How do different phonetic contexts modify vowel length in english
How do different phonetic contexts modify vowel length in english
The system of vowel phonemes. Problems of diphthongs and vowel length
The following 20 vowel phonemes are distinguished in BBC English (RP): [i:, a:, o:, u:, з:, i, e, æ, σ, υ, л(типа крышка домика), ə; ei, ai, oi, аυ, eυ, υə, iə].
Principles of classification provide the basis for the establishment of the following distinctive oppositions:
1. Stability of articulation
1.1. monophthongs vs. diphthongs
1.2. diphthongs vs. diphthongoids
2. Position of the tongue
2.1. horizontal movement of the tongue
a) front vs. central
cab — curb, bed — bird
b) back vs. central
2.2. vertical movement of the tongue
The English diphthongs are, like the affricates, the object of a sharp phonological controversy, whose essence is the same as in the case of affricates are the English diphthongs biphonemic sound complexes or composite monophonemic entities?
Diphthongs are defined differently by different authors. One definition is based on the ability of a vowel to form a syllable. Since in a diphthong only one element serves as a syllabic nucleus, a diphthong is a single sound. Another definition of a diphthong as a single sound is based on the instability of the second element. The 3d group of scientists defines a diphthong from the accentual point of view: since only one element is accented and the other is unaccented, a diphthong is a single sound.
D. Jones defines diphthongs as unisyllabic gliding sounds in the articulation of which the organs of speech start from one position and then glide to another position.
N.S. Trubetzkoy states that a diphthong should be (a) unisyllabic, that is the parts of a diphthong cannot belong to two syllables; (b) monophonemic with gliding articulation; (c) its length should not exceed the length of a single phoneme.
In accordance with the principle of structural simplicity and economy American descriptivists liquidated the diphthongs in English as unit phonemes.
The same phonological criteria may be used for justifying the monophonemic treatment of the English diphthongs as those applicable to the English affricates. They are the criteria of articulatory, morphophonological (and, in the case of diphthongs, also syllabic) indivisibility, commutability and duration. Applied to the English diphthongs, all these criteria support the view of their monophonemic status.
Qualitative difference is the main relevant feature that serves to differentiate long and short vowel phonemes because quantitative characteristics of long vowels depend on the position they occupy in a word:
(a) they are the longest in the terminal position: bee, bar, her;
(b) they are shorter before voiced consonants: bead, hard, cord;
(c) they are the shortest before voiceless consonants: beet, cart.
THE PHENOMENON OF REDUCTION
Q Types of reduction
Q The phenomenon of reduction
REDUCTION
LESSON 7
CHECK YOURSELF
Questions and tasks:
1. According to the stability of articulation there are three
groups of vowels. Do you think it is enough to distinguish
only two groups: monophthongs and diphthongs?
2. Phoneticians speak of front vowels and back vowels. What
characteristic do all the front vowels have in common that is
different from the back vowels?
3. What is the difference between front and front-retracted vowels?
4. What is the difference between back and back-advanced
vowels?
5. What makes central and front vowels different?
6. What characteristic makes close vowels unlike mid and open ones?
7. What would you tell your fellow-student to prove the necessity of distinguishing narrow and broad variants of close,
mid and open vowels?
8. What is the difference between free and checked vowels?
9. How do different phonetic contexts modify vowel length in
English?
10. Can the location of word stress and intonation influence
vowel length?
11. Are there any historically long and short vowels in English?
Key words and expressions:
vowels, unstressed syllables, reduction, historical process, weakening, shortening, disappearance, unstressed position, phonetic phenomenon, lexical changes, grammatical changes, retain, non-reduced, compound words, borrowing, rhythm, sentence stress, energy of breath, partial loss, complete loss, lexical significance, form-words, auxiliary verbs, modal verbs, personal pronouns, possessive pronouns, intonation group, phrases
In English as well as in Ukrainian vowels in unstressed syllables are usually reduced. The laws of reduction, in these languages are not the same, however.
Reduction is a historical process of weakening, shortening or disappearance of vowel sounds in unstressed positions. This phonetic phenomenon, as well as assimilation, is closely connected with the general development of the language system. Reduction reflects the process of lexical and grammatical changes.
The neutral sound represents the reduced form of almost any vowel or diphthong in the unstressed position.
There is also a tendency to retain the quality of the unstressed vowel sound, e.g. retreat, programme, situate.
Non-reduced unstressed sounds are often retained in:
a) compound words, e.g. blackboard, oilfield;
b) borrowings from the French and other languages, e.g.
bourgeoisie, kolkhoz.
Reduction is closely connected not only with word stress but also with rhythm and sentence stress. Stressed words are pronounced with great energy of breath. Regular loss of sentence stress of certain words is connected with partial or complete loss of their lexical significance. These words play the part of form-words in a sentence.
So reduction is realized:
a) in unstressed syllables within words;
b) in unstressed form-words, auxiliary and modal verbs, personal and possessive pronouns within intonation groups and
phrases.
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Sports Report from Channel 4
Announcer: This morning the Roarers football team arrived back from York. Paul
Short is our sports reporter, and he was at the airport.
Paul Short: Good morning. This is Paul Short. All the footballers are walking
towards me. Here’s George Ball, the goalkeeper. Good morning,
George Ball: Good morning. Are you a reporter?
Paul Short: Yes. I’m from Channel 4. Please tell our audience about the football
match with York.
George Ball: Well, it was awful. We lost. And the score was four, forty–four. But
it wasn’t my fault.
Paul Short: Whose fault was it?
George Ball: The forwards’.
Paul Short: The forwards’?.
George Ball: Yes, the forwards’. They were always falling down or losing the
Review questions and tasks.
1. What is the vowel quantity and quality?
2. According to what main principles are English vowels classified?
3. Name three groups of vowels that may be revealed according to the stability of articulation.
4. Characterize the groups of vowels according to the position of the tongue both in vertical and horizontal directions.
5. State the major difference between rounded and unrounded vowels. Name them.
6. How do different phonetic contexts modify vowel length in English?
Section 1
Make a careful study of the text below and pick out the terms related to phonetics.
Intonation
Intonation functions in various languages in a different way. The English intonation is very specific and for most foreign learners it is difficult to reproduce it. Some British phoneticians even say that for a foreign learner of English it is more important to acquire good intonation habits than to articulate the sounds perfectly.
Intonation is considered to be one of the components of pronunciation. The others are: speech sounds, the syllabic structure of words and word stress.
Intonation may be defined as a unity of (1) speech melody, (2) sentence-stress (accent), (3) speech tempo, and (4) voice quality (timbre).
The pitch of the voice does not stay on the same level while the sentence is pronounced. It rises and falls on the vowels and voice consonants. These falls and rises form definite patterns, typical of English, and are called speech melody.
Speech melody is made of falls and rises of the voice pitch. The word that is most important for the meaning of the sentence is made prominent by stress and a special moving tone. This special tone is the result of a change in the pitch, which either falls or rises, or changes its movement first in one direction, then in another. Other words essential for the meaning are also stressed, but the pitch of these words remains unchanged. Articles, prepositions, auxiliary, modal and link verbs are usually unstressed.
The rate of speech (speech tempo) is not constant. It is the speed with which sentences are pronounced. Closely connected with the tempo of speech is its rhythm (= a sequence of stressed and unstressed syllables). The English rhythm is not easy for a foreign learner to acquire. The timbre of the voice changes in accordance with the emotions experienced by the speaker.
All these above-mentioned phonetic features of a sentence form a complex unity, called intonation / prosody.
Every speaking voice has the normal range (i.e. an interval between its lower and upper limits). We may distinguish 3 pitch levels: high, medium, low.
voice 
_ _ high pitch level_ _ _
range _ _ medium _ pitch level _ _ pitch range
_ _ low _ _ pitch level _ _ _
The interval between two pitch levels is called the pitch range. Speech melody together with sentence stress is indicated with the help of dashes, curves and dots. A dot ( · ) denotes an unstressed syllable. A dash (— ) represents a stressed syllable pronounced with level pitch. A downward curve ( ) represents a stressed syllable pronounced with a fall in pitch within that syllable. An upward curve ( ) represents a stressed syllable pronounced with a rise in pitch within that syllable. Pitch ranges may be normal, wide and narrow.
In the text intonation is indicated by means of tonetic stress marks (vertical or slanting).
e.g. He was ‘glad to ‘meet her in the `street.
On the staves we may picture the speech melody of this sentence as follows:
Intonation patterns may consist of one or more syllables of various pitch levels. Pitch-and-stress sections of an intonation pattern are as follows: the pre-head, the head, the nucleus and the tail. The most important of these elements is the nucleus (the final stressed syllable). The nucleus can be followed by one or more unstressed or partially stressed syllables called the tail. The head consists of the syllables beginning with the first stressed syllables up to the last one. The pre-head includes unstressed and half-stressed syllables preceding the head. The nucleus and the tail form the terminal tone.
Section 2
[ u ]
( back-advanced, close (broad variant), rounded, short )
I. Observe the position of the lips and the tongue for the sound [u ]. Read the
words in the columns. Pay attention to the positional length of [ u ].
II. Read the sentences. Follow the tonetic marks.
1. It looks good. Перспективы хорошие.
2. Here’s your cook-book. Вот ваша кулинарная книга.
3. Put your foot down. Положите этому конец.
4. Keep a good look out. Будь внимателен.
5. Fuller took good aim. Фуллер тщательно прицелился.
6. Would you help the woman, if you could? Помогите, пожалуйста, этой
III. Observe the correct pronunciation of the rhythmic groups and the vowel [u].
‘Have a ‘look at the `book. | ‘Have a ‘look at this `book | which I ‘found ‘near a `brook. | ‘Have a ‘look at this `book | which I ‘found at a ‘brook and ‘gave to her `cook.||
IV. Match the following English idioms, proverbs and sayings with their Russian
equivalents. Make up situations to illustrate their usage.
1. by hook or by crook a. оказать дружескую услугу
2. to beat about the bush b. Все проверяется на практике.
3. The proof of the pudding is in the eating c. ходить вокруг да около
4. put one’s foot in it d. любой ценой
5. to be put to the push e. на хорошем счету у кого-то
6. in smb’s good books f. отложить в долгий ящик
7. do smb. a good turn g. попасть впросак
Section 3
I. Tick the words you recognize in the sentences you hear:
1. a) cock; b) cook 1. a) look; b) Luke
2. a) lock; b) look 2. a) full; b) fool
3. a) god; b) good 3. a) pull; b) pool
4. a) cod; b) could 4. a) fullish; b) foolish
5. a) Poss; b) Puss
6. a) Brockhurst; b) Brookhurst
II. Listen to the dialogue and learn it by heart.
A Lost Book
Mr. Cook: Woman! Could you tell me where you’ve put my book?
Mrs. Cook: Isn’t it on the bookshelf?
Mr. Cook: No. The bookshelf is full of your cookery books.
Mrs. Cook: Then you should look in the bedroom, shouldn’t you?
Mr. Cook: I’ve looked. You took that book and put it somewhere, didn’t you?
Mrs. Cook: The living-room?
Mr. Cook: No. I’ve looked. I’m going to put all my books in a box and lock it!
Mrs. Cook: Look, Mr. Cook! It’s on the floor next to your foot.
Vowels in context
Vowels
In the production of vowel sounds, the articulators do not come very close together, and the pasage of the air stream is relatively unobstructed. Vowels cannot easily be described in terms of ‘a place of articulation’. Instead, they are classified in terms of an abstract vowel spacewhich is represented by the four-sided figure known as the ‘Vowel Quadrilateral’ (trapezium) or Vowel Chart. This space bears a relation, though not an exact one, to the position of the tongue in vowel production (Figure 6).
For the vowel labelled /i:/ in heed the body of the tongue is displaced forwards and upwards in the mouth, towards the hard palate. By taking it to the extreme position (after which the air becomes turbulent, resulting in a fricative) we can get the first reference point for vowel description. Since the tongue is near the roof of the mouth this vowel is described as close,and since the highest point of the tongue is at the front of the area where vowel articulations are possible, it is described as front.
Conversely, for the vowel labelled /a:/ as in father, the tongue body is displaced downwards and backwards, narrowing the pharynx. The most extreme version of this sound is taken as a second reference point. The space between the tongue and the roof of the mouth is as large as possible, so this vowel is described as open,and the tongue is near the back of the mouth, so it is described as back.
The positions of the tongue for /u:/, a close backvowel in doom, and for /ae/ in RPcat, a front openvowel, will also provide fixed references. By joining the circles representing the highest points of the tongue in the four references we can get the boundary of the space within which vowels can be produced. The vowel space can be stylized as the quadrilateral in which two fully front vowels /e/ and /e/ are defined by auditory impressions between /i:/ and /ae/, and two fully back vowels, /э:/ and /n/, are defined as the two steps between /u:/ and /a:/ (Figure 7).
As a result we will have four degrees of closeness-openness for English: high (close), mid-high, mid-low (mid-open), low (open)and three divisions along the front-back dimension: front, central, back.The amount of four vertical and three horizontal divisions is maximal for any language of the world. In Russian, for instance, there is only one low open vowel [a], so the vowel chart will look like a triangle (Figure 8):
The position of the lips varies considerably in different English vowels. They are generally closer together in the mid and high back vowels, as /u, u:, o:, t>, эи, аи/ in book, food, cord, cot, coat, cow. Vowels may be described as being rounded(with lip rounding) or unrounded(the lips are in the neutral position). In English lip rounding is not contrastive because no two vowels are contrasted in being rounded or unrounded without a change in quality which always comes first, but it is an indispensable feature of the vowels listed above.
The features we have looked at are the most important ones, but there are many other ways in which vowels differ from each other. Relatively slight movements of the tongue produce quite distinct auditory differences in vowel quality.If the quality of a vowel stays unchanged during its articulation, the term pure vowel,or monophthong,is used, as in red, car, sit, sat. If there is an evident change in quality, it is a gliding vowel.If two auditory elements are involved, the vowel is referred to as a diphthong,e.g. light, say, go; if three elements, as a triphthong,e.g. fire, hour (which tend to be monophthongs today).
Note: In American English historically long vowels and diphthongs are defined as one group of tensevowels, and the glides of diphthongs are not indicated in the symbols: /e/, for example, is a symbol of diphthong /ei/, /o/ is a symbol of the British diphthong /эо/, actually pronounced by Americans as [oo]. The reason for it is that long vowels and diphthongs have a lot in common: they are peripheral in the vowel space, and therefore long and tense; long monophthongs are also diphthongized, at least /i:/ and /u:/ certainly are. Incidentally, these vowels are represented in American books as /i/ and /u/, with length unmarked. The facts show that classification depends on the framework of the school and the author.
Yet another way of classifying vowels is in terms of the amount of muscular tensionrequired to produce them: vowels articulated in extreme positions are more tensethan those articulated nearer the centre of the mouth, which are lax:cf. seat vs. sit, flute vs. foot.
There are also differences in vowel length,and some languages contrast longand shortvowels. British English, RP accent, for example, is claimed to have 20 vowels, usually divided into the following groups:
• shortvowels: i, e, зе, л, d, и, з
• longvowels: i:, а:, з:, о:, и:
• diphthongs:ei, ai, or, au, эи, is, еэ, из
InEnglish longvowels and diphthongshappen to be more peripheralsounds which require more tensionand timefor their articulation, and they also have specific vowel qualityto identify them. Therefore, for the English language classification of vowels into longand shortalso means grouping them into tenseand lax,while the identity of each particular vowel may rest on vowel qualityalone. In other words, all longvowels and diphthongsare longand tense; shortvowels are lax.There are no two vowels in English which are different in length or tenseness alone as there is always a distinctive vowel quality to identify each vowel. This accounts for the fact that vowel classifications in English are normally based on vowel qualityalone.
The long/short, tense/laxcategories of vowels are also distinguished from the point of view of energy discharge: shortvowels are checkeddue to the accompanying glottal activity, involving a rapid energy discharge in a short time interval, while longvowels are unchecked(sometimes called freebecause of the fading nature of energy discharge), which applies to all non-glottalized sounds, signalled acoustically by a lower energy discharge over a large time interval.
To complete the list of possible vowel distinctions in different languages we can say that some languages have nasalizedvowels in addition to normal (oral)ones; in these some of the air-flow is allowed to escape through the nose. French is a well-known example — the vowels in fin, bon, dans, brun are nasalized. Among other European languages, Portuguese and Polish also have nasalized vowels. In English nasalized vowels are pronounced under certain circumstances, before a nasal consonant, for example, in men but this quality change is allophonic, i.e. it does not change the meaning of a word (see Part II. Phonology).
In summary, vowels can be classified in terms of the following factors among which the first three are most important for English vowel quality:
• height of the body of the tongue (high, mid-high, mid-low, low)
• front-back position of the tongue (front, central, back)
• degree of lip rounding (rounded, unrounded)
• stability of articulation (monophthong, diphthong)
• duration (length) of the vowel segment (short, long)
• tenseness of the vocal organs (lax, tense)
• position of the soft palate (oral, nasal)
• energy discharge (checked, unchecked).
It should be noted here that, useful as it is for practical phonetics of teaching English, the description of vowels in terms of articulation is not quite accurate. Actually the two high vowels, /i:/ and /u:/ for example, are not equally high, /i:/ being much higher. Then there is the shape of the tongue and of the pharynx which affect the quality of vowels. We have to turn to acoustics to measure vowel sound properties more objectively.
It is important to note here how vowel features are affected by coarticulationwith consonants and with other features of phonetic context. Lengthis especially susceptible to the following circumstances:
• vowels are longest in an open syllable, they are shorter in a syllable closed by a voiced consonant, and vowels are the shortest in a syllable closed by a voiceless consonant: cf. sea, seed, seat, sigh, side, sight; as a result, the so-called «short» vowel of Ш may be longer than the «long» vowel of beet;
• vowels are longer in stressed syllables than in unstressed ones: cf. billow, below— [‘bitao], [bi’tau];
• vowels are longest in monosyllabic words, they are shorter in two-syllable words, and shortest in the words with more than two syllables: bid, bidder, forbidden, read, reader, readable;
• the vocal folds activity may be affected, thus producing a reduced voiceless vowel after a voiceless stop, as in the first syllables of the words potato, catastrophe;
• vowels may be nasalized before a nasal: man [maen];
• vowels are retracted before a word-final velarized /1/: bell, sill.
To sum up the features of vowel articulations which depend on coarticulationwith the neighbouring consonants we can conclude that English vowels are normally affected by consonants which follow them. This rule concerns variation in length, nasalization and velarization. In American English it also concerns retroflexion of vowels before r.
The influence of the prosodic features of stress upon vowel length appears to be universal, common with many other languages of the world.
Vowel variants in particular phonetic contexts are discussed in Part II. Phonology.
1.3. Language acquisition: how speech sounds are learned
Intonation patternsare the first kind of linguistic structuring in the vocalizations of the child; they emerge as early as 6 months. Children appear to perceive intonational differences before differences in phonetic segments, discriminating intonational rise and fall contours in adult English speech by 8 months. In terms of production, by 8 months distinctive intonational contours of rise and fall can be detected in child’s output. Though these early intonational patterns are not the same as fully-formed adult patterns, they may reflect their general characteristics and often signal differences in meaning. The acquisition of Chinese tone (4 distinct Mandarin tones) occurs well in advance of the mastery of segmentals, and within a short period of time. Just as tones are stored as part of the identity of the word in Mandarin, so also are stresspatterns in languages like German, English, and Russian. For example, the stress difference between ‘permit and permit is stored away as part of the underlying representation of these two words (Kess 1992:309-314).
Classifying consonants by the place of obstruction we proceed from the lips through the oral cavity to the larynx. Classifying by the manner of articulation we begin with the stops, then to fricatives and affricates. It was found that babies start practising sounds of their mother tongue when babbling in a similar order. There is a lot in common in sound acquisition among world languages. The order of acquisition of classes of soundsgoes by manner of articulation: nasals are acquired first /m, n/, then stops /b, d, k/, liquids, fricatives and affricates. Classes characterized by place of articulation features also appear according to a certain order: (bi)labials, velars, alveolars and palatals.
The early babbles consist mainly of repeated consonant-vowel sequences like mama, gaga, dada. Thus the first consonantsare /b, m, d, k/,the first vowelsare /a/and /i/,the first syllablesare of the consonant-vowel (CV) type, the basic rhythmis syllabic.(Even at a later stage American and English children stress form words and prepositions). The first meaningful contrasts are expressed intonationally: a high rise-fall of demand and a level (rise-fall-)rise of content.
All the children go through the stagesof first babbling,then one-wordperiod, then constructing sentences (telegraphic style).It is amazing that they do it so quickly: children do not seem to learn language, they «pick it up», and a five-year-old child can talk as well as an adult. A child can learn any language of the world he/she is exposed to. When and how do language-specific featuresoccur?
At the age of 6 months the baby begins practising only the sounds which are contrastive (phonemic) in his own language. Thus, for instance, before that age a Japanese baby can distinguish the sounds /1/ and /r/, but then he/she is unable to do that. The baby is a fine instrument attuned to the sounds of his mother tongue because he/she needs them to communicate, to distinguish meaningful units. Sounds which are more frequent in all the languages are acquired first.
It takes us to the problem of input. The critical periodfor language acquisition is from birth to puberty during which time a child must be exposed to human speech communication. The term for a type of child-directed speech is motherese, or baby-talk: adults tend to talk to babies in a special way by exaggerating pitch changes, labialization and palatalization. It is not the only source of language because the child can also hear adult-to-adult talk. Generally, as was found in experiments, the child’s
perception goes ahead of production:he/she can distinguish the sounds but fail to pronounce them properly.
It was found that the child is learning sounds to discriminate meaningful units, words and their grammatical forms. In English, for instance, the syntactic competence of a two-year-old child involves a patterned word order: subject — verb — object (SVO), while for a Russian child the morphology of words is more important, and the endings appear first, at the age of two.
Bilinguals are reported to create two vocabularies and two grammars simultaneously. They have an intermediate stage of cognate development when they can use the resource of one language for the other language usage. There are no generalizations about the phonetic discrimination of the two languages. Many bilinguals acquire the speaking fluency in both languages.
In second language learningthere seems to be also the critical ageafter which the pronunciation of the target language is difficult to acquire. Every year counts and seems to diminish the chances of success. It should be noted, however, that unlike learning one’s mother tongue, which in most cases is a creative but an unconscious process, second-language acquisition is both creative and conscious. A child or an adult is shown contrastive patterns of sounds, words and syntactical patterns, and a lot of things are explained. Motivation and practice are the necessary ingredients of success.
Just like imitation, analogy and reinforcement are not the only ways to learn the mother tongue, so are good models, drills and language environment not the only ways of learning a foreign language pronunciation. It takes a conscious effort to discriminate the automatic speaking habits of the mother tongue from those of the target language. Mastering them in mature age is quite a difficult task even for the persons placed in favourable language surroundings.
1.4. Acoustics: how speech sounds are processed and described
Speech technologies is such a fast developing area of applied phonetics that we cannot predict what the facilities for speech processing will be like tomorrow. Whatever we write may be outdated very quickly. Our task, therefore, is to take a look at the principal ways speech can be observed and analyzed.
In the phonetic laboratory we analyze speech using computers. The acoustic properties of sound signal are easier to observe than the exact positions of the tongue: we can record the signal and measure it thanks to the computer programs which are designed to process it. For each of the phonetic classes of sound that we have identified we can find corresponding acoustic patterns.
When talking, we produce sound waves which travel in the air and reach the eardrum of the listener. This acoustic signal can be recorded and processed with the help of a computer program, then observed as a waveform on display. We can see acoustic patterns corresponding to each class of sounds.
Vowels,for instance, are periodicsounds: they have a regular pattern of vibration repeating its pattern over and over. Fricativeslike /f, s, \/ are aperiodicsounds having an irregular, messy pattern. Voiceless stops (plosives)start with silence (at the complete closure of the mouth) which we see as absence of signal, a gap. When the closure is released there is an aperiodic sound, like a brief fricative. If/p, t, k/ are aspirated, the aperiodic sound is like [h]. Voiced stops (plosives)are periodic during the time the vocal tract is closed but the English /b, d, g/ actually have very little voicing (see Figure 9).
We can measure the time taken by each particular sound on the horizontal axis. The parameter is called duration.The frequencyof vibration and the amplitude(the amount of energy contained in the sound) can be taken in the acoustic spectral analysis.The underlying principle is that the complex waveform of a sound can be broken down into simple waveforms of different frequencies (like breaking down white light into rainbow pattern of colours), and we can measure the energy at each frequency. In the picture which is called spectrogramthey look like dark bands and are called formants.Darker bands represent greater energy. The vertical axis represents the frequency scale, the horizontal axis shows the time. Thus we can see how energy is distributed at different frequencies at any stage of the sound production.
In vowelsthe energy is concentrated in three or four narrow bands (formants) in the lower part of the spectrum. The formant with the lowest frequency, Formant 1 (Ft)corresponds roughly to the traditional open/close dimension: a low F, corresponds to a close vowel, like ft/ or /ul/. dormant 2 (F2),which is higher than Ft corresponds roughly to the front/backdimension of vowels: a vowel with a high F2 is likely to be a front vowel like /e/ or /a/. A low F2 is more likely to be a back vowel like /t>/, /a:/.
Frequency values vary from speaker to speaker but, nevertheless, there are group means (averaged data) for BBC female newscasters, for example, against which the speech of Queen Elizabeth II was compared to find Her Majesty’s progress towards a more democratic national standard pronunciation of vowels.
Prosody (or intonation),among the suprasegmental (spreading over a number of segments) features can also be analyzed acoustically. The parameters are: fundamental frequency (F^, intensity (Int), duration (T),which correspond to the perceptual categories of pitch, loudness, length.
Fundamental frequency curves show where the voice goes up (rise) or down (fall). A change in fundamental frequency may serve to distinguish the meaning of words in tone languages or the meaning of sentences in intonation languages (see Figure 10). It is also one of the major components of accent (stress) in English and Russian.
The duration of segments, syllables, intonation units and pauses may demonstrate the tempo and rhythm of speech. Duration is also a powerful means of stress in Russian and a few dialects of English where speech is monotone, such as conversational American English or Irish English, for instance.
Intensity level and change may demonstrate the way speakers employ loudness change: British English speakers keep up a high level of intensity while Russian speakers keep changing it: the fact suggests that loudness variation is more important for accent in Russian, while pitch change is, no doubt, the major accentual means in English.
An important side of acoustic phonetics is speech synthesis.Although scientists are still dissatisfied with the quality of synthesized speech, it is a very useful tool to learn more about a person’s reactions to various modifications of sounds and their properties. Acoustic phonetics is also used in health service, in security systems and for communication and other technical purposes in aviation and the navy, for instance.
There are phonetic laboratories which employ other instrumental techniques, such as palatography and ultrasonic equipment; even X-ray methods used to be practised to find the exact location of articulators in the process of speaking. The minimal equipment which we need today will consist of the tape-recorder and the computer.
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How do different phonetic contexts modify vowel length in english
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In linguistics, vowel length is the perceived duration of a vowel sound. Often the chroneme, or the «longness», acts like a consonant, and may etymologically be one such as in Australian English. While not distinctive in most dialects of English, vowel length is an important phonemic factor in many other languages, for instance in Arabic, Czech, Hindi, Sanskrit, Fijian, Finnish, Japanese, Hawaiian, Hungarian, Classical Latin, Lombard, German, Dutch, Latvian, Old English, Samoan, Lao, Thai, and Vietnamese. It plays a phonetic role in the majority of English dialects, and is said to be phonemic in a few dialects, such as Australian English and New Zealand English. It also plays a lesser phonetic role in Cantonese, which is exceptional among the spoken variants of Chinese.
Most languages do not distinguish vowel length, and for those that do, usually the only distinction is between short vowels and long vowels. There are very few languages that distinguish three vowel lengths, for instance Mixe. Some languages, such as Finnish, Estonian and Japanese, also have words where long vowels are immediately followed by more vowels, e.g. Japanese hōō «phoenix» or Estonian jäääär «ice edge».
Contents
Vowel length and related features
Stress is often reinforced by allophonic vowel length, especially when it is lexical. For example, French long vowels always occur on stressed syllables. Finnish, a language with two phonemic lengths, indicates the stress by adding allophonic length. This gives four distinctive lengths and five physical lengths: short and long stressed vowels, short and long unstressed vowels, and a half-long vowel, which is a short vowel found in a syllable immediately preceded by a stressed short vowel, e.g. i-so.
Among the languages that have distinctive vowel length, there are some where it may only occur in stressed syllables, e.g. in the Alemannic German dialect. In languages such as Czech, Finnish or Classical Latin, vowel length is distinctive in unstressed syllables as well.
In some languages, vowel length is sometimes better analyzed as a sequence of two identical vowels. In Baltic-Finnic languages, such as Finnish, the simplest example follows from consonant gradation: haka → haan. In some cases, it is caused by a following chroneme, which is etymologically a consonant, e.g. jää » ← Proto-Finno-Ugric *jäŋe. In noninitial syllables, it is ambiguous if long vowels are vowel clusters – poems written in the Kalevala meter often syllabicate between the vowels, and an (etymologically original) intervocalic -h- is seen in this and some modern dialects.
In Japanese, most long vowels are the results of the phonetic change of diphthongs; au and ou became ō, iu became yū, eu became yō, and now ei is becoming ē. The change occurred after the loss of intervocalic phoneme /h/. For example, modern kyōto (Kyoto) exhibits the following changes: kyauto > kyoːto. Another example is shōnen (boy): seunen > syoːnen (shoːnen). There is no lengthening.
Phonemic vowel length
Many languages make a phonemic distinction between long and short vowels: Japanese, Finnish, Hungarian, etc.
Long vowels may or may not be separate phonemes. In Latin and Hungarian, long vowels are separate phonemes from short vowels, thus doubling the number of vowel phonemes.
| Front | Central | Back | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| short | long | short | long | short | long |
| High | /i/ | /iː/ | /u/ | /uː/ | |
| Mid | /e/ | /eː/ | /o/ | /oː/ | |
| Low | /a/ | /aː/ | |||
Japanese long vowels are analyzed as either two same vowels or a vowel + the pseudo-phoneme /H/, and the number of vowels is five.
| Front | Central | Back | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| short | long | short | long | short | long |
| High | /i/ | /ii/ or /iH/ | /u/ | /uu/ or /uH/ | |
| Mid | /e/ | /ee/ or /eH/ | /o/ | /oo/ or /oH/ | |
| Low | /a/ | /aa/ or /aH/ | |||
Estonian has three distinctive lengths, but the third is suprasegmental, as it has developed from the allophonic variation caused by now-deleted grammatical markers. For example, half-long ‘aa’ in saada comes from the agglutination *saata+ka «send+(imperative)», and the overlong ‘aa’ in saada comes from *saa+ta «get+(infinitive)». One of the very few languages to have three lengths, independent of vowel quality or syllable structure, is Mixe. An example from Mixe is [poʃ] «guava», [poˑʃ] «spider», [poːʃ] «knot». Similar claims have been made for Yavapai and Wichita.
Long vowels in English
Vowel length, when applied to English, has several different related meanings.
Traditional non-phonetic «long» and «short» vowels
Traditionally, the vowels /ei iː ai oʊ juː/ (as in bait beet bite boat beauty) are said to be the «long» counterparts of the vowels /æ ɛ ɪ ɒ ʌ/ (as in bat bet bit bot but) which are said to be «short». This terminology reflects their pronunciation before the Great Vowel Shift, rather than their present-day pronunciations. A linguistically more accurate description is that the former are diphthongs (except for /iː/ ), while the latter are monophthongs («pure» vowels).
Allophonic vowel length
Symbolic representation of the two allophonic rules:
In addition, the vowels of Received Pronunciation are commonly divided into short and long, as obvious from their transcription. The short vowels are /ɪ/ (as in kit), /ʊ/ (as in foot), /e/ (as in dress), /ʌ/ (as in strut), /æ/ (as in trap), /ɒ/ (as in lot), and /ə/ (as in the first syllable of ago and in the second of sofa). The long vowels are /iː/ (as in fleece), /uː/ (as in goose), /ɜː/ (as in nurse), /ɔː/ as in north and thought, and /ɑː/ (as in father and start). While a different degree of length is indeed present, there are also differences in the quality (lax vs tense) of these vowels, and the currently prevalent view tends to emphasise the latter rather than the former.
Contrastive vowel length
In Australian English, there is contrastive vowel length. The following are minimal pairs of length for many speakers:
| [feɹi] ferry | vs | [feːɹi] fairy |
| [spæn] span past tense of spin | vs | [spæːn] as in wing span |
| [kæn] can meaning able to | vs | [kæːn] as in tin can |
| [bɪd] bid | vs | [bɪːd] beard |
Etymologies
Estonian, of Balto-Finnic languages, exhibits a rare phenomenon, where allophonic length variation becomes phonemic following the deletion of the suffixes causing the allophony. Estonian already distinguishes two vowel lengths, but a third one has been introduced by this phenomenon. For example, the Balto-Finnic imperative marker *-k caused the preceding vowels to be articulated shorter, and following the deletion of the marker, the allophonic length became phonemic, as shown in the example below. Similarly, the Australian English phoneme /æː/ was created by the incomplete application of a rule extending /æ/ before certain voiced consonants, a phenomenon known as the bad-lad split.
Notations in the Latin alphabet
In the International Phonetic Alphabet the sign ː (two triangles facing each other in an hourglass shape) is used for both vowel and consonant length. This may be doubled for an extra-long sound, or the top half ( ˑ ) used to indicate a sound is «half long». A breve is used to mark a short vowel or consonant.
Estonian has a three-way phonemic contrast: saada [saːda] «to get» saada [saˑda] «send!» sada [sada] «hundred» Although not phonemic, the distinction can also be illustrated in certain dialects of English: bead [biːd] beat [biˑt] bit [bɪt]
Diacritics
Additional letters
Consistent use: byta /ˈbyːta/ ‘to change’ vs bytta /ˈbyta/ ‘tub’ and koma /ˈkoːma/ ‘coma’ vs komma /ˈkoma/ ‘to come’
Inconsistent use: fält /ˈfɛlt/ ‘a field’ and kam /ˈkam/ ‘a comb’ (but the verb ‘to comb’ is kamma)
Other signs
No distinction
Some languages make no distinction in writing. This is particularly the case with ancient languages such as Latin and Old English. Modern edited texts often use macrons with long vowels, however. Australian English does not distinguish the vowels /æ/ from /æː/ in spelling, with words like ‘span’ or ‘can’ having different pronunciations depending on meaning.
Notations in other writing systems
In non-Latin writing systems, a variety of mechanisms have also evolved.