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Unit 7: Vowels and Its Phonetic Transcription

To describe a consonant in articulatory terms, we needed to know the airstream mechanism involved; Notes
the state of the glottis, deter-mining whether the sound is voiced or voiceless; the position of the
velum, which either allows or stops airflow through the nose, making the consonant nasal or oral;
the manner of articulation, namely stop, affricate, fricative or approximant; whether airflow is central
or lateral; and finally, the place of articulation, and consequently the identity and position of the
active and passive articulators.
Unfortunately, almost none of these helps us in classifying vowels. All vowels, universally, are
produced on a pulmonic egressive airstream, with central airflow: there is no contrast between central
and lateral vowels. It is possible, but rare, for vowels to be voiceless or nasal; in English, however, all
vowel phonemes are voiced and oral, and voiceless and nasal allophones appear only in very specific
circumstances, as we shall see later. Vowels are all continuants: that is, airflow through the oral tract
is not significantly obstructed during their production, so they are all approximants on the consonant
manner classification: there are no stop, fricative or affricate vowels. Finally, although we shall
distinguish between vowels in terms of place of articulation, the range of options is much more
restricted than for consonants, where places from labial to glottal are distinguished in English alone.
All vowels are produced in a very limited ‘vowel space’ in the centre of the oral tract, roughly between
palatal and velar in consonantal terms; and the place of articulation will also be much more difficult
to ascertain from self-observation, since the tongue never moves close enough to the roof of the
mouth in vowel production to make its position easy to feel.
It follows that an adequate vowel classification requires new features and descriptive parameters
which are better designed to capture the ways in which vowels do vary. This kind of situation, where
two classes of objects or concepts share some essential unity, but need different descriptors, is not
unique to vowels and consonants. For instance, plants and animals are both categories of living
things; they both populate the world widely, and are mutually necessary in terms of their
complementary roles in gas exchange, for instance. They both require the same basic nutrients, operate
according to the same chemical principles, and have common structures, including identical cell
types. However, there is just as little point in classifying plants according to whether or not they are
mammals, or have feathers, or are carnivores or herbivores, as there is in categorising animals as
being evergreen or dropping their leaves, bearing cones or flowers, or producing fruit or not. At that
lower classificatory level, it is simply necessary to recognise the divergence of the two categories by
using different distinguishing features. Equally, vowels and consonants are both speech sounds, and
are both necessary for language, since they play complementary roles in structuring syllables and
words. Both are formed by modifications of a moving airstream, carried out by the actions of the
vocal folds and articulatory organs. However, below this very general, common level, consonants
and vowels operate as different sets, and to allow us to produce as precise and insightful a classification
of each set as possible, they must be described in different terms.
7.2 The Anatomy of a Vowel

In classifying vowels, we need not indicate airstream mechanism, since it will always be pulmonic
egressive, and we can generally assume that vowels are all voiced and oral. To describe vowels
adequately and accurately, we then need to consider three different parameters, all of which can be
seen as modifications of the place or manner of articulation continua for consonants: as we shall see,
these are height, frontness and rounding. Additionally, vowels may be long or short (long ones are
marked with a following + below), and monophthongs or diphthongs. The examples in the sections
below will be from Standard Southern British English (sometimes called RP, or Received
Pronunciation), and General American, the most widely spoken variety of English in the United
States, excluding the southern states, and the eastern seaboard, especially Boston, New England and
New York City. SSBE and GA are generally thought of by English and American speakers respectively
as not having any strong regional marking, and both are varieties highly likely to be heard in
broadcasting, for instance in reading the television or radio news.
The front-back dimension
Front vowels are produced with the front of the tongue raised towards the hard palate (although not
raised enough, remember, to obstruct the airflow and cause local friction; vowels are approximants).

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