Back vowel

Last updated

Back vowels are a class of vowel sound used in spoken languages that are produced when the tongue is positioned toward the back of the mouth. Back vowels appear in most of the world's languages, with [ u] and [ o] being present in 88% and 60% of languages according to PHOIBLE.

Contents

Back vowels are typically rounded, meaning that the lips are engaged while speakers are producing them, but can be unrounded as well. This is because languages want to maximize the degree of contrast between vowels. [1] Rounding has the effect of bringing a vowel further back in the mouth, so across the world's languages, it's more common for back vowels to be rounded than unrounded, and for front vowels to be unrounded rather than rounded. [2] This is reflected in the position of unrounded back vowels on the IPA vowel chart. They are written to the left of the unrounded front vowels to note that they are typically centralized.

Articulation

In their articulation, back vowels do not form a single category, but may be either raised vowels such as [u] or retracted vowels such as [ɑ]. [3]

Partial list

The back vowels that have dedicated symbols in the International Phonetic Alphabet are:

There also are back vowels that do not have dedicated symbols in the IPA:

As here, other back vowels can be transcribed with diacritics of relative articulation applied to letters for neighboring vowels, such as ⟨u̞⟩, ⟨o̝⟩ or ⟨ʊ̠⟩ for a near-close back rounded vowel.

See also

References

  1. ↑ Lindblom, Björn (1986). "Phonetic universals in vowel systems". In Ohala, John J.; Jaeger, Jeri J. (eds.). Experimental phonology. Orlando, Flo.: Acad. Pr. pp. 13–44. ISBN   978-0-12-524940-9.
  2. ↑ Zsiga, Elizabeth C. (2013). The sounds of language: an introduction to phonetics and phonology. Linguistics in the world. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. ISBN   978-1-4051-9103-6.
  3. ↑ Scott Moisik, Ewa Czaykowska-Higgins, & John H. Esling (2012) "The Epilaryngeal Articulator: A New Conceptual Tool for Understanding Lingual-Laryngeal Contrasts"
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.