Vowel diagram

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A vowel chart for southern California English, showing how its vowels lie within the IPA vowel trapezium. California English vowel chart.svg
A vowel chart for southern California English, showing how its vowels lie within the IPA vowel trapezium.
A schematic vowel triangle arranged according to formants. Vowel triange, cardinal vowels.png
A schematic vowel triangle arranged according to formants.

A vowel diagram or vowel chart is a schematic arrangement of the vowels. Depending on the particular language being discussed, it can take the form of a triangle or a quadrilateral. Vertical position on the diagram denotes the vowel closeness, with close vowels at the top of the diagram, and horizontal position denotes the vowel backness, with front vowels at the left of the diagram. [2] Vowels are unique in that their main features do not contain differences in voicing, manner, or place (articulators). Vowels differ only in the position of the tongue when voiced. The tongue moves vertically and horizontally within the oral cavity. Vowels are produced with at least a part of their vocal tract obstructed. [3]

Contents

In the vowel diagram, convenient reference points are provided for specifying tongue position. The position of the highest point of the arch of the tongue is considered to be the point of articulation of the vowel. The vertical dimension of the vowel diagram is known as vowel height, which includes high, central (mid), or low vowels. The horizontal dimension of the vowel diagram includes tongue advancement and identifies how far forward the tongue is located in the oral cavity during production.

Vowels are also categorized by the tenseness or laxness of the tongue. The schwa [ə] is in the center of the chart and is frequently referred to as the neutral vowel. Here, the vocal tract is in its neutral state and creates a near perfect tube. For other vowels, there is a necessary movement of the vocal tract and tongue away from the neutral position, either up/down or backward/forward. The next dimension for vowels are tense/lax; here we can distinguish high/mid/low dimensions and the front/central/back dimensions. In other words, all vowels but schwas. Examples of tense and lax vowels are [i], [o] and [ɪ], [ɔ], respectively.

Another characteristic of vowels is rounding. For example, for [u], the lips are rounded, but for [i], the lips are spread. Vowels can be categorized as rounded or unrounded. Rounded vowels are [u], [ʊ], [o], [ɔ] and the unrounded vowels are [i], [ɪ], [e], [ɛ], [æ], [ɑ], [ʌ], [ə]. [4]

The vowel systems of most languages can be represented by vowel diagrams. Usually, there is a pattern of even distribution of marks on the chart, a phenomenon that is known as vowel dispersion. For most languages, the vowel system is triangular. Only 10% of languages, including English, have a vowel diagram that is quadrilateral. Such a diagram is called a vowel quadrilateral or a vowel trapezium. [2]

Different vowels vary in pitch. For example, high vowels, such as [i] and [u], tend to have a higher fundamental frequency than low vowels, such as [a]. Vowels are distinct from one another by their acoustic form or spectral properties. Spectral properties are the speech sound's fundamental frequency and its formants.

Each vowel in the vowel diagram has a unique first and second formant, or F1 and F2. The frequency of the first formant refers to the width of the pharyngeal cavity and the position of the tongue on a vertical axis and ranges from open to close. The frequency of the second formant refers to the length of the oral cavity and the position of the tongue on a horizontal axis. [i], [u], [a] are often referred to as point vowels because they represent the most extreme F1 and F2 frequencies. [a] has a high F1 frequency because of the narrow size of the pharynx and the low position of the tongue. The F2 frequency is higher for [i] because the oral cavity is short and the tongue is at the front of the mouth. The F2 frequency is low in the production of [u] because the mouth is elongated and the lips are rounded while the pharynx is lowered. [5]

The IPA vowel chart has the cardinal vowels and is displayed in the form of a trapezium. By definition, no vowel sound can be plotted outside of the IPA trapezium because its four corners represent the extreme points of articulation.

The vowel diagrams of most real languages are not so extreme. In English, for example, high vowels are not as high as the corners of the IPA trapezium, and front vowels are not as front. [2] [6]

IPA vowel diagram with added material

The official vowel chart of the International Phonetic Alphabet does not include vowel symbols with added diacritics as shown here, and only gives labels for the heights "close", "close-mid", "open-mid", and "open" (shown here in bold).

See also

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Formant</span> Spectrum of phonetic resonance in speech production, or its peak

In speech science and phonetics, a formant is the broad spectral maximum that results from an acoustic resonance of the human vocal tract. In acoustics, a formant is usually defined as a broad peak, or local maximum, in the spectrum. For harmonic sounds, with this definition, the formant frequency is sometimes taken as that of the harmonic that is most augmented by a resonance. The difference between these two definitions resides in whether "formants" characterise the production mechanisms of a sound or the produced sound itself. In practice, the frequency of a spectral peak differs slightly from the associated resonance frequency, except when, by luck, harmonics are aligned with the resonance frequency.

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.

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A near-close vowel or a near-high vowel is any in a class of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a near-close vowel is that the tongue is positioned similarly to a close vowel, but slightly less constricted.

A mid vowel is any in a class of vowel sounds used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a mid vowel is that the tongue is positioned midway between an open vowel and a close vowel.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mid central vowel</span> Vowel sound represented by the schwa, ⟨ə⟩

The mid central vowel is a type of vowel sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ⟨ə⟩, a rotated lowercase letter e, which is called a "schwa".

A front vowel is a class of vowel sounds used in some spoken languages, its defining characteristic being that the highest point of the tongue is positioned as far forward as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction that would otherwise make it a consonant. Front vowels are sometimes also called bright vowels because they are perceived as sounding brighter than the back vowels.

A central vowel, formerly also known as a mixed vowel, is any in a class of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a central vowel is that the tongue is positioned halfway between a front vowel and a back vowel.

A back vowel is any in a class of vowel sound used in spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a back vowel is that the highest point of the tongue is positioned relatively back in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant. Back vowels are sometimes also called dark vowels because they are perceived as sounding darker than the front vowels.

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

The open front unrounded vowel, or low front unrounded vowel, is a type of vowel sound used in some spoken languages. It is one of the eight primary cardinal vowels, not directly intended to correspond to a vowel sound of a specific language but rather to serve as a fundamental reference point in a phonetic measuring system.

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

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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.

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The Romic Alphabet, sometimes known as the Romic Reform, is a phonetic alphabet proposed by Henry Sweet. It descends from Ellis's Palaeotype alphabet and English Phonotypic Alphabet, and is the direct ancestor of the International Phonetic Alphabet. In Romic every sound had a dedicated symbol, and every symbol represented a single sound. There were no capital letters; there were letters derived from small capitals, though these were distinct letters.

In phonetics and phonology, relative articulation is description of the manner and place of articulation of a speech sound relative to some reference point. Typically, the comparison is made with a default, unmarked articulation of the same phoneme in a neutral sound environment. For example, the English velar consonant is fronted before the vowel compared to articulation of before other vowels. This fronting is called palatalization.

References

  1. ↑ Ladefoged, Peter (1999). "American English". Handbook of the International Phonetic Association. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 41–44. ISBN   0-521-63751-1.
  2. 1 2 3 Paul Skandera and Peter Burleigh (2005). A Manual of English Phonetics and Phonology. Gunter Narr Verlag. pp. 33–34. ISBN   3823361252.
  3. ↑ Cancio, Mary Lou (2007). Functional Phonetics Workbook. San Diego, CA: Plural Publishing.
  4. ↑ Russell, Kevin (27 November 2005). "Describing English vowels". Phonetics. University of Manitoba . Retrieved 18 April 2013.
  5. ↑ Eva M. Fernández and Helen Smith Cairns (2011). Fundamentals of Psycholinguistics . Wiley-Blackwell. pp.  158–159. ISBN   9781405191470.
  6. ↑ Heinz J. Giegerich (1992). English Phonology: An Introduction. Cambridge University Press. pp. 14–15. ISBN   0521336031.
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