2. English Vowels. Vowel Phonemes.

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 that they are stable from the articulatory point of view.

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.

The analyses of the vocalic system of English consonants allowed the phoneticians to work out the main principles of classification of vowel sounds. Here they are:

1. stability of articulation

2. the position of the tongue

3. position of the lips

4. length

5. tenseness

6. final phase of articulation or character of a vowel

1. According to the first principle, stability of articulation, Russian phoneticians define three main types of vowel sounds:

1. monophthongs – the position of the tongue is stable

2. diphthongs – the position of the tongue changes slightly and we may hear 2 sounds

3. diphongoids – the position of the tongue changes very slightly and we hear 1 sound.

At one and the same time A. Gimson offers a vocalic system, consisting of 20 phonemes: pure vowels and vowel glides. 7 of them are short – i, e, æ, Λ, ρ, ə and 13 are long – a:, o:, ə:, i:, u:, ei, əu, ai, au, ou, iə, eə, uə. As we may see 5 of them are pure sounds, and al the rest are vowel glides. This approach is considered to be not exact as it doesn’t reflect the difference between long monophthongs and long diphthongs. For those who study English and the pronunciation of the language it is necessary to know that [I:] and [U:] are diphongoids and this tendency gets stronger in modern language.

Now I would like to say some words about English diphthongs.

As it is known, the English diphthongs are complex, indivisible unities, as well as affricates. The main point for consideration again is the idea of monophonemic or biphonemic nature of these combinations. Vasilyev and Zinder, the representatives of St. Petersburg school of phonetics, consider them to be monophonemic fro the point of their articulation, the length of a diphthong is equal to the length of its elements in one and the same phonetic context: sait- si:t, kəut – ko:t

2. The second principle of classification of vowel sounds is the 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.

According to the vertical movement of the tongue. And again the approaches of Russian and British schools are different.

British phoneticians distinguish:

• high vowels (or close) the back f the tongue is raised. – I, I:, U, U:

• mid vowels (half-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.

Russian phoneticians distinguish, in addition to this, they go into deeper details, broad variation (I, U, ρ, æ) and narrow variation (i:, e, Λ) of the three vertical positions of the tongue. The six groups of the vowels distinguished according to this principle may be found in Sokolova book of Theoretical phonetics p. 82.

3. Next principle of classification is the position of the lips. What should be mentioned here? The idea of rounded and unrounded lips… Traditionally there exist 3 main positions of the lips: spread, rounded and neutral. To classify a sound it is sufficient to operate with two positions or to be more exact oppositions: rounded and unrounded (neutral) lips. In English rounding of the lips is not relevant phonologically it is of physiological character. At one and the same time all the back vowels in English are articulated with the rounded lips, no back vowel can exist without it and so it is one of the important, indispensable characteristics of a vowel sound.

Now we may pass over to another articulatory characteristic of a vowel sound, peculiar to the English vowel system, the distinction of vowels according to their length. It is the quantitative characteristics of a sound and in accordance with it there are 2 main classes of English vowels – long and short.

This principle of classification also presents a fertile ground for disputes between the phoneticians. The main point to discuss is whether the distinction in length is a relevant property of the system of English vowels.

Denial Jones, a very famous English linguist, underlines the relativity (meaningfulness) of this characteristic (the length of a vowel) because such pairs as bid – bi:d, sit – si:t, ful – fu:l are opposed to each other on the basis of the length of a vowel and this difference leads to the change in the meaning. These oppositions Jones called chronemes.

On the other hand, famous Soviet phonetician, the representative of St. Petersburg school of phonetics, claims that English language is not the language in which there may exist chronemes as separate, phonological units.

Another articulatory characteristic that needs our attention is tenseness. It characterizes the state of the organs of speech at the moment of production of a vowel. Historically all the long vowels are tense and all the short vowels are lax.

And the last characteristics that I would like to draw your attention to is 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.

All the properties, mentioned above, are displayed by the vowels in the strong position, otherwise by the stressed vowels.