Page 216 - DENG504_LINGUISTICS

Linguistics

Notes c. English central vowels. There are three central vowel phonemes in English: [• ], [ ] and [f:].
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1. [• ] (N.B. For technical reasons, I have followed Daniel Jones and the majority of phonetic
transcriptions in use in choosing this symbol to represent the vowel of the English word cut;
however, strictly speaking, this symbol is used in the IP A alphabet to represent secondary cardinal
vowel 14, the unrounded counterpart of primary cardinal vowel 6 []]-see above) is a central half-
open, short, lax, unrounded vowel. It is the lowest standard English vowel and is
distributed in word-initial and medial position: utter, subtle. It never occurs in word or
syllable-final position. It is usually spelt either u: under, but, or o: come, front, honey; in a
number of words it is spelt ou: courage, southern, rough, tough, and exceptionally oo in
blood and flood and oe in does. Many Romanian speakers of English find it difficult to
acquire the correct pronunciation of [•] mistaking it for some variant of a or o.
2. [ ] is the commonest English vowel. It is a central, mid, lax, unrounded vowel-the schwa
mentioned before-for the pronunciation of which the tongue adopts the neutral position
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in relation to which all the other articulatory positions can be described. The vowel freely
occurs in all basic positions, but only in unstressed syllables: aside, collide, rather. Its
pronunciation doesn’t normally raise any problem for a Romanian speaker of English. It
should be noted, however, that one of the most difficult to acquire of the phonological
features of English is the change of the vowel quality with the stress shift (in a way
comparable to Russian). Thus, most English vowels, if unstressed, will be reduced to
schwa only to resume their basic value if the stress shifts back on them: cf Satan [seit n],
Satanic [sctænwk], Satanism [sewtcnwzm] or fatal [fewtcl], [fctælwtw], fatalism [fewtclwzm]. It
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would be superfluous to list all the possible spellings of [s ], since the vowel can be, as I
have said, the reduced form of any simple vowel or even diphthong (see fatality, above) in
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English and can consequently be rendered in writing by any vowel letter with the exception
of y which only represents the semivowel j or the vowel i.
3. [f:] is a central, mid, long, tense central vowel. It is the tense counterpart of the schwa and
since it only occurs in stressed syllables, in complementary distribution with the preceding
vowel, some phoneticians, including Daniel Jones, argue that the two sounds are positional
variants of the same mid central vowel phoneme. It is distributed in all three basic positions,
very often in monosyllabic words: err, first, curtain, fur, refer. It is commonly spelt ir, ur, er,
or yr in final position or followed by a consonant or ear when followed by a consonant:
bird, burn, fern, myrtle, learn. Other spellings include our in words like courtesy, journal,
journey, scourge, and, exceptionally, o in colonel.
Here are the English simple vowels or monophthongs distributed contrastively in the same
context:
a. the front vowels: eat [bi:t], bit [bwt], bet [bet], bat [bæt]
b. the central vowels: Burt [bf: t], but [b t] - the weak, unstressed form, butt [b• t]
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c. the back vowels: boot [bu:t], butch [b υ t•], bought [b]:t], bot [b]t], Bart [ba:t].
We can now summarize the information we have on the English simple vowels (monophthongs)
and include it in the following table:

Front Central Back

Tense Lax Tense Lax Tense Lax
High/close i: i u: υ

Mid e f: e ]:

Low/open æ • Y: ]

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