In phonetics and phonology, checked vowels are those that commonly stand in a stressed closed syllable, while free vowels are those that can stand in either a stressed closed syllable or a stressed open syllable.
The terms checked vowel and free vowel originated in English phonetics and phonology; they are seldom used for the description of other languages, even though a distinction between vowels that usually have to be followed by a consonant and other vowels is common in most Germanic languages.
The terms checked vowel and free vowel correspond closely to the terms lax vowel and tense vowel respectively, but linguists often prefer to use the terms checked and free, as there is no clearcut phonetic definition of vowel tenseness and because by most attempted definitions of tenseness /ɔː/ and /ɑː/ are considered lax, even though they behave in American English as free vowels.
Checked vowels is also used to refer to the kind of very short glottalized vowels heard in the Zapotecan languages of Oaxaca, Mexico, that contrast with laryngealized vowels. The term checked vowel is also used to refer to a short vowel followed by a glottal stop in Mixe, which has a distinction between two kinds of glottalized syllable nuclei: checked ones, with the glottal stop after a short vowel, and nuclei with rearticulated vowels, a long vowel with a glottal stop in the middle.
In English, the checked vowels are the following: [1]
There are a few exceptions, mostly in interjections: eh and meh with /ɛ/ ; duh, huh, uh, uh-uh, and uh-huh with /ʌ/ ; nah with /æ/ or /ʌ/ ; and yeah with /ɛ/ (in accents that lack the diphthong /ɛə/) or /æ/ . There are also the onomatopoeia baa for /æ/ and the loanword pho for /ʌ/ when pronounced in American English, as well as sometimes milieu and pot-au-feu . [2] [3] [4] [5] The proper names Graham and Flaherty are sometimes pronounced with a prevocalic /æ/ . [6] [7]
The free vowels are the following:
The schwa /ə/ is usually considered neither free nor checked because it cannot stand in stressed syllables.
In non-rhotic dialects, non-prevocalic instances of /ɜːr/ as in purr, burr and /ər/ as in letter, banner pattern as vowels, with the former often being the long counterpart of the latter and little to no difference in quality: [pʰəː,bəː,ˈlɛtə,ˈbænə]. In rhotic dialects, they pattern as vowel+consonant sequences, following the historical situation, even though they often surface as rhotacized vowels: [pʰɚ,bɚ,ˈɫɛɾɚ,ˈbɛənɚ] (or, in other analyses, syllabic postalveolar/retroflex approximants: [pʰɹ̩] etc.)
The same applies to /ɪər/ , /ʊər/ and /ɛər/ , which are realized as centering diphthongs or long monophthongs in non-rhotic varieties of English, but as vowel+consonant sequences (alternative analysis: centering diphthongs with a rhotacized offset) in rhotic English.
The term checked vowel is also useful in the description of English spelling. [8] As free written vowels a, e, i, o, u correspond to the spoken vowels /eɪ/ , /iː/ , /aɪ/ , /oʊ/ , /uː/ ; as checked vowels a, e, i, o, u correspond to /æ/ , /ɛ/ , /ɪ/ , /ɒ/ , /ʊ/ . In spelling free and checked vowels are often called long and short, based on their historical pronunciation, though nowadays some or all of the free vowels are diphthongs, depending on the dialect, not long vowels as such. Written consonant doubling often shows the vowel is checked; the i of dinner corresponds to checked /ɪ/ because of the double consonants nn; the i of diner corresponds to free /aɪ/ because of the single consonant n. This, however, interferes with the differences in doubling rules between American and British styles of spelling. [9] Similarly, a " e " following a single consonant at the end of a word often indicates that the preceding vowel is free where it would otherwise be checked; for example, the a of tap corresponding to /æ/ whereas that in tape corresponds to /eɪ/ .
English orthography is the writing system used to represent spoken English, allowing readers to connect the graphemes to sound and to meaning. It includes English's norms of spelling, hyphenation, capitalisation, word breaks, emphasis, and punctuation.
A vowel is a syllabic speech sound pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract. Vowels are one of the two principal classes of speech sounds, the other being the consonant. Vowels vary in quality, in loudness and also in quantity (length). They are usually voiced and are closely involved in prosodic variation such as tone, intonation and stress.
A diphthong, also known as a gliding vowel, is a combination of two adjacent vowel sounds within the same syllable. Technically, a diphthong is a vowel with two different targets: that is, the tongue moves during the pronunciation of the vowel. In most varieties of English, the phrase "no highway cowboy" has five distinct diphthongs, one in every syllable.
Estuary English is an English accent associated with the area along the River Thames and its estuary, including London. Phonetician John C. Wells proposed a definition of Estuary English as "Standard English spoken with the accent of the southeast of England". He views Estuary English as an emerging standard accent of England: an "intermediate" between the 20th-century higher-class non-regional standard accent, Received Pronunciation, and the 20th-century lower-class local London accent, Cockney. There is some debate among linguists as to where Cockney speech ends and Estuary English begins.
The phonology of the open back vowels of the English language has undergone changes both overall and with regional variations, through Old and Middle English to the present. The sounds heard in modern English were significantly influenced by the Great Vowel Shift, as well as more recent developments in some dialects such as the cot–caught merger.
English phonology is the system of speech sounds used in spoken English. Like many other languages, English has wide variation in pronunciation, both historically and from dialect to dialect. In general, however, the regional dialects of English share a largely similar phonological system. Among other things, most dialects have vowel reduction in unstressed syllables and a complex set of phonological features that distinguish fortis and lenis consonants.
In linguistics, vowel length is the perceived length of a vowel sound: the corresponding physical measurement is duration. In some languages vowel length is an important phonemic factor, meaning vowel length can change the meaning of the word, for example in Arabic, Estonian, Finnish, Fijian, Japanese, Kannada, Kyrgyz, Latin, Malayalam, Old English, Scottish Gaelic, Tamil and Vietnamese.
Stress is a prominent feature of the English language, both at the level of the word (lexical stress) and at the level of the phrase or sentence (prosodic stress). Absence of stress on a syllable, or on a word in some cases, is frequently associated in English with vowel reduction – many such syllables are pronounced with a centralized vowel (schwa) or with certain other vowels that are described as being "reduced". Various phonological analyses exist for these phenomena.
A Pronouncing Dictionary of American English, also referred to as Kenyon and Knott, was first published by the G. & C. Merriam Company in 1944, and written by John Samuel Kenyon and Thomas A. Knott. It provides a phonemic transcription of General American pronunciations of words, using symbols largely corresponding to those of the IPA. A similar work for English pronunciation is the English Pronouncing Dictionary by Daniel Jones, originally published in 1917 and available in revised editions ever since.
There are a variety of pronunciations in modern English and in historical forms of the language for words spelled with the letter ⟨a⟩. Most of these go back to the low vowel of earlier Middle English, which later developed both long and short forms. The sound of the long vowel was altered in the Great Vowel Shift, but later a new long A developed which was not subject to the shift. These processes have produced the main four pronunciations of ⟨a⟩ in present-day English: those found in the words trap, face, father and square. Separate developments have produced additional pronunciations in words like wash, talk and comma.
In English, many vowel shifts affect only vowels followed by in rhotic dialects, or vowels that were historically followed by that has been elided in non-rhotic dialects. Most of them involve the merging of vowel distinctions and so fewer vowel phonemes occur before than in other positions of a word.
Like many other languages, English has wide variation in pronunciation, both historically and from dialect to dialect. In general, however, the regional dialects of English share a largely similar phonological system. Among other things, most dialects have vowel reduction in unstressed syllables and a complex set of phonological features that distinguish fortis and lenis consonants.
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