Phonological classes of vowels

Because neither aspiration nor voicing is absolute, with intermediate degrees of both, the relative terms fortis and lenis are often used to describe a binary opposition between a series of consonants with higher (more positive) VOT, defined as fortis, and a second series with lower (more negative) VOT, defined as lenis. Of course, being relative, what fortis and lenis mean in one language will not in general correspond to what they mean in another.

 

1.7 Airstream mechanism

 

In phonetics, the airstream mechanism is the method by which airflow is created in the vocal tract. Along with phonation, it is one of two mandatory aspects of sound production; without these, there can be no speech sound.

The organ generating the airstream is called the initiatior; for this reason the production of airflow is called initiation. There are three initiators used in spoken human languages: thediaphragm together with the ribs and lungs (pulmonic mechanisms), the glottis (glottalic mechanisms), and the tongue (lingual or "velaric" mechanisms). Each may act by increasing pressure in the airstream or by reducing it with suction. These changes in pressure are often said to involve outward and inward airflow, and are therefore termed egressive and ingressivemechanisms; however, ingressive mechanisms often only reduce outward airflow. Of these six possible airstream mechanisms, four are found in words around the world:

• pulmonic egressive, where the air is pushed out of the lungs by the ribs and diaphragm; all human languages employ such sounds (such as vowels), and many use them exclusively.
• glottalic egressive, where the air column is pushed upward by the glottis. Such consonants are called ejectives.
• glottalic ingressive, where the air column is rarefied as the glottis moves downward. Such consonants are called implosives.
• lingual ingressive, AKA velaric ingressive, where the air in the mouth is rarefied by a downward movement of the tongue. These are the clicks.

These may be combined into airstream contours.

The Khoisan languages have pulmonic, ejective, and click consonants, the Chadic languages have pulmonic, implosive, and ejective consonants, and the Nguni languages utilize all four, pulmonic, click, implosive, and ejective, in normal vocabulary.

In interjections, the other two mechanisms may be employed. For example, in countries as diverse as Canada, Sweden, Turkey, and Togo, a pulmonic ingressive ("gasped" or "inhaled") vowel is used for back-channeling or to express agreement, and in France a lingual egressive (a "spurt") is used to express dismissal. The only language where such sounds are known to be contrastive in normal vocabulary is the ritual language Damin; however, that language appears to have been intentionally designed to be different from normal speech.

English Vowel and Consonant Sounds

Vowel Phonemes			Consonant Phonemes
01		pit	21		pit
02		pet	22		bit
03		pat	23		time
04		pot	24		door
05		luck	25		cat
06		good	26		get
07		ago	27		fan
08		meat	28		van
09		car	29		think
10		door	30		that
11		girl	31		send
12		too	32		zip
13		day	33		man
14		sky	34		nice
15		boy	35		ring
16		beer	36		leg
17		bear	37		rat
18		tour	38		wet
19		go	39		hat
20		cow	40		yet
			41		shop
			42		leisure
			43		chop
			44		jump

 

2. CLASSIFICATION OF VOWELS

 

2.1 What is vowel

 

A vowel is a type of sound for which there is no closure of the throat or mouth at any point where vocalization occurs. Vowels can be contrasted with consonants, which are sounds for which there are one or more points where air is stopped. In nearly all languages, words must contain at least one vowel. While a word can be formed without any consonants – such as the English words I or way – no word may consist of only consonants, without a vowel.

 

Vowels differ from consonants in two very important ways: they are articulated without any kind of obstruction in the oral cavity – i.e., the articulators do not form a complete or partial closure or a narrowed passage in the way of the exhaled air. On the other hand, vowels differ from consonants in their behaviour, too: while consonants typically occur in syllable marginal positions – they appear at the peripheries of the syllable – vowels form the very core of the syllable and occur in syllable central position.

Vowel sounds may be classified according to two types of factors: phonetic and phonological.

In the first case, classification is based on some articulatory characteristics while in the second it is some aspect of vowel behaviour that serves as the basis for classification.

 

2.2 Phonetic classes of vowels

 

Let me first examine what phonetic classes may be defined in the English vowel system.

In some vowels the position of the tongue is relatively stable during articulation; such vowels are called monophthongs. In other vowels, though, the position that the tongue occupies at the beginning of the vowel differs significantly from what it occupies at the end of the vowel; some tongue movement is involved. Such vowels are referred to as diphthongs (and triphthongs). We may also think of this difference as a difference in how many vowels are found within one syllable: in monophthongs there is one. Note though that triphthongs are not found in all dialects of English: those dialects that pronounce all underlying /r/'s – the so-called rhotic dialects.

 

A monophthong is simply a vowel. The word monophthong comes from the old Greek language. Mono means one or single, and the -phthong means soundor tone, from the basic word phthalein, which means to speak, create sound with the voice. The word monophthong shows that a vowel is spoken with exactly one tone and one mouth position. For example, when you say "teeth", then while you are creating the sound of the "ee", nothing changes for that sound. A monophthong can be a lexeme of a language and as such it can as well be a syllable. There is no shorter syllable than a single monophthong.

English monophthongs

Vowel Phonemes
Lips loosely spread. Tongue lax with less tension than / i: /		pit
Lips loosely spread and slighly wider apart than / ɪ /		pet
Lips neutrally open and slightly wider apart than / e /		pat
Open lip-rounding, wide open jaws, back of tongue low.		pot
Lips neutrally open. Open jaws. Centralized quality.		luck
Lips loose, but closely rounded. Tongue not as tense as in / u: /		good
Lips in neutral position. Centralized. Tongue slightly higher than in /ʌ/		ago
Lips spread. Tongue tense (front raised) with sides touching upper molars.		meat
Lips neutrally open and jaws far apart. Centre to back of tongue fully open.		car
Medium lip rounding. Tongue drawn back making no contact with upper molars.		door
Lips neutrally spread. Tongue slightly higher than /ə/ (no firm contact with upper molars)		girl
Lips closely rounded. Back of tongue high. Tense compared with /ʊ/		too

 

A diphthong (from Greek δίφθογγος, diphthongos, literally "two sounds" or "two tones"), also known as agliding vowel, refers to two adjacent vowel sounds occurring within the same syllable. In most dialects of English, the words eye, boy, andcow contain examples of diphthongs.

 

Diphthongs contrast with monophthongs, where only one vowel sound is heard in a syllable. Where two adjacent vowel sounds occur in different syllables, as in, for example, the English word re-elect, the result is described as hiatus, not as a diphthong. Diphthongs often form when separate vowels are run together in rapid speech during a conversation. However, there are also unitary diphthongs, as in the English examples above, which are heard by listeners as single-vowel sounds (phonemes).

English diphthongs

your tongue moves to:

your tongue moves to:

your tongue moves to:

 

 

On the other hand, vowels may be short or long – depending on their duration: long vowels are approximately twice as long as short ones. Note that diphthongs and triphthongs are just as long as long monophthongs. Whenever we refer to long vowels, we always mean long monophthongs, diphthongs and triphthongs together. Note that length in English varies depending on the environment – i.e., length is not a stable property. For more on length alternations.

 

Short vowels	Long vowels
ɪ ʊ e ɒ   ʌ æ	ɑ:  ɪ: u:  ɔ:  ɜ:	eɪ    aɪ    ɔɪ    ɑʊ    əʊ    ɪə     eə    ʊə	aɪə         ɑʊə
Monophtongs		Diphtongs	Triphtongs

 

To further demonstrate that length is not a purely phonetic property of English vowels, we may refer to the controversy of length marking: the vowel length of monophthongal – or pure – vowels is indicated with a colon. However, one of the so-called short monophthongs, the vowel /æ/ is just as long in actual pronunciation as any of the long monophthongs or diphthongs and it even undergoes the very same shortening process as long vowels do. However, its length is not indicated in transcription with the colon. The vowel /æ/ is categorized as a short vowel because it behaves like other short vowels do. The phonetic length of /æ/ may be due to the fact that during its production the lower jaw and the tongue are in their most open position, a gesture which might take long enough to cause a perceivable length difference.

Another important note concerning vowel length is due here: while most Hungarian short-long vowel pairs consist of vowels of more or less the same quality with just a length difference, English short-long vowel pairs always involve a quality difference, that is, there is no English short-long vowel pair in which the qualities of the two vowels are the same. This is also reflected in the phonetic symbols used to indicate them.

 

2.3 Phonological classes of vowels

 

As far as phonological classifications of vowels are concerned, the two major phonological classes are based on the type of syllable the vowel appears in. English behaves quite differently from Hungarian as far as stressed and unstressed syllables are concerned. On the one hand, while it is always the first syllable of the word that carries the main stress in Hungarian, it may be the first, second, third, etc. syllable of an English word that carries primary stress. On the other hand, English unstressed syllables have reduced vowels only, in the sense that these vowels are shorter, weaker in energy and closer to schwa /ə/ in place of articulation. Thus, in unstressed syllables only weak vowels – /ə/, /ɪ/ and /ʊ/ – fmay be found while in stressed syllables we may only find so-called full vowels – i.e., all the other vowels of English, also including /ɪ/ and /ʊ/, which, besides occurring in unstressed syllables, may also function as full vowels.

 

Within the class of full vowels we may distinguish two subclasses: tense and lax vowels. One has to be very careful when using these two terms as they are often used as phonetic labels, too. In a phonetic sense, these terms refer to the muscle bundles located at the backmost part of the tongue, against the back wall of the pharynx (throat). Whenever these muscles are tense, the vowel is tense (in a phonetic sense); when such muscle tenseness is not present, the vowel is lax (phonetically). However, we will use these terms in a purely phonological sense, i.e., to refer to a certain kind of vowel behaviour. (We might just as well call the two types of vowel Type1 and Type2 was it not for our wish to follow the tradition.) As we will show below, tense and lax vowels (in a phonological sense) occur in different types of environment.

 

Tense	Lax
Monophtongs		ɪ: u:  ɔ:		ɪ    e   æ   ʌ    ʊ    ɒ    ɑ:   ɜ:    ɔ:
Diphtongs and Triphtongs		eɪ    aɪ    ɔɪ    ɑʊ    əʊ    ɪə    eə   ʊə aɪə         ɑʊə

 

There are a few generalizations to be drawn on the basis of the above table: all short vowels are lax and all diphthongs and triphthongs are tense while long monophthongs are divided between the two classes. Non-high long monophthongs – that is /ɑ:/, /ɜ:/ and /ɔ:/ – are lax, except in the case of /ɔ:/

 

The behaviour of /ɔ:/ is twofold: sometimes it is tense, in other cases it is lax. There are two general types of spellings that indicate a lax /ɔ:/ while a further set of spellings represents the tense variant.

 

The following table sums up what we have discussed about the manner of articulation and the behaviour of vowels so far.

 

Full vowel						Weak vowel
Lax			Tense
Short	Long		Long
Monophtongs		ɪ ʊ  e  ɒ   ʌ  æ		ɑ:   ɜ:    ɔ:	ɪ:   u:    ɔ:			ɪ ʊ   ə
Diphtongs		–		–	eɪ  aɪ  ɔɪ  ɑʊ əʊ  ɪə  eə  ʊə			–
Triphtongs		–		–	aɪə         ɑʊə			–

 

Let me now turn to the places of articulation of vowels. Before I actually discuss these we have to point out that places of articulation are not as clearcut for vowels as for consonants for the very simple reason that while in consonants the place of articulation refers to the articulators producing some degree of obstruction, in vowels it is simply inapplicable as they do not involve any kind of obstruction. Instead of referring to obstruction sites, I will use three criteria to classify vowels according to horizontal tongue position, vertical tongue position and lip rounding.

The places of articulation of the monophthongs of RP are the following:

 

Front	Central		Back
unrounded	unrounded		unrounded	rounded
Close	/ɪ:/ beat	–		–	/u:/ boot
Half-close	/ɪ/ bit	/ə/ ago /ɜ:/ burn		–	/ʊ/ put
Half-open	/e/ bet			–	/ɔ:/ bought
Open	/æ/ bat	/ʌ/ but		/ɑ:/ bar	/ɒ/ Bob

 

I have to note that besides the terms used in the table above, close vowels are often referred to as high, open vowels as low, while the ones inbetween as mid. As it can be seen from the above table the following generalizations may be drawn: front and central vowels are unrounded while back vowels are rounded, except for /ɑ:/.

 

Diphthongs may be classified according to several factors. On the one hand, we may distinguish them according to their second component: if it is a schwa /ə/, then we talk about centring diphthongs. In all other diphthongs the second component is more close than the first, and these are thus called closing diphthongs; those that end in /ɪ/ are fronting (and closing) while those ending in /ʊ/ are backing (and closing). On the other hand, closing diphthongs may be classified according to the articulatory distance between the two components: the diphthongs /eɪ/, /əʊ/ are narrow (and closing), while the rest, /aɪ/, /ɑʊ/, /ɔɪ/ are the so-called low-starting or wide diphthongs.

This is summarized in the table below:

 

Centring	Closing
	Fronting		Backing
Narrow		ɪə   eə  ʊə		eɪ		əʊ
Wide		–		aɪ    ɔɪ		ɑʊ

CONCLUSIONS

 

Certainly, there is a relationship between the English sound system and the English spelling system.  However, the relationship between sound and spelling is neither straightforward nor obvious.  If it were,  many of us would spell more accurately than we do.  What is obvious is that the sounds of English are not the same as the letters of English.  

Although it is obvious in an intellectual sense that sounds and letters are not the same thing,  most students working through this appendix will on occasion make errors through mistaking sounds for letters.            

The patterning found in the sound system of English is a reflection of  the physiology of the vocal tract.  The patterns of the English sound system  make sense in terms of how sounds are made (and, particularly, for vowels, how sounds are perceived).            

The basic principle involved is modification of the air flow.  When making a sound air moves through the vocal cords in larynx, through the throat, and on out through the mouth or nose.  As it moves,  the air flow is modified through vibrating the vocal cords, by opening (or not opening) the velum to let part of the flow go out through the nose, and by constricting the air flow partially or completely in the mouth.            

Once the English sound system is understood,  it becomes easier to make sense out of the spelling system of English and it becomes possible to make some sense out of the problems all students have learning to spell and out of the problems speakers of other languages have in learning to pronounce English.   

 

 

 

 

 

 

LITERATURE

 

1. http://angol.btk.ppke.hu/tanegysegek/bbk/Chapter3.pdf

2. http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-a-consonant.htm

3. http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-a-vowel.htm

4. http://www.btinternet.com/~ted.power/esl0105.html

5. http://www.btinternet.com/~ted.power/folkchart.htm

6. http://www.btinternet.com/~ted.power/esl0104b.html

7. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consonant

8. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Place_of_articulation

9. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manner_of_articulation

10. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonation

11. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voice_onset_time

12. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airstream_mechanism