1. English Vowels. Vowel Phonemes.

Substitution or commutation gives us a brilliant possibility to establish contrastive units, phonemes. The basic method to establish a phoneme inventory is the method of minimal pairs, as we have shown on consonants. The same can be applied to vowels.

Speaking about vowels we should always remember their articulatory and acoustic features. As it was mentioned not once already, vowels are articulated without any obstruction for the air stream, so we hear tone not noise.

The minimal vocalic system of a language may be presented in the form of a triangle:

I u

A

The most important characteristic of these vowels is their articulatory stability.

The most typical type of a vocalic system consists of 5 vowel phonemes. So the triangle changes its appearance and looks like the following:

I U

E O

A

Speaking about English language we should not forget that the vocalic system of this language consists of a greater number of phonemes, which happened through historical development of a language.

There 20 vowel sounds which have a distinctive function in standard British English called RP or BBC English. Strange as it may seem but other varieties such as General American or Scottish English have less – 15-16 units only.

Now the question comes: which features distinguish the vowel sounds in the minimal pairs? The basic classifying features of English vowels are quality, length, position of the lips, among which the quality is phonemic, because the change in quality creates contrast and serves to distinguish words and their forms. Now let’s go into details.

1. Vowel quality depends on the height and the front-back position of the tongue. Here the phoneticians distinguish the vertical and the horizontal position of the tongue. According to the horizontal movement of the tongue, Russian school of phonetics distinguishes:

• Front vowels (i:, æ, ei) the tongue is in the front part of the mouth cavity.

• Front-retracted (i) the tongue is in the front part of the mouth cavity but a little bit retracted

• Mid or central vowels (ə, ə:, Λ)

• Back vowels (o, o:, u:, a:)

• Back-advanced (u short)

In comparison with it, British school of phonetics sees this gradation differently. They do not distinguish such vowels as front-retracted and back-advanced. According to British school I and I: are both front vowels and U\U: are both back. So they divide the vowels into front, back or central.

According to the vertical movement of the tongue the vowels are classified into: high vowels (or close) the back оf the tongue is raised. – I, I:, U, U:

• mid vowels (mid-open) the back of the tongue is in neutral position – e, ə, ə:,

• low-vowels (open) the back of the tongue is lowered – æ, Λ, a:, ρ.

2. Stability of articulation provides for a vowel quality throughout its production. 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. A change in quality results in a gliding vowels. If two auditory elements are involved, the vowel is referred to as a diphthong, if three elements – then a triphthong. Though all long vowels are in between, and they are called diphthongoids.

3. Vowel length gives us two groups of vowel sounds – long and short, which are distinct in a number of features. The division of the vowels into long and short means also grouping them into tense and lax.

4. Tenseness: long vowels, including diphthongs, are tense, short vowels are lax.

5. Energy discharge: long vowels are unchecked (free) and short vowels are checked, i.e. produced with accompanying glottal activity, involving a rapid energy discharge in a short interval. It is often related to the final phase of articulation or the character of a vowel end. It is traditionally termed checkness and depends on the character of the articulatory transition from vowel to a consonant, which is very close in English unlike in Russian. As a result all the short vowels are checked when stressed. The degree of checkness may vary and depends upon a consonant. It is stronger before voiceless consonants and we should also mention that all the long vowels are free.

6. Position of the lips may distinguish rounded and unrounded vowels.

7. Position of the soft palate: all English vowels are oral; other languages, like French, for example. May have nasal vowels. English vowels may be nasalized before a nasal consonant but the nasal quality change is not phonemic as it is not contrastive, it is allophonic.

So we may see that all the 20 vowel phonemes can be distinguished by quality alone.