Week 5: The Phonetics of Vowels

Oct. 10th, 2024 Week 5 (Ch.4): Vowel Sounds, their articulation and acoustics

1. Intro to Vowel Space

   1. Definition: how are vowels produced?

      1. In contrast to consonants, vowels have open articulation

      2. We characterize vowels as high, low, front, back, lip-rounding, 1ax/tense

      3. We don't use “place” or “manner” dimensions, which are reserved for consonants

         1. POA (place of articulation): bilabial (b,m,p), labio-dential (th)

         2. “Place” dimension is used to describe how non-tongue articulators (lips, palate, teeth) are moving together in contact to produce sounds

   2. Chapter focus:

      1. Cardinal vowels

      2. Vowel dimensions

      3. Positional variation in English vowels.

2. The Landscape of Vowels

   1. Speech sounds are organized in consonant-vowel sequences, aka CV-structure

   2. Syllable structure: CV Is the basically syllable

      1. BA, PA, DA,

      2. All languages have this structure

   3. Vowels as the backdrop for consonantal constrictions, forming syllable nuclei

      1. Syllables consist of 3 parts:

         1. Onset (beginning sound)

         2. Nucleus (Vowel)

         3. Coda (last sound in the syllable); coda position can be empty

         4. In examples like, BA, then onset is B (stop), and the nucleus is A

         5. In other examples, CAT [khaet],

            1. Onset == [kh]

            2. Nucleus == [ae]

            3. Coda == [t]

      2. Stress patterns

         1. Stress is when a syllable is more prominent than the other syllables in a word

         2. Prominence can be defined/measured in the following ways:

            1. Longer duration

            2. Louder

            3. Higher pitch

            4. More clearly articulated than others
               

3. Danial Jones's Cardinal Vowels

   1. Definition: Cardinal vowels are vowel extremes that are used as markers to transcribe or in reference to other vowels.

   2. How many cardinal vowels do we have: 8 primary cardinal vowels (Jones, 1996)

3. Cardinal vowels serve as reference points for vowel space; [i], [a], [u] are recognized as the extremes

*** Cardinal vowels are extreme abstractions, the actual vowels of actual languages are usually far less extreme!

• Original Characterization

  • Originally thought of in terms of where the highest point of the tongue is located

  • Cardinal vowel #1 ([ i ]): as far forward and up as possible n Cardinal vowel #5 ([ o ]): as far back and down as possible

• A more meaningful (re) characterization:

  • in terms of the vowels' formant frequencies (F1 and F2)

  • Gives a closer approximation of how we perceive the auditory qualities of these vowels (incl. the perceived auditory distance between vowels)

• Daniel Jones (1881 - 1967)

  • One of the greatest phoneticians of all time

  • President of IPA 1950-1967 (and Secretary for some 20+ years before that)

  • First linguist to use the term phoneme in (roughly) its current sense

  • The basis for Prof. Henry Higgins in G. B. Shaw's Pygmalion (and the musical and film My Fair Lady)
    

• Secondary Cardinal Vowels

  • #9 through #16: obtained from #1W8 by changing the lip rounding

    • adding lip rounding to #1 through #5:

      • - [ i e e a o ] —› [ y a œ ce o ]

    • removing lip rounding from #6 through #8:

      • - [ o o u ] —› [ a x m ]

  • #17 and #18: approximately half-way between [ i ] (#1) and [ u ] (#8)

    • without lip rounding (#17, [ i ])

    • with lip rounding (#18, [ u ])

• Central Vowel

  • refers to vowel sounds produced with the tongue positioned halfway between a front vowel and a back vowel

  • Primary central vowel: On the IPA —+ [a] (schwa), as in the first syllable of"about."

    • typically produced with the tongue positioned in the middle of the mouth, making it the most neutral vowel sound

  • Other central vowels

    • [i] (close central unrounded vowel)

    • [u] (close central rounded vowel)

ri NOTE: Most phoneticians/phonologists instead use [ a ] to denote a low central vowel

4. Dimensions of Vowel Quality

   1. Height and backness

      1. Height: high, mid, low

      2. Backness: front, central/mid, back

   2. Tense/lax:

      1. Contrasts: tongue root position and vowel length

      2. Lax vowels: [I,E,o,u]

      3. Tense vowels: [i,e,o,u]

         1. Long vowels in English

         2. We can end a syllable in tense vowels but not lax vowels (in English)

      4. Tense —› refers to muscular tensions of the tongue root

      5. In English, tense vowels tend to be diphthongized, with upward movement of the tongue body after producing the initial vowel sound.

         1. Bee [bi] or [bij]

         2. Eight, [ei t]

         3. Hope, [houp]

   3. Rounding:

      1. Lip rounding; occurs for back vowels and poses articulation challenges with low vowels

      2. Rounding quality is predictable from height and backness

         1. Only non-low, (mid, and high) back vowels are round
            

   4. Central vowels:

      1. Vowels articulated with the tongue positioned in the middle

      2. Central vowels are peripheral, not cardinal vowels, because they are not very distinct from each other.

      3. Languages need to have distinct-sounding vowels to make their words perceivably different and messages understood.

   5. Contrasts among low vowels

      1. Back & bake sound very different, so we know that they are phonemic; changing of the vowel changes the meaning of words.

      2. However, in various dialects of English (e.g, British and Boston dialects), people can have varying low vowel spaces, but still meanings are communicated without interference.

         1. Cot  caught merger

         2. Some vowels are merged together, some vowels are more distinct, but do not affect meaning or comprehension

5. Nasality and Voice quality

   1. In addition to height, backness, rounding, vowels can also be different with regard to nasalization and voice quality

   2. Nasalization occurs to vowels commonly before a nasal consonants; as a phonological assimilation process

      1. E.g., mom; can,

      2. Diacritic for nasalized vowels: a

   3. Nasalization can also happen to show phonemic contrasts

      1. In French and Portugues, a nasalized vowel and a non-nasalized vowels make the words they are part of different

   4. Voice quality distinctions:

      1. Breathy (vocal folds are lax): [3]

      2. Creaky (when vocal folds are tense): [a]

      3. Devoiced (whisper): [a]

6. Length and Diphthongs

   1. In some languages, all vowels have length contrasts (e.g., for each short vowel, there is a long vowel counterpart that shares the same dimension in height and backness, but only differ in length)

   2. Diphthongs, [ai] (‘bike’), [au] (‘loud’), [oi] (‘oil’

7. Tone

   1. Tonal languages vs. non-tonal languages

      1. In tonal languages, pitch difference change the meaning; e.g, Mandarin and THai

   2. Intonation

      1. Question vs. statement will be realized differently

   3. Above 70% of world's languages are tonal; most languages spoken in Europe are primarily non-tonal, creating the misconception that non-tonal languages are more natural or prevalent.
      

8. Positional Variants of English Vowels:

   1. Nasalization happens before nasal consonants

   2. Tense vowels tend to become diphthongized

      1. Eight, bake, beetle, hope,

   3. Vowel lengthened in open syllables and before voiced consoannts:

      1. If we have a CV-syllable (open), the V is long; but in CVC, V can be short

      2. CVC, where the second C is voiced, then this V nucleus is likely a long vowel.

         1. bead, [bid] ; [i] is long before the voiced stop [d]