Phonetics (Vowels Only) PDF - George Yule

## Vowels While the consonant sounds are mostly articulated via obstruction in the vocal tract, vowel sounds are produced with a relatively free flow of air. They are all typically voiced. To describe vowel sounds, we consider the way in which the tongue influences the shape through which the airfl...

## Vowels While the consonant sounds are mostly articulated via obstruction in the vocal tract, vowel sounds are produced with a relatively free flow of air. They are all typically voiced. To describe vowel sounds, we consider the way in which the tongue influences the shape through which the airflow must pass. To talk about a place of articulation, we think of the space inside the mouth as having a front versus a back and a high versus a low area. Thus, in the pronunciation of heat and hit, we talk about "high, front" vowels because the sound is made with the front part of the tongue in a raised position. In contrast, the vowel sound in hat is produced with the tongue in a lower position and the sound in hot can be described as a “low, back” vowel. The next time you're facing the bathroom mirror, try saying the words heat, hit, hat, hot. For the first two, your mouth will stay fairly closed, but for the last two, your tongue will move lower and cause your mouth to open wider. (The sounds of relaxation and pleasure typically contain lower vowels.) We can use a vowel chart, like Table 3.4 (based on Ladefoged and Johnson, 2015), to help classify the most common vowel sounds in English, as illustrated in the words below. ### Table 3.4 Vowel Chart | | Front | Central | Back | |:-----:|:------:|:--------:|:-----:| | **High** | i | ɪ | u | | **Mid** | e | ε | o | | | | ə | | | | | Λ | | | | | ɔ | | | **Low** | æ | a | ɑ | #### Front Vowels: - [i] bead, beef, key, me - [ɪ] bid, myth, women - [ɛ] bed, dead, said - [æ] bad, laugh, wrap #### Central Vowels: - [ə] above, oven, support - [ʌ] butt, blood, dove, tough #### Back Vowels: - [u] boo, move, two, you - [ʊ] book, could, put - [ɔ] born, caught, fall, raw - [ɑ] Bob, cot, swan ## Diphthongs In addition to single vowel sounds, we regularly create sounds that consist of a combination of two vowel sounds, known as diphthongs. When we produce diphthongs, our vocal organs move from one vocalic position [a] to another [ɪ] as we produce the sound [ar], as in Hi or Bye. The movement in this diphthong is from low toward high front. Alternatively, we can use movement from low toward high back, combining [a] and [u] to produce the sound [au], which is the diphthong repeated in the traditional speech training exercise [hau nau braun kau]. In some descriptions, the movement is interpreted as involving a glide such as [j] or [w], so that the diphthongs we are representing as [ar] and [au] may sometimes be seen as [aj] or [aw]. While the vowels [e], [a] and [o] are used as single sounds in other languages, and by speakers of different varieties of English, they are more often used as the first sounds of diphthongs in American English. Figure 3.2 provides a rough idea of how diphthongs are produced and is followed by a list of the sounds, with examples to illustrate some of the variation in the spelling of these sounds. ### Figure 3.2 Diphthongs | | Front | Central | Back | |:-----:|:------:|:--------:|:-----:| | **High** | | | u | | **Mid** | e | ɪ | ɔ | | **Low** | | | a | #### Diphthongs: - [aɪ] buy, eye, I, my, pie, sigh - [ɑʊ] bough, doubt, cow - [eɪ] bait, eight, great, late, say - [oʊ] boat, home, owe, throw, toe - [ɔɪ] boy, noise, royal ## American and British Diphthongs The pronunciation of some diphthongs in Southern British English, following Roberts (2017), is noticeably different from North American English, as shown in Table 3.5. Note that the final [r] sound, normally pronounced in American varieties, is typically omitted in Southern British English, especially among higher social status speakers (see Table 19.1, page 297). ### Table 3.5 Differing Diphthongs | | **poor** | **peer** | **pair** | **pour** | **pyre** | **power** | |:-------:|:--------:|:--------:|:--------:|:--------:|:--------:|:---------:| | **American** | [pur] | [pir] | [peɪr] | [pur] | [pɑɪər] | [paʊər] | | **British** | [pʊə] | [piǝ] | [pɛə] | [pɔː] | [paɪə] | [paʊə] | ## Subtle Individual Variation Vowel sounds are notorious for varying between one variety of English and the next, often being a key element in what we recognize as different accents. It may be, for example, that you make no distinction between the vowels in the words caught and cot and use [a] in both. You may also be used to seeing the vowel sound of pet represented as [e] in dictionaries rather than with [ɛ] as used here. For many speakers, [e] is the short vowel in words like came and make. You may not make a significant distinction between the central vowels [ə], called "schwa," and [ʌ], called “wedge." If you're trying to transcribe, just use schwa [ə]. It is the unstressed vowel (underlined) in the everyday use of words such as afford, collapse, photograph, wanted, and in those very common words a and the in casual speech. You can check the transcription in Task A on page 39 to see how often the schwa sound occurs. There are many other variations in the physical articulation of speech sounds. We didn't even mention the uvula (“little grape"), hanging at the end of the velum. It is used with the back of the tongue to produce uvular sounds, such as the "r" sound, usually represented by [R], in the French pronunciation of rouge and lettre. The more we focus on the subtle differences in each sound, the more likely we are to find ourselves describing the pronunciation of a group or an individual speaker. Such differences help us to recognize a person's voice as soon as he or she speaks. But those differences do not explain how we understand what total strangers with unfa-miliar voices are saying. We are able to disregard variation in phonetic detail and identify each underlying sound type as part of a word with a particular meaning. Trying to understand how we do that takes us into phonology.