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’