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Linguistics
Notes The Standard American vowel in stone is, as I noted, the /ow/ off-glide diphthong. The
British RP vowel is also a diphthong, one that starts with the vowel of met and ends with that of
put. Its like the diphthong in some East Coast US dialects (South Jersey / Philadelphia/
Maryland), which starts with the vowel of bathe and ends with that of put.
Another British diphthong, that of Southeastern or Estuary speakers, starts with the front
vowel of bat and ends ups back and central. Make that a bit longer and you have the distinctive
Australian diphthong in stone, which makes sense because Australian dialects are relatively
recent developments from London English.
By contrast, some English dialects have a short pure vowel /o/--notably South African dialects
and some West Indian dialects. A longer /o/ is a feature of some Irish dialects, but there are
Irish speakers who have a high long pure vowel, almost that of American boot, in stone. If you
start with /o/ and glide into a central vowel, you have the Canadian and Minnesota version of
stone, and if you make the initial /o/ of that diphthong longer, you have the Scottish diphthong-
-again, Canadian speech owes a great deal to Scottish English. Finally, if you use a short vowel
like that of put in stone, you have an approximation of the vowel in some Indian dialects.
7.5 Key-Words
1. The hard palate : The hard palate is the upper part of the mouth after alveolar ridge towards the
throat. It can be felt with tongue. With the help of hard palate some sounds are
produced like initial sounds in yes.
2. The soft palate : After hard palate towards the throat, if we roll our tongue we will find a portion
of soft skin. This portion is called soft palate or velum. Velum functions in two
ways to produce sounds: (i) It makes contact with the back of the tongue to
complete the closure and (ii) It gets raised and makes contact with the back
wall of phrynx to complete the closure. The first type of closure is called Velar
clusure and the second type of closure is called velic closure. Sound in words
like flat, board, spray, etc. are produced during a velic closure.
3. The uvula : The uvula is a small tongue like organ at the end of the soft palate.
4. The tongue : Tongue is the most important and flexible articulator in the speech apparatus.
It moves to make contact with different articulators to produce different sounds.
Many sounds are produced with the help of tongue. For example, when tongue
is suspended in the mid of the mouth slightly curved sound /sh/ produced.
7.6 Review Questions
1. (i) Which of the following words contains a rounded vowel?
put seek hook grew grey hoe hold
(ii) Which of the following words contains a front vowel?
see seat met tap throw tape through
(iii) Which of the following words contains a high vowel?
see seat steak throw list lost through
(iv) Which of the following words contains a central vowel?
about put luck hit purse father kept
(v) Which of the following words contains a high back vowel?
put love hit heat luck look food
2. (i) What do the vowels in these words have in common?
bet hair rose post love purse mate
(ii) What do the vowels in these words have in common?
see leap weird pit fiend miss crypt
92 LOVELY PROFESSIONAL UNIVERSITY
