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VOWELS
English Phonetics and Phonology

Lesson 4A
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VOWEL GROUPS
SHORT
bad
bed, friend, head
good, put, should
his, it, kiss
hot, of, on
love, must, number
the, about
LONG
car, park
door, more, caught
free, me, please
girl, third, world
who, you
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Vowels may differ in three ways
Quality (i.e. the difference between /i:/ and
/u:/
Oral or nasal production (unlike French, this
does not have a phonemic function in
English)
Length

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We will now look at how vowels vary in
quality
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These are x-rays of a person producing
different vowels
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7
8
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In the close front position
(unrounded) we produce /i/ -
pit
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In the open front position
(unrounded) we produce /a/ -
pat
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Back open (unrounded) - pot
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Back close (rounded): /u/
- put
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Connecting these points gives us a box called
the Vowel Quadrilateral
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All the vowel sounds that the human voice can
produce may be plotted within the limits of the
quadrilateral
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Here is the vowel quadrilateral divided into
sectors with the IPA symbols at fixed points.
These are called Cardinal Vowels.

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N.B. Do not confuse symbols for
cardinal vowels with language
specific phonemes
The IPA vowel quadrilateral is a grid on which we
can plot vowels
It indicates the total area in which vowels can be
produced by human beings, the cardinal vowels
are fixed reference points on this chart, just like
lines of longtitude and latitude on a map
Plots of language specific vowels do not usually
correspond to the cardinal vowels, e.g. the Italian
/a/ does not correspond to the cardinal vowel [a]
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The four corners of the quadrilateral may
be seen as the four corners of a map
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Plotting vowels within the chart is like
plotting the irregular outlines of
topography
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These are the places of articulation of English
short and long pure vowels
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The chart of Standard Italian vowels would look
like this:
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The fact that Italian lacks vowels in the
central area may well explain why Italian
students of English have so much trouble
with these sounds
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However, it is important to remember that
the cardinal vowel system describes
vowels from an articulatory point of
view
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whereas vowels are an acoustic
phenomenon and may also be described
according to their acoustic properties.
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Plotting the values of the 1
st
and 2
nd

formants results in a graph which greatly
resembles the quadrilateral
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We can note that the values of the
acoustic properties are not always exactly
the same: they tend to vary considerably
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This type of analysis can be used to
illustrate the difference between native
(left) and non-native speakers production
(right)
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Native (left) and non-native speakers
production (right)
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Length
English vowels differ in length as well as
in quality

These differences are as important to
perception as quality

English long vowels are far longer than
Italian equivalents (e.g. /i:/, /u:/)

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The distinction between long and
short vowels is not always very clear
The realisation of long and short vowels
depends on their context, this is called
Clipping
This means that long vowels and
diphthongs tend to be shortened before
voiceless consonants e.g. /p/, /t/, /k/, /f/ etc.
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Vowel length in centiseconds:


(Data from Gimson 1980:98)

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Potential ambiguity
Italian speakers of English often produce vowel
sounds that can be misinterpreted by native
speakers
This is particularly important in the case of
minimal pairs i.e. where substituting one vowel
sound for another leads to semantic changes
This can be due to the irregular orthography of
English or interference from L1. We will now
examine this second case.

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/ i: / v. / i /
e.g. sheep v. ship. Italian speakers often
use one vowel sound, the Italian /i:/ for
both. In the case of sheep the vowel length
is too short, in that of ship the quality does
not exclude ambiguity.

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Other cases
e.g. ban and bun here the problem is one
of vowel quality
e.g. coat and court the Italian /o/ is often
used for both