Tenseness

Last updated

In phonology, tenseness or tensing is, most generally, the pronunciation of a sound with greater muscular effort or constriction than is typical. [1] More specifically, tenseness is the pronunciation of a vowel with less centralization (i.e. either more fronting or more backing), longer duration, and narrower mouth width (with the tongue being perhaps more raised) compared with another vowel. [2] The opposite quality to tenseness is known as laxness or laxing: the pronunciation of a vowel with relatively more centralization, shorter duration, and more widening (perhaps even lowering).

Contents

Contrasts between two vowels on the basis of tenseness, and even phonemic contrasts, are common in many languages, including English. For example, in most English dialects, beet and bit are contrasted by the vowel sound being tense in the first word but not the second; i.e., // (as in beet) is the tense counterpart to the lax /ɪ/ (as in bit); the same is true of // (as in kook) versus /ʊ/ (as in cook). Unlike most distinctive features, the feature [tense] can be interpreted only relatively, often with a perception of greater tension or pressure in the mouth, which, in a language like English, contrasts between two corresponding vowel types: a tense vowel and a lax vowel. An example in Vietnamese is the letters ă and â representing lax vowels, and the letters a and ơ representing the corresponding tense vowels. Some languages like Spanish are often considered as having only tense vowels, but since the quality of tenseness is not a phonemic feature in this language, it cannot be applied to describe its vowels in any meaningful way. The term has also occasionally been used to describe contrasts in consonants.

Vowels

In general, tense vowels are more close (and correspondingly have lower first formants) than their lax counterparts. Tense vowels are sometimes claimed to be articulated with a more advanced tongue root than lax vowels, but this varies, and in some languages, it is the lax vowels that are more advanced, or a single language may be inconsistent between front and back or high and mid vowels. [3] The traditional definition, that tense vowels are produced with more "muscular tension" than lax vowels, has not been confirmed by phonetic experiments. Another hypothesis is that lax vowels are more centralized than tense vowels. There are also linguists [4] who believe that there is no phonetic correlation to the tense–lax opposition.

In many Germanic languages, such as RP English, and Standard German tense vowels are longer in duration than lax vowels, but in Scots, Scottish English, General American English, and Icelandic, there is no such correlation. The standard variety of Yiddish has only lax vowels, and no tense vowels. [5]

Germanic languages prefer tense vowels in open syllables (so-called free vowels ) and lax vowels in closed syllables (so-called checked vowels ).

Consonants

Occasionally, tenseness has been used to distinguish pairs of contrasting consonants in languages. Korean, for example, has a three-way contrast among stops and affricates; the three series are often transcribed as [ptk] - [pʰtɕʰkʰ] - [p͈t͈ɕk͈]. The contrast between the [p] series and the [p͈] series is sometimes said to be a function of tenseness: the former are lax and the latter tense. In this case the definition of "tense" would have to include greater glottal tension; see Korean phonology.

In Ewe, /f/ and /v/ are articulated with a strong articulation, [f͈] and [v͈], to better distinguish them from weaker /ɸ/ and /β/.

In some dialects of Irish and Scottish Gaelic, there is a contrast between [l,lʲ,n,nʲ] and [ɫˑ,ʎˑ,nˠˑ,ɲˑ]. Again, the former set have sometimes been described as lax and the latter set as tense. It is not clear what phonetic characteristics other than greater duration would then be associated with tenseness.

Some researchers [6] have argued that the contrast in German, traditionally described as voice ([ptk] vs. [bdɡ]), is in fact better analyzed as tenseness since the latter set is voiceless in Southern German. German linguists call the distinction fortis and lenis rather than tense and lax. Tenseness is especially used to explain stop consonants of the Alemannic German dialects because they have two series of them that are identically voiceless and unaspirated. However, it is debated whether the distinction is really a result of different muscular tension and not of gemination.

See also

Related Research Articles

In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract, except for the h sound, which is pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract. Examples are and [b], pronounced with the lips; and [d], pronounced with the front of the tongue; and [g], pronounced with the back of the tongue;, pronounced throughout the vocal tract;, [v], and, pronounced by forcing air through a narrow channel (fricatives); and and, which have air flowing through the nose (nasals). Most consonants are pulmonic, using air pressure from the lungs to generate a sound. Very few natural languages are non-pulmonic, making use of ejectives, implosives, and clicks. Contrasting with consonants are vowels.

The term phonation has slightly different meanings depending on the subfield of phonetics. Among some phoneticians, phonation is the process by which the vocal folds produce certain sounds through quasi-periodic vibration. This is the definition used among those who study laryngeal anatomy and physiology and speech production in general. Phoneticians in other subfields, such as linguistic phonetics, call this process voicing, and use the term phonation to refer to any oscillatory state of any part of the larynx that modifies the airstream, of which voicing is just one example. Voiceless and supra-glottal phonations are included under this definition.

In phonetics, a plosive, also known as an occlusive or simply a stop, is a pulmonic consonant in which the vocal tract is blocked so that all airflow ceases.

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.

In phonetics and phonology, a semivowel, glide or semiconsonant is a sound that is phonetically similar to a vowel sound but functions as the syllable boundary, rather than as the nucleus of a syllable. Examples of semivowels in English are y and w in yes and west, respectively. Written in IPA, y and w are near to the vowels ee and oo in seen and moon, written in IPA. The term glide may alternatively refer to any type of transitional sound, not necessarily a semivowel.

The phonology of Standard German is the standard pronunciation or accent of the German language. It deals with current phonology and phonetics as well as with historical developments thereof as well as the geographical variants and the influence of German dialects.

In phonetics, a flap or tap is a type of consonantal sound, which is produced with a single contraction of the muscles so that one articulator is thrown against another.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Open front rounded vowel</span> Vowel sound represented by ⟨ɶ⟩ in IPA

The (near-)open front rounded vowel, or (near-)low front rounded vowel, is a type of vowel sound that has not been confirmed to be phonemic in any spoken language. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ⟨ɶ⟩, and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is &. The letter ⟨ɶ⟩ is the small caps rendition of ⟨Œ⟩. ⟨œ⟩, the lowercase version of the ligature, is used for the open-mid front rounded vowel.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Close front rounded vowel</span> Vowel sound represented by ⟨y⟩ in IPA

The close front rounded vowel, or high front rounded vowel, is a type of vowel sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ⟨y⟩, and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is y. Across many languages, it is most commonly represented orthographically as ⟨ü⟩ or ⟨y⟩ but also as ⟨u⟩ ; ⟨iu⟩/⟨yu⟩ ; ⟨уь⟩ ; or ⟨ү⟩.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Close-mid front rounded vowel</span> Vowel sound represented by ⟨ø⟩ in IPA

The close-mid front rounded vowel, or high-mid front rounded vowel, is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Open-mid front rounded vowel</span> Vowel sound represented by ⟨œ⟩ in IPA

The open-mid front rounded vowel, or low-mid front rounded vowel, is a type of vowel sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents the sound is ⟨œ⟩. The symbol œ is a lowercase ligature of the letters o and e. The letter ⟨ɶ⟩, a small capital version of the ⟨Œ⟩ ligature, is used for a different vowel sound: the open front rounded vowel.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Near-close near-front rounded vowel</span> Vowel sound represented by ⟨ʏ⟩ in IPA

The near-close front rounded vowel, or near-high front rounded vowel, is a type of vowel sound, used in some spoken languages.

Voice or voicing is a term used in phonetics and phonology to characterize speech sounds. Speech sounds can be described as either voiceless or voiced.

In phonetics, vowel roundedness is the amount of rounding in the lips during the articulation of a vowel. It is labialization of a vowel. When a rounded vowel is pronounced, the lips form a circular opening, and unrounded vowels are pronounced with the lips relaxed. In most languages, front vowels tend to be unrounded, and back vowels tend to be rounded. However, some languages, such as French, German and Icelandic, distinguish rounded and unrounded front vowels of the same height, and Vietnamese distinguishes rounded and unrounded back vowels of the same height. Alekano has only unrounded vowels. In the International Phonetic Alphabet vowel chart, rounded vowels are the ones that appear on the right in each pair of vowels. There are also diacritics, U+0339◌̹COMBINING RIGHT HALF RING BELOW and U+031C◌̜COMBINING LEFT HALF RING BELOW, to indicate greater and lesser degrees of rounding, respectively. Thus has less rounding than cardinal, and has more. These diacritics can also be used with unrounded vowels: is more spread than cardinal, and is less spread than cardinal.

In phonetics, nasalization is the production of a sound while the velum is lowered, so that some air escapes through the nose during the production of the sound by the mouth. An archetypal nasal sound is.

In linguistics, fortis and lenis, sometimes identified with 'tense' and 'lax', are pronunciations of consonants with relatively greater and lesser energy, respectively. English has fortis consonants, such as the p in pat, with a corresponding lenis consonant, such as the b in bat. Fortis and lenis consonants may be distinguished by tenseness or other characteristics, such as voicing, aspiration, glottalization, velarization, length, and length of nearby vowels. Fortis and lenis were coined for languages where the contrast between sounds such as 'p' and 'b' does not involve voicing.

Swedish has a large vowel inventory, with nine vowels distinguished in quality and to some degree in quantity, making 18 vowel phonemes in most dialects. Another notable feature is the pitch accent, a development which it shares with Norwegian. Swedish pronunciation of most consonants is similar to that of other Germanic languages.

In phonetics, advanced tongue root (ATR) and retracted tongue root (RTR) are contrasting states of the root of the tongue during the pronunciation of vowels in some languages, especially in Western and Eastern Africa, but also in Kazakh and Mongolian. ATR vs RTR was once suggested to be the basis for the distinction between tense and lax vowels in European languages such as German, but Ladefoged and Maddieson have indicated that the tongue root position in Germanic languages is not an independent gesture.

This article is about the sound system of the Navajo language. The phonology of Navajo is intimately connected to its morphology. For example, the entire range of contrastive consonants is found only at the beginning of word stems. In stem-final position and in prefixes, the number of contrasts is drastically reduced. Similarly, vowel contrasts found outside of the stem are significantly neutralized. For details about the morphology of Navajo, see Navajo grammar.

This article aims to describe the phonology and phonetics of central Luxembourgish, which is regarded as the emerging standard.

References

  1. Matthews, Peter Hugoe (2014). The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Linguistics. Oxford University PRess. p. 403.
  2. Halle, Morris (1977). "Tenseness, Vowel Shift, and the Phonology of the Back Vowels in Modern English." Linguistic Inquiry 8.4. p. 611.
  3. Ladefoged & Maddieson 1996, p. 302-4.
  4. Lass 1976, p. 1-39.
  5. Kleine, Ane (2003). "Standard Yiddish". Journal of the International Phonetic Association. 33 (2): 263. doi: 10.1017/S0025100303001385 .
  6. Jessen, Michael (1998). Phonetics and Phonology of Tense and Lax Obstruents in German. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. ISBN   90-272-1553-7.