic creation, maintenance and use of systems of, such as English English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into South-East Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria. Following the economic, political, military, scientific, cultural, and colonial influence of Great Britain and the United Kingdom from the 18th century, and of ah! [ɑː] or oh! [oʊ], pronounced with an open vocal tract The vocal tract is the cavity in animals where sound that is produced at the sound source is filtered. In birds it consists of the trachea, the syrinx, the oral cavity, the upper part of the esophagus, and the beak. In mammals it consists of the laryngeal cavity, the pharynx, the oral cavity, and the nasal cavity, and in some nonhuman mammals so that there is no build-up of air pressure at any point above the glottis The glottis is defined as the combination of the vocal folds and the space in between the folds. This contrasts with consonants In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract. Examples are [p], pronounced with the lips; [t], pronounced with the front of the tongue; [k], pronounced with the back of the tongue; [h], pronounced in the throat; [f] and [s], pronounced by forcing air through a, such as English sh! [ʃː], where there is a constriction or closure at some point along the vocal tract. A vowel is also understood to be syllabic A syllable is a unit of organization for a sequence of speech sounds. For example, the word water is composed of two syllables: wa and ter. A syllable is typically made up of a syllable nucleus (most often a vowel) with optional initial and final margins (typically, consonants): an equivalent open but non-syllabic sound is called a semivowel Semivowels, also known as glides or non-syllabic vowels, are vowels that form diphthongs with full syllabic vowels. That is, they are vowel-like sounds that do not form the nucleus of a syllable or mora; they are not the most prominent part of the syllable. They are normally written by adding the IPA non-syllabicity mark [ ̯ ] to a vowel letter,.

In all languages, vowels form the nucleus In phonetics and phonology, the nucleus is the central part of the syllable, most commonly a vowel. In addition to a nucleus, a syllable may begin with an onset and end with a coda, but in most languages the only part of a syllable that is mandatory is the nucleus. The nucleus and coda form the rime of the syllable or peak of syllables, whereas consonants In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract. Examples are [p], pronounced with the lips; [t], pronounced with the front of the tongue; [k], pronounced with the back of the tongue; [h], pronounced in the throat; [f] and [s], pronounced by forcing air through a form the onset In phonetics and phonology, a syllable onset is the part of a syllable that precedes the syllable nucleus and (in languages which have them) coda In phonology, a syllable coda comprises the consonant sounds of a syllable that follow the nucleus, which is usually a vowel. The combination of a nucleus and a coda is called a rime. A coda is not required in syllables. Some languages' phonotactics, like that of Japanese, limit syllable codas to a small group of single consonants, whereas others. However, some languages also allow other sounds to form the nucleus of a syllable, such as the syllabic l in the English word table [ˈteɪ.bl̩] (the stroke under the l indicates that it is syllabic; the dot separates syllables), or the r in Serbian Serbian is a South Slavic language, spoken mainly in Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Croatia, and in the Serbian diaspora. Serbian is the official language in Serbia, one of the official languages in Bosnia and Herzegovina and a minority language in Croatia, Hungary, Montenegro, Republic of Macedonia, Romania and Slovakia. Standard vrt [vr̩t] "garden".

There is a conflict between the phonetic definition of "vowel" (a sound produced with no constriction in the vocal tract) and the phonological definition (a sound that forms the peak of a syllable).[1] The approximants Approximants are speech sounds that involve the articulators approaching each other but not narrowly enough or with enough articulatory precision to create turbulent airflow. Therefore, approximants fall between fricatives, which do produce a turbulent airstream, and vowels, which produce no turbulence. This class of sounds includes lateral [j] and [w] illustrate this conflict: both are produced without much of a constriction in the vocal tract (so phonetically they seem to be vowel-like), but they occur on the edge of syllables, such as at the beginning of the English words "yes" and "wet" (which suggests that phonologically they are consonants). The American linguist Kenneth Pike Kenneth Lee Pike , also known during his life as Ken Pike, was an American linguist and anthropologist. He was the originator of the theory of tagmemics and coiner of the terms "emic" and "etic" suggested the terms 'vocoid' for a phonetic vowel and "vowel" for a phonological vowel,[2] so using this terminology, [j] and [w] are classified as vocoids but not vowels.

The word vowel comes from the Latin Latin or sometimes Roman is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. Although often considered a dead language, in view of the fact that it has no native, fluent speakers, Latin continues to be taught in schools and has been, and currently is, used in the process of new word production in modern languages from many word vocalis, meaning "speaking", because[citation needed] in most languages words and thus speech are not possible without vowels. Vowel is commonly used to mean both vowel sounds and the written symbols that represent them.

Contents

Articulation

IPA The International Phonetic Alphabet [note 1] is a system of phonetic notation based primarily on the Latin alphabet, devised by the International Phonetic Association as a standardized representation of the sounds of spoken language. The IPA is used by foreign language students and teachers, linguists, speech pathologists and therapists, singers, vowel chart (Chart image)
Front A front vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a front vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far in front as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant. Front vowels are sometimes also called bright vowels because they are perceived as Near-​front Central A central vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a central vowel is that the tongue is positioned halfway between a front vowel and a back vowel. The central vowels identified by the International Phonetic Alphabet are: Near-​back Back A back vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a back vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far back as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant. Back vowels are sometimes also called dark vowels because they are perceived as sounding
Close A close vowel is a type of vowel sound used in many spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a close vowel is that the tongue is positioned as close as possible to the roof of the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant
i The close front unrounded vowel is a type of vowel sound, used in many spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is i, and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is i · y The close front rounded vowel is a type of vowel sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is y, and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is y. In various languages, it is written as ‹ü›, ‹uu›, ‹u›, ‹ű›, ‹y›, ‹уь›, or ‹위› ɨ The close central unrounded vowel is a type of vowel sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ɨ, and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is 1. The IPA symbol is the letter i with a horizontal bar. Both the symbol and the sound are commonly referred to as "barred-i" · ʉ ɯ The close back unrounded vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ɯ, and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is M. The IPA symbol is a turned letter m, although given its relation to the sound represented by the letter u, it can be considered a u with · u The close back rounded vowel is a type of vowel sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is u, and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is u ɪ The near-close near-front unrounded vowel is a type of vowel sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ɪ, and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is I. The IPA symbol is a small capital letter i · ʏ ɪ̈ · ʊ̈ · ʊ The near-close near-back vowel is a type of vowel sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet for the near-close near-back rounded vowel is ‹ʊ›. This derives from a small turned capital Ω; although officially called a small Latin letter upsilon, it bears little resemblance to the Greek upsilon and e The close-mid front unrounded vowel is a type of vowel sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is e, and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is e · ø The close-mid front rounded vowel is a type of vowel sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ø, a lowercase letter o with a diagonal stroke through it, derived from the Danish, Norwegian and Faroese alphabets which use the letter to represent this sound. The symbol is ɘ · ɵ ɤ · o The close-mid back rounded vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is o, and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is o ə The mid central vowel is a type of vowel sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ə, and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is @. The same symbol may be used for the rounded and the unrounded mid central vowel ɛ The open-mid front unrounded vowel is a type of vowel sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ‹ɛ›, and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is E · œ The open-mid front rounded vowel is a type of vowel sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is œ, and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is 9. The symbol œ is a ligature of the letters o and e. Note that ɶ, a small version of the capital Œ ligature, is used for the open ɜ · ɞ ʌ The open-mid back unrounded vowel is a type of vowel sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ʌ, and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is V. The IPA symbol is an inverted letter v and both the symbol and the sound are commonly referred to as either a wedge, a caret, or a hat · ɔ The open-mid back rounded vowel is a type of vowel sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ɔ, and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is O. The IPA symbol is a turned letter c and both the symbol and the sound are commonly called "open-o". The name open-o represents æ The near-open front unrounded vowel is a type of vowel sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is æ, and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is {. The IPA symbol is the lowercase ae ligature, and both the symbol and the sound are commonly referred to as "ash" · ɐ The near-open central vowel is a type of vowel sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ɐ, and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is 6. The IPA symbol is an upside-down printed letter 'a' a The open front unrounded vowel is a type of vowel sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is a, and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is a · ɶ The open front rounded vowel is a type of vowel sound, not confirmed to be phonemic in any spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ɶ, and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is &. The symbol ɶ is a small capital Œ. Note that œ, the lowercase version of the ligature, is used for the open- ɑ The open back unrounded vowel is a type of vowel sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ɑ, and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is A. The symbol ɑ is called script a because it lacks the extra hook on top of a printed letter a, which corresponds to a different vowel, the · ɒ The open back rounded vowel is a type of vowel sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ɒ, and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is Q. The symbol <ɒ> is called turned script a, because it is a rotated version of script a, so-called because it lacks the extra stroke on
Near-close
Close-mid A close-mid vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a close-mid vowel is that the tongue is positioned two-thirds of the way from a close vowel to a mid vowel. The close-mid vowels identified by the International Phonetic Alphabet are:
Mid A mid vowel is a vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a mid vowel is that the tongue is positioned mid-way between an open vowel and a close vowel. The only mid vowel with a dedicated symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet is the mid central vowel [ə], a symbol which is also used for the vowel schwa
Open-mid The open-mid vowels make a class of vowel sounds used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of an open-mid vowel is that the tongue is positioned two-thirds of the way from an open vowel to a mid vowel. The open-mid vowels identified by the International Phonetic Alphabet are:
Near-open A near-open vowel is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a near-open vowel is that the tongue is positioned similarly to an open vowel, but slightly more constricted. Near-open vowels are sometimes described as lax variants of the fully-open vowels[citation needed]. The near-open vowels for which
Open An open vowel is a vowel sound of a type used in nearly all spoken languages . The defining characteristic of an open vowel is that the tongue is positioned as far as possible from the roof of the mouth. Open vowels are sometimes also called low vowels in reference to the low position of the tongue. The open vowels identified in the International

Before and after a bullet are the unrounded · rounded In phonetics, vowel roundedness refers to the amount of rounding in the lips during the articulation of a vowel. That is, it is vocalic labialization. When pronouncing a rounded vowel, the lips form a circular opening, while unrounded vowels are pronounced with the lips relaxed. In most languages, front vowels tend to be unrounded, while back vowels A long vowel In linguistics, vowel length is the perceived duration of a vowel sound. Often the chroneme, or the "longness", acts like a consonant, and may etymologically be one such as in Australian English. While not distinctive in most dialects of English, vowel length is an important phonemic factor in many other languages, for instance in Arabic, is indicated by appending ː

Vowels audio samples

Close: i y ɨ ʉ ɯ u Near-close: ɪ ʏ ɪ̈ ʊ̈ ʊ Close-mid: e ø ɘ ɵ ɤ o Mid-central: ə Open-mid: ɛ œ ɜ ɞ ʌ ɔ Near-open: æ ɐ Open: a ɶ ɑ ɒ

See also: IPAConsonants X-rays of Daniel Jones' [i, u, a, ɑ].

The articulatory features that distinguish different vowel sounds are said to determine the vowel's quality. Daniel Jones developed the cardinal vowel system to describe vowels in terms of the common features height (vertical dimension), backness (horizontal dimension) and roundedness (lip position). These three parameters are indicated in the schematic IPA vowel diagram on the right. There are however still more possible features of vowel quality, such as the velum position (nasality), type of vocal fold vibration (phonation), and tongue root position.

Height

Vowel height is named for the vertical position of the tongue relative to either the roof of the mouth or the aperture of the jaw. In high vowels, such as [i] and [u], the tongue is positioned high in the mouth, whereas in low vowels, such as [a], the tongue is positioned low in the mouth. The IPA prefers the terms close vowel and open vowel, respectively, which describes the jaw as being relatively open or closed. However, vowel height is an acoustic rather than articulatory quality, and is defined today not in terms of tongue height, or jaw openness, but according to the relative frequency of the first formant (F1). The higher the F1 value, the lower (more open) the vowel; height is thus inversely correlated to F1.[3]

The International Phonetic Alphabet identifies seven different vowel heights:

True mid vowels do not contrast with both close-mid and open-mid in any language, and the letters [e ø ɤ o] are typically used for either close-mid or mid vowels.

Although English contrasts all six contrasting heights in its vowels, these are interdependent with differences in backness, and many are parts of diphthongs. It appears that some varieties of German have five contrasting vowel heights independently of length or other parameters. The Bavarian dialect of Amstetten has thirteen long vowels, reported to distinguish four heights (close, close-mid, mid, and near-open) each among the front unrounded, front rounded, and back rounded vowels, plus an open central vowel: /i e ɛ̝ æ/, /y ø œ̝ ɶ̝/, /u o ɔ̝ ɒ̝/, /ä/. Otherwise, the usual limit on the number of contrasting vowel heights is four.

The parameter of vowel height appears to be the primary feature of vowels cross-linguistically in that all languages use height contrastively. No other parameter, such as front-back or rounded-unrounded (see below), is used in all languages. Some languages have vertical vowel systems in which, at least at a phonemic level, only height is used to distinguish vowels.

Backness

Tongue positions of cardinal front vowels with highest point indicated. The position of the highest point is used to determine vowel height and backness

Vowel backness is named for the position of the tongue during the articulation of a vowel relative to the back of the mouth. In front vowels, such as [i], the tongue is positioned forward in the mouth, whereas in back vowels, such as [u], the tongue is positioned towards the back of the mouth. However, vowels are defined as back or front not according to actual articulation, but according to the relative frequency of the second formant (F2). The higher the F2 value, the fronter the vowel; backness is thus inversely correlated to F2.

The International Phonetic Alphabet identifies five different degrees of vowel backness:

Although English has vowels at all five degrees of backness, there is no known language that distinguishes all five without additional differences in height or rounding.

Roundedness

Main article: Roundedness

Roundedness refers to whether the lips are rounded or not. In most languages, roundedness is a reinforcing feature of mid to high back vowels, and is not distinctive. Usually the higher a back vowel is, the more intense the rounding. However, some languages treat roundedness and backness separately, such as French and German (with front rounded vowels), most Uralic languages (Estonian has a rounding contrast for /o/ and front vowels), Turkic languages (with an unrounded /u/), Vietnamese and Korean with back unrounded vowels.

Nonetheless, even in languages such as German and Vietnamese, there is usually some phonetic correlation between rounding and backness: front rounded vowels tend to be less front than front unrounded vowels, and back unrounded vowels tend to be less back than back rounded vowels. That is, the placement of unrounded vowels to the left of rounded vowels on the IPA vowel chart is reflective of their typical position.

Different kinds of labialization are also possible. In mid to high rounded back vowels the lips are generally protruded ("pursed") outward, a phenomenon known as exolabial rounding because the insides of the lips are visible, whereas in mid to high rounded front vowels the lips are generally "compressed", with the margins of the lips pulled in and drawn towards each other, a phenomenon known as endolabial rounding. However, not all languages follow this pattern. The Japanese /u/, for example, is an endolabial (compressed) back vowel, and sounds quite different from an English exolabial /u/. Swedish and Norwegian are the only two known languages where this feature is contrastive, having both endo- and exo-labial close front rounded vowels and close central rounded vowels, respectively. In many phonetic treatments, both are considered types of rounding, but some phoneticians do not believe that these are subsets of a single phenomenon of rounding, and prefer instead the three independent terms rounded (exolabial), compressed (endolabial), and spread (unrounded).

Nasalization

Main articles: Nasal vowel and Nasalization

Nasalization refers to whether some of the air escapes through the nose. In nasal vowels, the velum is lowered, and some air travels through the nasal cavity as well as the mouth. An oral vowel is a vowel in which all air escapes through the mouth. French, Polish and Portuguese contrast nasal and oral vowels.

Phonation

Main article: Phonation

Voicing describes whether the vocal cords are vibrating during the articulation of a vowel. Most languages only have voiced vowels, but several Native American languages, such as Cheyenne and Totonac, contrast voiced and devoiced vowels. Vowels are devoiced in whispered speech. In Japanese and Quebec French, vowels that are between voiceless consonants are often devoiced.

Modal voice, creaky voice, and breathy voice (murmured vowels) are phonation types that are used contrastively in some languages. Often, these co-occur with tone or stress distinctions; in the Mon language, vowels pronounced in the high tone are also produced with creaky voice. In cases like this, it can be unclear whether it is the tone, the voicing type, or the pairing of the two that is being used for phonemic contrast. This combination of phonetic cues (i.e. phonation, tone, stress) is known as register or register complex.

Tongue root retraction

Main article: Advanced and retracted tongue root

Advanced tongue root (ATR) is a feature common across much of Africa. The contrast between advanced and retracted tongue root resembles the tense/lax contrast acoustically, but they are articulated differently. ATR vowels involve noticeable tension in the vocal tract.

Secondary narrowings in the vocal tract

Main article: Pharyngealization

Pharyngealized vowels occur in some languages; Sedang uses this contrast, as do the Tungusic languages. Pharyngealisation is similar in articulation to retracted tongue root, but is acoustically distinct.

A stronger degree of pharyngealisation occurs in the Northeast Caucasian languages and the Khoisan languages. These might be called epiglottalized, since the primary constriction is at the tip of the epiglottis.

The greatest degree of pharyngealisation is found in the strident vowels of the Khoisan languages, where the larynx is raised, and the pharynx constricted, so that either the epiglottis or the arytenoid cartilages vibrate instead of the vocal cords.

Note that the terms pharyngealized, epiglottalized, strident, and sphincteric are sometimes used interchangeably.

Rhotic vowels

Main article: R-colored vowel

Rhotic vowels are the "R-colored vowels" of English and a few other languages.

Tenseness/checked vowels vs. free vowels

Main article: Tenseness

Tenseness is used to describe the opposition of tense vowels as in leap, suit vs. lax vowels as in lip, soot. This opposition has traditionally been thought to be a result of greater muscular tension, though phonetic experiments have repeatedly failed to show this.

Unlike the other features of vowel quality, tenseness is only applicable to the few languages that have this opposition (mainly Germanic languages, e.g. English), whereas the vowels of the other languages (e.g. Spanish) cannot be described with respect to tenseness in any meaningful way. In discourse about the English language, "tense and lax" are often used interchangeably with "long and short", respectively, because the features are concomitant in the common varieties of English. This cannot be applied to all English dialects or other languages.

In most Germanic languages, lax vowels can only occur in closed syllables. Therefore, they are also known as checked vowels, whereas the tense vowels are called free vowels since they can occur in any kind of syllable.

Acoustics

Related article: Phonetics
Spectrogram of vowels [i, u, ɑ]. [ɑ] is a low vowel, so its F1 value is higher than that of [i] and [u], which are high vowels. [i] is a front vowel, so its F2 is substantially higher than that of [u] and [ɑ], which are back vowels.

The acoustics of vowels are fairly well understood. The different vowel qualities are realized in acoustic analyses of vowels by the relative values of the formants, acoustic resonances of the vocal tract which show up as dark bands on a spectrogram. The vocal tract acts as a resonant cavity, and the position of the jaw, lips, and tongue affect the parameters of the resonant cavity, resulting in different formant values. The acoustics of vowels can be visualized using spectrograms, which display the acoustic energy at each frequency, and how this changes with time.

The first formant, abbreviated "F1", corresponds to vowel openness (vowel height). Open vowels have high F1 frequencies while close vowels have low F1 frequencies, as can be seen at right: The [i] and [u] have similar low first formants, whereas [ɑ] has a higher formant.

The second formant, F2, corresponds to vowel frontness. Back vowels have low F2 frequencies while front vowels have high F2 frequencies. This is very clear at right, where the front vowel [i] has a much higher F2 frequency than the other two vowels. However, in open vowels the high F1 frequency forces a rise in the F2 frequency as well, so an alternative measure of frontness is the difference between the first and second formants. For this reason, some people prefer to plot as F1 vs. F2 – F1. (This dimension is usually called 'backness' rather than 'frontness', but the term 'backness' can be counterintuitive when discussing formants.)

In the third edition of his textbook, Peter Ladefoged recommended use of plots of F1 against F2 – F1 to represent vowel quality.[4] However, in the fourth edition, he changed to adopt a simple plot of F1 against F2,[5] and this simple plot of F1 against F2 was maintained for the fifth (and final) edition of the book.[6] Katrina Hayward compares the two types of plots and concludes that plotting of F1 against F2 – F1 "is not very satisfactory because of its effect on the placing of the central vowels",[7] so she also recommends use of a simple plot of F1 against F2. In fact, this kind of plot of F1 against F2 has been used by analysts to show the quality of the vowels in a wide range of languages, including RP British English,[8][9] the Queen's English,[10] American English,[11] Singapore English,[12] Brunei English,[13] North Frisian,[14] Turkish Kabardian,[15] and various indigenous Australian languages.[16]

R-colored vowels are characterized by lowered F3 values.

Rounding is generally realized by a complex relationship between F2 and F3 that tends to reinforce vowel backness. One effect of this is that back vowels are most commonly rounded while front vowels are most commonly unrounded; another is that rounded vowels tend to plot to the right of unrounded vowels in vowel charts. That is, there is a reason for plotting vowel pairs the way they are.

Prosody and intonation

Main articles: Prosody and Intonation

The features of vowel prosody are often described independently from vowel quality. In non-linear phonetics, they are located on parallel layers. The features of vowel prosody are usually considered not to apply to the vowel itself, but to the syllable, as some languages do not contrast vowel length separately from syllable length.

Intonation encompasses the changes in pitch, intensity, and speed of an utterance over time. In tonal languages, in most cases the tone of a syllable is carried by the vowel, meaning that the relative pitch or the pitch contour that marks the tone is superimposed on the vowel. If a syllable has a high tone, for example, the pitch of the vowel will be high. If the syllable has a falling tone, then the pitch of the vowel will fall from high to low over the course of uttering the vowel.

Length or quantity refers to the abstracted duration of the vowel. In some analyses this feature is described as a feature of the vowel quality, not of the prosody. Japanese, Finnish, Hungarian, Arabic and Latin have a two-way phonemic contrast between short and long vowels. The Mixe language has a three-way contrast among short, half-long, and long vowels, and this has been reported for a few other languages, though not always as a phonemic distinction. Long vowels are written in the IPA with a triangular colon, which has two equilateral triangles pointing at each other in place of dots ([iː]). The IPA symbol for half-long vowels is the top half of this ([iˑ]). Longer vowels are sometimes claimed, but these are always divided between two syllables.

The length of the vowel is a grammatical abstraction, and there may be more phonologically distinctive lengths. For example, in Finnish, there are five different physical lengths, because stress is marked with length on both grammatically long and short vowels. However, Finnish stress is not lexical and is always on the first two moras, thus this variation serves to separate words from each other.

In non-tonal languages, like English, intonation encompasses lexical stress. A stressed syllable will typically be pronounced with a higher pitch, intensity, and length than unstressed syllables. For example in the word intensity, the vowel represented by the letter 'e' is stressed, so it is longer and pronounced with a higher pitch and intensity than the other vowels.

Monophthongs, diphthongs, triphthongs

Main articles: Monophthong, Diphthong, Triphthong, and Semivowel

A vowel sound whose quality doesn't change over the duration of the vowel is called a monophthong. Monophthongs are sometimes called "pure" or "stable" vowels. A vowel sound that glides from one quality to another is called a diphthong, and a vowel sound that glides successively through three qualities is a triphthong.

All languages have monophthongs and many languages have diphthongs, but triphthongs or vowel sounds with even more target qualities are relatively rare cross-linguistically. English has all three types: the vowel sound in hit is a monophthong /ɪ/, the vowel sound in boy is in most dialects a diphthong /ɔɪ/, and the vowel sounds of flower, /aʊər/, form a triphthong or disyllable, depending on dialect.

In phonology, diphthongs and triphthongs are distinguished from sequences of monophthongs by whether the vowel sound may be analyzed into different phonemes or not. For example, the vowel sounds in a two-syllable pronunciation of the word flower (/ˈflaʊər/) phonetically form a disyllabic triphthong, but are phonologically a sequence of a diphthong (represented by the letters <ow>) and a monophthong (represented by the letters <er>). Some linguists use the terms diphthong and triphthong only in this phonemic sense.

Written vowels

Main article: Writing system

The name "vowel" is often used for the symbols that represent vowel sounds in a language's writing system, particularly if the language uses an alphabet. In writing systems based on the Latin alphabet, the letters A, E, I, O, U, and Y are all used to represent vowels. However, not all of these letters represent vowels in all languages, or even consistently within one language (some of them, especially W and Y, are also used to represent approximants). Moreover, a vowel might be represented by a letter usually reserved for consonants, or a combination of letters, particularly where one letter represents several sounds at once, or vice versa; examples from English include igh in "thigh" and x in "x-ray". In addition, extensions of the Latin alphabet have such independent vowel letters as Ä, Ö, Ü, Å, Æ, and Ø.

The phonetic values vary considerably by language, and some languages use I and Y for the consonant [j], e.g., initial I in Romanian and initial Y in English. In the original Latin alphabet, there was no written distinction between V and U, and the letter represented the approximant [w] and the vowels [u] and [ʊ]. In Modern Welsh, the letter W represents these same sounds. Similarly, in Creek, the letter V stands for [ə]. There is not necessarily a direct one-to-one correspondence between the vowel sounds of a language and the vowel letters. Many languages that use a form of the Latin alphabet have more vowel sounds than can be represented by the standard set of five vowel letters. In English spelling, the five letters A E I O and U can represent a variety of vowel sounds, while the letter Y frequently represents vowels (as in e.g., "gym" or "happy"); W is used in representing some diphthongs (as in "cow") and to represent a monophthong in the borrowed words "cwm" and "crwth".

Other languages cope with the limitation in the number of Latin vowel letters in similar ways. Many languages make extensive use of combinations of letters to represent various sounds. Other languages use vowel letters with modifications, e.g., Ä in Finnish, or add diacritical marks, like umlauts, to vowels to represent the variety of possible vowel sounds. Some languages have also constructed additional vowel letters by modifying the standard Latin vowels in other ways, such as æ or ø that are found in some of the Scandinavian languages. The International Phonetic Alphabet has a set of 28 symbols to represent the range of basic vowel qualities, and a further set of diacritics to denote variations from the basic vowel.

See also: Zero consonant, Mater lectionis, and Inherent vowel

Use of vowels in languages

The importance of vowels in distinguishing one word from another varies from language to language. The alphabets used to write the Semitic languages, such as the Hebrew alphabet and the Arabic alphabet, do not ordinarily mark all the vowels, since they are frequently unnecessary in identifying a word. These alphabets are technically called abjads. Although it is possible to construct simple English sentences that can be understood without written vowels (cn y rd ths?), extended passages of English lacking written vowels can be difficult to understand (consider dd, which could be any of add, aided, dad, dada, dead, deed, did, died, diode, dodo, dud, dude, eddie, iodide, or odd).

In most languages, vowels serve mainly to distinguish separate lexemes, rather than different inflectional forms of the same lexeme as they commonly do in the Semitic languages. For example, while English man becomes men in the plural, moon is not a different form of the same word.

Nearly all languages have at least three phonemic vowels, usually [i], [a], [u] as in Classical Arabic and Inuktitut (or [æ], [ɪ], [ʊ] as in Quechua), though Adyghe and many Sepik languages have a vertical vowel system of [ɨ], [ə], [a]. Very few languages have fewer, though some Arrernte, Circassian, Ndu languages have been argued to have just two, [ə] and [a], with [ɨ] being epenthetic.

The rarest vowels cataloged are ɜ (has just been cataloged in Paicî and Received Pronunciation English) and ʊ̈ (Early Modern English and Russian).

It is not possible to say which language has the most vowels, since that depends on how they are counted. For example, long vowels, nasal vowels, and various phonations may or may not be counted separately; indeed, it may sometimes be unclear if phonation belongs to the vowels or the consonants of a language. If such things are ignored and only vowels with dedicated IPA letters ('vowel qualities') are considered, then very few languages have more than ten. The Germanic languages have some of the largest inventories: Standard Swedish has seventeen contrasting simple vowels, nine long and eight short (/iː eː ɛː ɑː oː uː ʉ̟ː yː øː ɪ ɛ a ɔ ʊ ɵ ʏ œ/), while the Amstetten dialect of Bavarian has been reported to have thirteen long vowels: /iː yː eː øː ɛː œː æː ɶː aː ɒː ɔː oː uː/.[citation needed] The Mon-Khmer languages of Southeast Asia also have some large inventories, such as the eleven vowels of Vietnamese: /i e ɛ æ ɑ ʌ ɔ ɤ o ɯ u/. Wu has the largest inventories of Chinese; the Jinhui dialect of Wu (金汇方言)) has also been reported to have eleven vowels: ten normal vowels, /a e ɯ ɨ i ɞ ɵ ø u y/, plus restricted /ɿ/.[17] The Taa language, spoken mainly in Botswana and Namibia, is extremely unusual in having (depending on analysis) between 20 and 31 vowels.[18].

One of the most common vowels is [a̠]; it is nearly universal for a language to have at least one open vowel, though most dialects of English have an [æ] and a [ɑ]—and often an [ɒ], all open vowels—but no central [a]. Some Tagalog- and Cebuano-speakers have [ɐ] rather than [a], and Dhangu Yolngu is described as having /ɪ ɐ ʊ/, without any peripheral vowels. [i] is also extremely common, though Quileute has [eː], [æː], [aː], [oː] without any close vowels, at least as they are pronounced when long. The third vowel of Arabic-type three-vowel system, /u/, is considerably less common. A large fraction of the languages of North America happen to have a four-vowel system without /u/: /i, e, a, o/; Aztec is an example.

See also

References

  1. ^ Laver, John (1994) Principles of Phonetics, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 269.
  2. ^ Crystal, David (2005) A Dictionary of Linguistics & Phonetics (Fifth Edition), Maldern, MA/Oxford: Blackwell, p. 494.
  3. ^ According to Peter Ladefoged, traditional articulatory descriptions such as height and backness "are not entirely satisfactory", and when phoneticians describe a vowel as high or low, they are in fact describing an acoustic quality rather than the actual position of the tongue. Ladefoged, Peter (2006) A Course in Phonetics (Fifth Edition), Boston, MA: Thomson Wadsworth, p. 189.
  4. ^ Ladefoged, Peter (1993) A Course in Phonetics (Third Edition), Fort Worth: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, p. 197.
  5. ^ Ladefoged, Peter (2001) A Course in Phonetics (Fourth Edition), Fort Worth: Harcourt, p. 177.
  6. ^ Ladefoged, Peter (2006) A Course in Phonetics (Fifth Edition), Boston: Thomson Wadsworth, p. 189.
  7. ^ Hayward, Katrina (2000) Experimental Phonetics, Harlow, UK: Pearson, p. 160.
  8. ^ Deterding, David (1997) The formants of monophthong vowels in Standard Southern British English Pronunciation, Journal of the International Phonetic Association, 27, 47-55.
  9. ^ Hawkins, Sarah and Jonathan Midgley (2005) Formant frequencies of RP monophthongs in four age groups of speakers, Journal of the International Phonetic Association, 35, 183-199.
  10. ^ Harrington, Jonathan, Sallyanne Palethorpe and Catherine Watson (2005) Deepening or lessening the divide between diphthongs: an analysis of the Queen's annual Christmas broadcasts. In William J. Hardcastle and Janet Mackenzie Beck (eds.) A Figure of Speech: A Festschrift for John Laver, Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, pp. 227-261.
  11. ^ Flemming, Edward and Stephanie Johnson (2007) Rosa's roses: reduced vowels in American English, Journal of the International Phonetic Association, 37, 83-96.
  12. ^ Deterding, David (2003) An instrumental study of the monophthong vowels of Singapore English, English World-Wide, 24, 1–16
  13. ^ Salbrina, Sharbawi (2006) The vowels of Brunei English: an acoustic investigation. English World-Wide, 27, 247-264.
  14. ^ Bohn, Ocke-Schwen (2004) How to organize a fairly large vowel inventory: the vowels of Fering (North Frisian), Journal of the International Phonetic Association, 34, 161-173.
  15. ^ Gordon, Matthew and Ayla Applebaum (2006) Phonetic structures of Turkish Kabardian, Journal of the International Phonetic Association, 36, 159-186.
  16. ^ Fletcher, Janet (2006) Exploring the phonetics of spoken narratives in Australian indigenous languages. In William J. Hardcastle and Janet Mackenzie Beck (eds.) A Figure of Speech: A Festschrift for John Laver, Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, pp. 201-226.
  17. ^ Values in open oral syllables.[1]
  18. ^ World Language Statistics and Facts

Bibliography

External links

Listen to this article (info/dl) This audio file was created from a revision of Vowel dated 2005-07-18, and does not reflect subsequent edits to the article. (Audio help) More spoken articles
Look up vowel in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.
International Phonetic Alphabet
IPA-topics
IPA History of the IPA · International Phonetic Association · Journal of the IPA (JIPA) · Naming conventions
Special topics Extensions to the IPA · Obsolete and nonstandard symbols · IPA chart for English dialects
Technical Kirshenbaum · SAMPA · X-SAMPA · TIPA · Phonetic symbols in Unicode
Consonants
Pulmonic consonants
Place Labial Coronal Dorsal Radical Glottal
Manner Bila​bial Labio​dental Den​tal Alve​olar Post​alv. Retro​flex Pal​a​tal Ve​lar Uvu​lar Pha​ryn​geal Epi​glot​tal Glot​tal
Nasal m ɱ n ɳ ɲ ŋ ɴ
Plosive p b t d ʈ ɖ c ɟ k ɡ q ɢ ʡ ʔ
Fricative ɸ β f v θ ð s z ʃ ʒ ʂ ʐ ç ʝ x ɣ χ ʁ ħ ʕ ʜ ʢ h ɦ
Approximant ʋ ɹ ɻ j ɰ
Trill ʙ r  * ʀ я *
Flap or tap ⱱ̟ ɾ ɽ ɢ̆ ʡ̯
Lateral Fric. ɬ ɮ ɭ˔̊ ʎ̥˔ ʟ̝̊
Lateral Appr. l ɭ ʎ ʟ
Lateral flap ɺ ɺ̢ * ʎ̯
Non-pulmonic consonants
Clicks ʘ ǀ ǃ ǂ ǁ
Implosives ɓ ɗ ʄ ɠ ʛ
Ejectives
tɬʼ tʃʼ
Affricates
p̪f ts dz ʈʂ ɖʐ
ɟʝ
Co-articulated consonants
Fricatives ɕ ʑ ɧ
Approximants ʍ w ɥ ɫ
Stops k͡p ɡ͡b ŋ͡m
These tables contain phonetic symbols, which may not display correctly in some browsers. [Help]
Where symbols appear in pairs, left—right represent the voiceless—voiced consonants.
Shaded areas denote pulmonic articulations judged to be impossible.
* Symbol not defined in IPA.
Chart image Pulmonics · Non-pulmonics · Affricates · Co-articulated
Vowels
IPA vowel chart (Chart image)
Front Near-​front Central Near-​back Back
Close
i · y ɨ · ʉ ɯ · u ɪ · ʏ ɪ̈ · ʊ̈ · ʊ e · ø ɘ · ɵ ɤ · o ə ɛ · œ ɜ · ɞ ʌ · ɔ æ · ɐ a · ɶ ɑ · ɒ
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Mid
Open-mid
Near-open
Open

Before and after a bullet are the unrounded · rounded vowels A long vowel is indicated by appending ː

Categories: Vowels | Phonetics

 

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