VOWELS

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VOWELS

• English Phonetics and Phonology
• Lesson 4A

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VOWEL GROUPS

• SHORT
• bad
• bed, friend, head
• good, put, should
• his, it, kiss
• hot, of, on
• love, must, number
• the, about

• LONG
• car, park
• door, more, caught
• free, me, please
• girl, third, world
• who, you

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Vowels may differ in three ways

• Quality (i.e. the difference between /i/ and
  /u/
• Oral or nasal production (unlike French, this
  does not have a phonemic function in English)
• Length

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We will now look at how vowels vary in quality
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These are x-rays of a person producing different
vowels
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In the close front position (unrounded) we
produce /i/ - pit
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In the open front position (unrounded) we produce
/a/ - pat
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Back open (unrounded) - pot
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Back close (rounded) /u/ - put
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Connecting these points gives us a box called the
Vowel Quadrilateral
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All the vowel sounds that the human voice can
produce may be plotted within the limits of the
quadrilateral
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Here is the vowel quadrilateral divided into
sectors with the IPA symbols at fixed points.
These are called Cardinal Vowels.
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N.B. Do not confuse symbols for cardinal vowels
with language specific phonemes

• The IPA vowel quadrilateral is a grid on which we
  can plot vowels
• It indicates the total area in which vowels can
  be produced by human beings, the cardinal vowels
  are fixed reference points on this chart, just
  like lines of longtitude and latitude on a map
• Plots of language specific vowels do not usually
  correspond to the cardinal vowels, e.g. the
  Italian /a/ does not correspond to the cardinal
  vowel a

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The four corners of the quadrilateral may be seen
as the four corners of a map
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Plotting vowels within the chart is like plotting
the irregular outlines of topography
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These are the places of articulation of English
short and long pure vowels
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The chart of Standard Italian vowels would look
like this
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The fact that Italian lacks vowels in the central
area may well explain why Italian students of
English have so much trouble with these sounds
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However, it is important to remember that the
cardinal vowel system describes vowels from an
articulatory point of view
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whereas vowels are an acoustic phenomenon and
may also be described according to their acoustic
properties.
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Plotting the values of the 1st and 2nd formants
results in a graph which greatly resembles the
quadrilateral
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We can note that the values of the acoustic
properties are not always exactly the same they
tend to vary considerably
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This type of analysis can be used to illustrate
the difference between native (left) and
non-native speakers production (right)
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Native (left) and non-native speakers production
(right)
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Length

• English vowels differ in length as well as in
  quality
• These differences are as important to perception
  as quality
• English long vowels are far longer than Italian
  equivalents (e.g. /i/, /u/)

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The distinction between long and short vowels is
not always very clear

• The realisation of long and short vowels depends
  on their context, this is called Clipping
• This means that long vowels and diphthongs tend
  to be shortened before voiceless consonants e.g.
  /p/, /t/, /k/, /f/ etc.

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Vowel length in centiseconds
(Data from Gimson 198098)
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Potential ambiguity

• Italian speakers of English often produce vowel
  sounds that can be misinterpreted by native
  speakers
• This is particularly important in the case of
  minimal pairs i.e. where substituting one vowel
  sound for another leads to semantic changes
• This can be due to the irregular orthography of
  English or interference from L1. We will now
  examine this second case.

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/ i / v. / i /

• e.g. sheep v. ship. Italian speakers often use
  one vowel sound, the Italian /i/ for both. In
  the case of sheep the vowel length is too short,
  in that of ship the quality does not exclude
  ambiguity.

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Other cases

• e.g. ban and bun here the problem is one of
  vowel quality
• e.g. coat and court the Italian /o/ is often
  used for both