Practice with Consonants

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Practice with Consonants
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The Vowels of English

• Vowels differ from consonants in that there is no
  obstruction of the airstream in the vocal tract.
• Unfortunately, as a result of this, the
  distinctive features of vowels are not as easy to
  see, feel or hear as those of consonants.

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Describing Vowels

• We use four criteria to distinguish vowels
• Tongue height
• Frontness
• Tenseness
• Lip rounding

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Tongue Height

• Tongue height describes how high in the mouth the
  tongue is when the vowel is pronounced.
• Compare the position of your jaw when you say
  meet /mit/ and mat /m?t/. Your jaw drops to
  accommodate your tongue, which rises and falls
  depending on the vowels you produce.
• Vowels like /i/ are called high vowels, vowels
  like /?/ are called low vowels, and those in
  between are called mid vowels.

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Some English Vowels by Height
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Frontness, or Advancement

• Frontness describes the tongues position with
  respect to the front or the back of the mouth.
• Compare the position of your tongue when you say
  keep /kip/ and coop /kup/. You might be able to
  notice that your tongue is farther forward when
  you produce the /i/ vowel, and farther back when
  you produce /u/.
• Vowels like /i/ are called front vowels, while
  vowels like /u/ are called back vowels. Those
  produced centrally are called, predictably,
  central vowels.

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Some English Vowels by Tongue Height and Frontness

• These vowels are the same in many dialects of
  American English.

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Tenseness

• Tense vowels and lax vowels are distinguished by
  the amount of muscle tension in the vocal tract
  when they are produced.
• Compare /i/ in meet /mit/ and /?/ in mit /m?t/.
  The muscles in your throat tense up in the first
  word and relax in the second.

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Roundedness

• The final feature we use to describe vowels is
  roundedness simply, the lips are rounded in the
  production of rounded vowels (such as the /u/ in
  who) and unrounded in the production of unrounded
  vowels (such as the /i/ in whee!).

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So!

• Every vowel in English can be described using
  these four categories.
• /i/ is a high, front, tense vowel.
• /?/ is a mid, back, lax, rounded vowel.
• Again, the vowels are physically organized in the
  IPA chart to reflect these criteria

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The Vowels of American English
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Vowel Mergers in American EnglishSomething that
might make this difficult.
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Vowel Mergers in American English

• The a? merger
• This merger is occurring quite rapidly, all
  across the country, moving generally South to
  North.
• It results in pairs of words like cot / caught
  and don / dawn sounding the same.
• The ?? merger
• This merger is occurring largely in Appalachia,
  especially Kentucky and parts of southern Ohio.
• It results in pairs of words like pin / pen and
  tin / ten sounding the same.

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The Mid Central Vowels

• You will note that there are two mid central
  vowels /?/, or schwa, and /?/, or wedge.
  Both have the same sound.
• /?/ represents the tendency in English of vowels
  in unstressed syllables to shift to a mid central
  vowel.
• For example, although can is usually pronounced
  with a low front vowel /c?n/, in a sentence it
  usually moves to schwa I can come. sounds like
  /ai k?n k?m/.
• /?/ represents stressed vowels whose natural
  position is mid central, as in come in the
  example above.

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Diphthongs

• A diphthong is a sequence of two sounds, a vowel
  plus a glide.
• The three diphthongs occurring in English are
• /aj/ as in high
• /aw/ as in cow
• /?j/ as in boy
• But note that this is a somewhat complex area
  many phoneticians characterize diphthongs as two
  vowels, and you may notice that the vowel /e/ we
  have already learned is a near-diphthong, or
  diphthongized.

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r-coloring

• In some cases, a vowel (especially /?/)will merge
  with a following /r/ sound, producing an
  r-colored vowel. This is represented by
  attaching the symbol ? to the vowel
• farmer /fArm?/
• In practice, there is very little difference
  between /fArm?/ and /fArm?r/

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Remember

• Orientation for conversation partners is tonight
  at 630 in Baker Center Ballroom!