LG204 background.pdf

LG204-5-FY ENGLISH PHONETICS AND PHONOLOGY Background 

LG204 Weeks 2-3 

The sounds of English Part I 

This week I’ll start to introduce the sounds of English, which I covered briefly last 

year in LG105 in two short lectures. Let’s go back to some phonetic definitions and 

then consider which sounds are used in English. 

Consonants: sounds which involve some oral obstruction causing an interruption to 

the airstream (this questions the status of [] and [h] – we’ll return to this later). The 

obstruction is the result of two articulators coming together in some way. 

Obstruents: sounds where the air pressure behind some obstruction is greater than 

that outside 

Manner of articulation: stops, fricatives, affricates 

Definition: stop consonant 

Air from lungs (pulmonary egressive); also known as plosive or occlusive (not a very 

much used word these days). The term ‘stop’ characterises type of closure that is 

involved. That is to say that the passage of air is interrupted totally. The term 

‘plosive’ characterises the type of release – an explosion of air and the term 

‘occlusive’ has roughly the same meaning as ‘stop’. I will generally use the term 

‘stop’. In the context of this topic, the stops I’m referring to are ‘oral stops’, I shall 

come to nasal stops in a week or so’s time. 

Stops can be made, in theory, at any point in the oral cavity (mouth – show diagram 

here) – try a bilabial stop to see how this is made. 

Definition: fricative 

Again pulmonary egressive airstream mechanism; also known as spirant. This 

expression isn’t used too much but the term ‘spirantisation’ is common, expressing 

the process of turning a sound into a fricative. The obstruction to the airstream is 

partial but sufficiently severe so that when the air particles hit it they are forced 

through a narrow gap between the articulators and air turbulence known as ‘frication’ 

results. If the gap were too wide, then frication would not occur. 

Again, fricatives can be made at any point in the oral cavity (try the labio-dental 

fricative). 

Definition: affricate 

We have discussed two ways of creating an obstruction – either the air is totally 

stopped for a brief spell or the airflow is partially impeded but not totally stopped. 

Both these manners of articulation qualify as obstruents because of the relationship, as 

described above, between the air pressure inside the mouth and that in the outside 

atmosphere. The third category of sound is known as an affricate. Effectively, these 

sounds are not different from the other two, they are a combination of both. An 

affricate consists of a stop articulation and a fricative one. Whilst a straightforward 

stop is released cleanly, the stop element of the affricate is released partially leaving a 

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narrow gap for the air to escape, resembling a fricative. Crucially, the two elements 

of the affricate are articulated at the same point in the mouth. 

Try the palato-alveolar affricate [] to see what happens. 

Place of articulation 

As I’ve said, obstructions can be made between articulators at any point in the oral 

cavity. It’s most likely that the contact will be made between two articulators that are 

reasonably near to each other. One of these is described as ‘active’ in that it moves 

and the other is described as ‘passive’ and remains static. When we are discussing the 

phonetic description of an articulation, we tend to describe it by means of both 

articulators involved or, if the active articulator is the tongue, in terms of the passive 

articulator. When we come to phonological description, we use the active articulator 

to characterise place, but that’s for later. 

Parts of the tongue: the flexible part that can protrude out of the mouth is known as 

the blade and the bit round the end is the tip. These two are indissoluble as we shall 

see later. The more fleshy, less flexible bit is the body of the tongue and it is divided 

into two sections for descriptive purposes: the front and the back. The part of the 

tongue which adjoins the larynx is known as the tongue root. This area isn’t used in 

the articulation of English consonants although other languages do have sounds using 

this as an active articulator. 

Bearing this in mind, we’ll start to see at what point these obstructions are, indeed 

made. I shall only discuss those places and combinations of manner and place that are 

relevant to English 

1. Bilabial: an obstruction made with the two lips. 

2. Labio-dental: the upper teeth and the lower lip 

3. Dental: the blade of the tongue and the upper teeth. This could also be called 

lingua-dental, but since the tongue is responsible for most obstructions, we 

tend to omit it from descriptions unless a particular tongue area making 

contact with part of the oral structure that isn’t immediately adjacent to it. 

4. Alveolar: the tip of the tongue and the alveolar ridge (tooth ridge – so called 

because it contains the tooth sockets or alveoli). 

5. Palato-alveolar: the blade of the tongue and the area of the palate which is 

partially the back part of the alveolar ridge 

6. Retroflex: the tip of the tongue and the palato-alveolar area (as above) 

7. Palatal: the front of the tongue and the hard palate 

8. Velar: the back of the tongue and velum or soft palate 

Voicing 

A third phonetic parameter required to provide a complete set of the obstruent sounds 

of English is ‘voice’. The term ‘voicing’ or ‘voice’ characterises the vibration of the 

vocal folds or vocal cords. These are located in the larynx (voice box or Adam’s 

apple). The larynx is a cartilage box located at the top of the trachea (or windpipe), 

through which the air has to pass on its way to the mouth and to the exterior. In the 

middle of this box is a hole, known as the glottis and the glottis is bounded by two 

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bands of muscle – the vocal folds. These bands of muscle can be configured in a 

number of ways (some others of which will be discussed later). If voicing is to occur, 

they have to be configured in such a way as to allow them to vibrate. This means that 

they must close the gap of the glottis but mustn’t be too tightly together – they must 

be slack, so that when the air pushes its way through they open, but then are pulled 

together again. The effect of this is to cause them to vibrate and the result can be 

heard as extra sound over and above that made by the contact of the articulators in the 

mouth. Voicing can be heard inside the head if you place your hands over your ears 

and can be felt at the larynx if the fingers are placed on either side of it. Try sss/zzz to 

experience the effect. 

Let’s now see which combinations of place and manner are relevant to a description 

of the obstruent phonemes of English (each of these pairings may be either voiceless 

or voiced). I’m using the term ‘phoneme’ here, in spite of the fact that it’s 

fundamentally a word connected with phonology, because I want to isolate the 

distinctive sounds of English and, at this juncture, don’t want to talk about any 

contextual variation that might become apparent. 

The obstruents of English and the IPA symbols for them 

I list below the set of obstruent phonemes of English with minimal pairs of words 

illustrating their use and also demonstrating their phonemic status. Just a reminder of 

the meaning of ‘minimal pair’. These are a pair of words which have different 

meanings but differ in only one sound, or, in the current examples, only one feature of 

one sound. 

English has 6 phonemic (contrastive) stops, that is voiced and voiceless pairs at three 

different places of articulation. 

Bilabial: voiceless [p] and voiced [b] (pan, ban) 

Alveolar: voiceless [t] and voiced [d] (ton, done) 

Velar: voiceless [k] and voiced [g] (cot, got) 

There are 8 phonemic fricatives, that is voiceless and voiced pairs at four different 

places of articulation. 

Labio-dental: voiceless [f] and voiced [v] (fat, vat) 

Dental: voiceless [] and voiced [] (thigh, thy) 

Alveolar: voiceless [s] and voiced [z] (sip, zip) 

Palato-alveolar: voiceless [] and voiced [] (ruche, rouge) 

There are two phonemic affricates, voiced and voiceless at 1 place of articulation. 

Palato-alveolar: voiceless [] and voiced [] (chin, gin) 

Note that, with the exception of the palato-alveolar fricatives, I have produced 

examples of words where the phoneme in question is word initial. The reason for the 

deviation from this practice in the one particular case is the faulty distribution of the 

sound [] in English. This is something we will return to in the second term. It turns 

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out that all the other obstruents of English may occur in most positions of the word 

(initial, medial and final), although, again, there may be gaps in certain contexts – a 

matter I shall also take up in the second term. 

Missing ‘obstruents’ and states of the glottis 

I remarked at the beginning that the basic definition of ‘consonant’ would seem to 

preclude the inclusion of the sounds [h] and [] (glottal stop) from the category. As 

we know, the type of sound made with no oral obstruction is known as a vowel. We 

shall be looking at these in a few weeks. 

The two sounds in question, then, leave us with a characterisation problem. It’s clear 

that [h] must be included in the inventory of English consonants, since it occurs in 

minimal contrast with other true obstruents (for example hot vs. cot and got). One 

wouldn’t normally want to include [] in this inventory, although it is a very common 

sound in the language. This is because it never contrasts with any other consonant, 

but is generally recognised as a contextual variant of a voiceless stop phoneme, in 

particular [t]. The reason for its inclusion in this list is that it helps to exemplify a 

certain state of the glottis. 

The phoneme [h] is described in much of the literature, including CP and the IPA 

chart, as a voiceless glottal fricative. It is possible that some frication does occur at 

the glottis, since there appears to be more sound emitting than would occur if this 

were merely produced by opening the glottis and letting air pass through. However, 

another way of describing this sound is to characterise it as a burst of aspiration 

similar to that we shall be discussing with regard to voiceless stops. This involves 

what is known as a ‘spread glottis’. It has also been described in the literature as a 

‘voiceless vowel’. This is because, [h] is always followed by a vowel and the mouth 

will be formed into the shape of the vowel which is to follow it, but a puff of air will 

be released, to introduce the vowel. Clearly, [h] is voiceless, since the vocal folds 

remain open. It does, however, have a voiced counterpart, which isn’t phonemic, 

merely contextual. When /h/ occurs between two vowels, as in behind or ahead, then 

vocal fold vibration does take place. This feat is accomplished by allowing vibration 

to take place in one part of the glottis whilst the other part remains open (see fig. 1.14 

in CP). The phonetic symbol is []. 

The glottal stop involves a momentary total closure of the glottis, with the vocal folds 

tight rather than slack as for voicing. A term used for this state of affairs is 

‘constricted glottis’. This can also refer to the situation where we get creaky voice, 

where the total closure would occur at one end and a slacker closure at the other. 

Creaky voice isn’t a distinctive feature of English, although it occurs in some 

circumstances for certain types of effect. We won’t be discussing this in this course. 

Fricatives that don’t usually appear in the basic inventory 

In some dialects of English (in particular Scottish and perhaps American), there is a 

contrast between the words which and witch. In other dialects, these words are 

homophones. The second of these starts with [w], which will be discussed in due 

course, but the first has a fricative initially. This sound is a labio-velar fricative. The 

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labial part is a rounding of the lips whilst the velar part is where the frication occurs. 

The sound is, of course, voiceless. 

Another fricative, with restricted use, is the voiceless velar fricative [x]. For many 

speakers this sound, occurring in a few words of non-English origin like Scots loch or 

German Bach, is, in any case, replaced by the equivalent stop [k]. 

Finally, for many speakers, a word like huge is pronounced, not with [h] followed by 

the glide [j], but with a voiceless palatal fricative []. 

None of the sounds featured in this section is generally considered to be phonemic in 

English. 

English sonorant consonants 

As we saw, obstruents are defined as sounds where the air pressure behind an 

obstruction if greater than that outside. This build up of air is achieved by ensuring 

that the only point at which air can escape is that of what we call the ‘primary 

constriction’. This entails ensuring that the velum is raised to that air cannot escape 

through the nasal cavity. In order to articulate a sonorant consonant, a primary 

constriction will still be formed at some point in the oral tract (since that’s the 

definition of a consonant) but air is allowed to escape elsewhere. This escape of air 

ensures that the air pressure behind and beyond the constriction is roughly equal. 

Nasals 

All the nasal consonants of English involve a primary stop constriction (indeed it is 

hard to imagine how a nasal fricative could possibly exist). Vowels may be 

inherently nasal (although not in English) or contextually nasalized – we shall discuss 

this in a week or so’s time. The basic articulatory difference between oral stops and 

nasal stops is the position of the velum. For oral stops there is a velic closure, as 

mentioned above, and for nasal stops the velum is lowered so that air can escape into 

the nasal cavity. Thus the difference between [b] and [m] is fundamentally the 

difference in the position of the velum, whilst the difference between [m] and [n] 

comes from the relative places where the primary constriction occurs. 

English has three phonemically relevant nasal stops: 

Bilabial: [m] as in ram [rm] 

Alveolar: [n] as in ran [rn] 

Velar: [] as in rang [r] (this does not have the same distribution as the 

other two, as we shall see in the second term) 

In addition, there is also a phonetic symbol [] which denotes a labio-dental nasal. 

This sound does, indeed, occur in English but, as we shall see in a week or so, this can 

be viewed as an allophone either of [m] or [n], occurring only before [f] or [v] (e.g. 

triumph [taf]. 

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Liquid approximants 

The term ‘approximant’ refers to a sound where any oral constriction is less close than 

that employed in the articulation of fricatives. Therefore, the nasals described above 

cannot be classified as approximants by virtue of the fact that the oral constriction 

involved is a stop. Whilst the most obvious secondary channel for the release of air 

must be the nasal cavity, other sonorant sounds are possible. English, like the 

majority of the world’s languages, employs the mouth as a secondary channel 

simultaneously with it acting as a locus for the primary constriction. The most 

obvious way in which this can be achieved is by forming a constriction at the alveolar 

ridge with the blade of the tongue whilst simultaneously lowering the sides of the 

tongue to allow air to escape that way. The sound made in this way is, of course, [l] 

which is known as a lateral approximant (lateral meaning ‘of the sides’). As we 

shall see in due course, there is more to the articulation of the lateral approximant than 

this brief description. 

As we saw, the term ‘lateral’ refers to the sides of the tongue, the opposite of this is, 

clearly, the centre of the tongue. Most sounds are ‘central’ in that the air passes over 

the centre of the tongue at some stage. Clearly, when an obstruent constriction 

occurs, then the air passes down the centre of the tongue until it encounters that 

constriction. However, we are talking here about sonorant sounds, where no such 

constriction occurs. If we reverse the tongue action of the lateral approximant, in 

other words, press the sides of the tongue against the back teeth and allow the air to 

pass over the centre of the tongue, whose tip is retracted towards the post-alveolar 

region (either retroflexed or not), we produce the standard British and American 

rhotic or central approximant []. Note, however, that some accents of English 

produce different types of /r/ sound. For example, in Scottish the standard /r/ is an 

alveolar tap []. Traditionally, the Scottish /r/ has been described as the trill [r], but 

this is unlikely to occur these days. It is also claimed that in some parts of 

Northumbria the /r/ is a uvular fricative [] – how common this sound is is not clear. 

In the so-called ‘rhotic’ dialects of English, there may also be a further variant on the 

standard /r/. This will also be discussed briefly later. 

Glides 

Strictly speaking, the sounds I shall call ‘glides’ are not consonantal articulations. 

That is to say that the air passes freely and there is no true constriction, even as severe 

as that involved in the lateral sounds (the status of the central rhotic approximant is 

also questionable when it comes to the possibility of its being a true consonant). 

Indeed their alternative names ‘semi-vowels’ is perhaps more truly descriptive. 

Glides [w] and [j] have more or less identical articulations to the high vowels [u] and 

[i] which we shall discuss next week. The descriptions of these sounds are: 

[w] labio-velar approximant. That is to say that the lips are rounded and the back 

of the tongue is raised towards the velum without contact being made 

[j] palatal approximant. Here the front part of the tongue is raised towards the 

hard palate. 

The reason I have included glides in the inventory of consonants is because of their 

distribution. They occur in contrast with true consonants – for example watt [wt] 

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rhymes with yacht [jt] which rhymes with cot [kt]. Effectively, we could say that 

these are non-nucleic vowels, they may occur as syllable onsets (although never as 

codas in English), but will be in complementary distribution with [u]/[i] which only 

occur in nuclear position. 

I present below a tabulated inventory of the consonant phonemes of English. As this 

is a phonemic inventory, some of the sounds discussed above don’t appear. 

[p] pan [t] tan [k] can 

[b] bun [d] done [g] gun 

[f] fin [θ] thin [s] sin [] shin 

[v] vie [] thy [z] zoo [] beige 

[] chin 

[] gin 

[m] ram/mat [n] ran/gnat [] rang 

[l] low 

[] row 

[w] watt [j] yacht [h] hot 

Part II Allophonic variation in Consonants 

The stops 

The table above indicates that English has 6 contrastive stop consonants. The 

phonetic realisation of the stops, however, tells a somewhat different story. The 

following table, borrowed from Ladefoged (2001) shows various words containing 

allophones of these stops. 

1 2 3 4 5 

pie buy spy nap nab 

tie die sty mat mad 

kye guy sky knack nag 

Notice first of all that the stops consonants in columns 1 and 2 represent a minimal 

set. That is to say that the words differ only in their initial consonant. Horizontally, 

the pairs share a place of articulation. Let us examine the manifestations of the stops 

column by column. The sounds exemplified in column 1 are all voiceless and, in this 

respect, would appear to be the same as those sounds exemplified in columns 3 and 4. 

We shall see, however, that this isn’t the case. 

Voiceless stops that are word-initial share an important feature, which is aspiration. 

The presence of aspiration can be experienced if you put your finger in front of your 

mouth when you utter pie – you should find that after the opening of the lips to 

release the stop and before the vocal folds start to vibrate the vowel, a small puff of 

air is released (the way in which this is achieved is similar to the articulation of [h] 

which is why the phonetic symbol for aspiration is a tiny h superscript). It is easier to 

feel this during the articulation of the bilabial the same situation also occurs following 

[t] and [k], as well as the affricate [], which, of course, contains a stop consonant. 

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If we now compare the words containing these voiceless stops with those in column 2, 

which contains the so-called ‘voiced’ stops, we will find that no such burst of air is 

experienced. The reason I refer to these sounds as ‘so-called voiced stops’ is because 

no real vocal fold vibration occurs in these sounds in word initial position. In order 

for voicing to occur it is essential for air to be passing through the closed glottis and 

to push the vocal folds apart. Since there is simultaneously a closure in the mouth 

then the air won’t be able to perform this task. When these stops occur between two 

vowels, as for example in obey, adore, again, the vocal folds will already be vibrating 

and will continue to do so throughout the articulation of the stop. Another distinction 

used here could be fortis and lenis. A fortis consonant is one which involves greater 

breath force (thus opposite for lenis); is voiceless (lenis may be voiced); initial in a 

stressed syllable have strong aspiration (lenis unaspirated); vowels short before final 

fortis cons. (full length before final lenis). Final stops often have reinforcing glottal 

stop – not so for lenis. 

The following wave forms illustrate the difference between the voiceless aspirated 

stop of tie and the ‘voiced’ sound at the beginning of die. 

Notice that the period between the release of the stop and the onset of the vowel is 

considerably longer in tie than in die. 

If we turn to the words in column 3, we might assume that these words are identical to 

those in column 1 except that they are all preceded by [s]. However, if we perform 

the aspiration test on these words, we should find that no aspiration occurs. Indeed, if 

we were to record these words and cut the [s] out of the tape, anyone listening to 

result would more than likely conclude that they were listening to the words in 

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column 2 rather than column 1. We shall return in much more detail to the situation 

involving [s] next term. For the time being we can state that there is no contrast 

between voiced and voiceless stops after [s] (no words such as sby, sdy, sgy exists in 

English, nor, indeed, could they). Whether we claim [p] to be an allophone of /p/ or 

/b/ is purely academic (spelling notwithstanding). The general claim that could be 

made is that /p/ has two allophones (at this point) [p h ] and [p]. We call this lack of 

contrast ‘neutralisation’. I show the wave form for sty below. 

Notice here that the /t/ closure more closely resembles the /d/ closure in die than the 

/t/ closure in tie. 

We’ll now turn to columns 4 and 5. Again these pairs of words appear to be 

distinguished by the voicing or lack of it of the final stop sound. If you were to say 

these words in a frame such as Say …again you would indeed find that you could hear 

the difference in voicing. Notice, however, that it’s highly unlikely that the voiceless 

stop at the end of the words would be aspirated, it would simply be voiceless. The 

voiced stops in this situation would involve vocal fold vibration, being intervocalic. 

If, however, we were to include these words in the frame say…to me, or at the end of 

an utterance then the stops would remain unreleased, making voicing less likely. 

How, therefore, can we distinguish them? What we can distinguish is the relative 

difference in the length of the vowels that precede the final stop, not the voicing or 

lack of it in the stops themselves. This difference in vowel length is very apparent in 

the comparative wave forms for mat and mad below. 

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Stops which precede other consonants or those which occur pre-pausally are not 

released. This is because the articulators are already anticipating the following sound 

and are forming into that sound. Release, if we can describe it as such, therefore, 

merely spills into the following sound. Examples of words where there are two 

adjacent stops include apt fact etc. The diacritic that denotes no release is hence nap 

[np]. 

Lack of release can apply to stops in any dialect of English, however, for many of us 

there is a further variant on the final /t/ in particular (sometimes also on /p/ and /k/). 

This the glottal stop []. In non-prevocalic position, these stops may either be preglottalised 

– that is to say that a glottal stop precedes or accompanies the stop 

articulation, as in cap [k p]. Pre-glottalisation may also occur with /t/ but here it is 

more likely that the alveolar contact will be totally lost here, leaving the glottal stop as 

a substitute, as in cat [k]. The extent to which /t/ is replaced by a glottal stop and in 

what position in the word, will vary from speaker to speaker and from dialect to 

dialect. Ladefoged, who is primarily writing about American English, says that it’s 

very likely to happen before a syllabic nasal in a word like button [bIt is also 

very common syllable finally in words such as Scotland [sklnd], Watford [wfd] 

and Gatwick [gwk]. 

Alveolar stops may also be released into a following nasal or lateral consonant. That 

is to say that in words like sudden instead of releasing the contact for the [d] it 

remains in its position and air is channelled through the nose. Likewise, in a word 

such as muddle the sides of the tongue will be lowered whilst the alveolar contact 

remains in place. I have discussed these phenomena with regard to voiced [d], but, of 

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course, this can also occur with voiceless [t], where it isn’t glottalised. There are 

many speakers who would pronounce button as [btn] and bottle as [btl]. 

Fricatives 

There is somewhat less variation in the positional behaviour of fricatives than there is 

of stops. The vowel length difference between pre-voiceless and pre-voiced fricatives 

is the same as that for stops. Voiced fricatives are prone to devoicing word finally as 

well as preceding another consonant particularly if that consonant is voiceless. In 

phrases such as five to five the [v] will be voiceless. In try to improve the [v] will not 

be fully voiced but in prove it the vocal folds continue to vibrate throughout. 

Some fricatives involve additional lip action. Try the words fin, thin, sin, shin [fn] 

[n] [sn] [n] and consider the part played by the lips. Clearly, the labiodental 

[f]/[v] involve the lips as the primary articulation. Dental []/[] do not involve the 

lips at all, but the alveolar [s]/[z] are accompanied by very slight rounding. Palatoalveolar 

[]/[] involve a considerable amount of rounding. The term used for this lip 

rounding is ‘labialisation’. 

Affricates 

Because affricates are combinations of stops and fricatives, they share attributes with 

both of these. Like voiceless stops, the voiceless affricate [] is aspirated wordinitially. 

It may also undergo pre-glottalisation – try a word such as Richard. This 

may be pronounced as [rd] or as [r d]. Like voiced fricatives, the voiced 

affricate [] will be devoiced in a phrase such edge trimmer. These affricates also 

behave like sibilant fricatives in the form of plural marker that attaches to them. As 

you will remember from last year, [s, z, , , , ] all have plurals with epenthetic []. 

Nasals 

Nasals may be either plain consonants or may become more vowel-like in that they 

can form syllable nuclei in words such as button, prism etc. Nasals can also replace 

words such as and in phrases such as Jack and Kate [kket] you and me [jummi]. 

Nasals will tend to assume the place of articulation of the following consonant, word 

internally and across word boundaries. 

/m/ [m] or [] before a labiodental /f v/ some food, some videos 

/n/ [m] before labial ten pens etc 

[ before labiodental ten feet, ten videos 

[n] before dental tenth 

[n] before alveolar ten times 

[n] before palatoalveolar ten sheep 

[] before retroflex ten rules 

[] before palatal ten years 

[] before velar ten cars 

They will also tend to be devoiced when preceded by /s/ in words like snow, smell. 

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Approximants 

There are four phonemic approximants in English. Three [ w j] are classified as 

‘central’ and the fourth [l] as lateral. If we divide them in a different way, we can say 

that [ l] are ‘liquids and [w j] are glides (see above). These approximants share a 

number of attributes. They may occur as the second element of word initial 

consonant clusters, although, as we shall see, there is some doubt about the status of 

[j] in this context. We’ll discuss this next term. 

When preceded by voiceless obstruents, approximants will be voiceless (e.g. play, 

pry, fry, fly, three, sleep, try, shriek, climb, cry, swim, twin, queen, cute, few, pure). 

/l/ has two positional allophones i.e. [l] (clear l) in syllable onsets and [] (dark l) in 

syllable rhymes. In many dialects dark l is vocalised (full [fuw]). The extent to which 

such vocalisation occurs and the contexts in which it is more likely to appear is a 

matter for research. 

In non-rhotic dialects, // occurs only in syllable onsets having been replaced by [] 

particularly following non-low vowels, although in recent years the schwa has also 

tended to disappear except where the preceding vowel is high. (fear [f], hour [a] 

higher [ha] but dare [d:] door [d:] etc.). 

As I mentioned in class, // also has two allophones (although the dark variant lacks a 

symbol as far as I can ascertain – this may be because it’s usually attached to a vowel 

– Ladefoged discusses rhoticised vowels in AmEng. For example [] for the vowel 

in dare in contrast to [] in a non-rhotic dialect. 

References 

Ladefoged P. (2001) A Course in Phonetics Fort Worth: Harcourt College Publishers 

THE VOWELS OF ENGLISH 

Over the past two weeks, we have discussed the articulation of English consonants 

and have been able to give a pretty accurate description of how and where they are 

articulated. This is because there is an interruption to the airstream that it’s possible 

to pinpoint. We found out, of course, that the consonants can be influenced by 

position in the word or by neighbouring sounds, which will cause them to vary in a 

number of ways. However, it’s still possible to describe the variation in terms of 

place, manner and voicing etc. When we come to the description of vowels, however, 

we have no points like this to guide us. There is no interruption to the airflow. 

Vowels involve the vibration of the vocal folds and a free passage of air. If we 

practise this we get something like []. So how do we vary vowel quality in order to 

give us a greater range than just one vowel? This can be achieved by changing the 

shape and size of the resonating chamber – the mouth. When the vibrating air 

particles enter this chamber, they will produce different notes according to this shape 

and size. This can be compared with the trick some people perform with glasses of 

water. They put different amounts of water into glasses and then play a tune by 

12


pinging on the side of the glasses. The notes will be produced by the air resonating in 

the top of the glass and because the area of air in the glasses varies, so different notes 

can be produced. We can alter the shape of our oral cavity by using the tongue which 

can be raised, lowered (both from a neutral position – roughly the position of the 

vowel []) or can be retracted. In addition, a further dimension of lip-rounding can be 

added. 

Let’s start by going through the set of English vowels in relation to the relevant 

vowels in the set of cardinal vowels. The cardinal vowels are a set of reference 

points, idealised vowels which don’t all occur in any language. When we’ve located 

these reference points, we can plot in the English vowels. The English vowels show 

great variability across different accents, much more than do consonants. I shall stick 

to a fairly neutral set of Southern British vowels in the main, but may well make 

reference to other accents if it seems appropriate. 

There are 2 sets of cardinal vowels – primary and secondary – each containing 8. 

English has rough equivalents to all the primary set and to one or possibly two of the 

secondary set. In addition, there are a number of vowels which don’t figure even 

approximately in either set, and several diphthongs. 

The cardinal vowels were the brainchild of phonetician Daniel Jones. Two of them (1 

and 5) have articulatory descriptions, the others are located in terms of their acoustic 

properties. They are equidistant from each other acoustically. Cardinal 1 requires the 

tongue to be placed as high in the oral cavity as it can be without creating frication. 

You may find that the sides of the tongue actually touch the back teeth but the air can 

still flow freely through the gap in the centre. This vowel is [i]. Cardinal 5 is formed 

by lowering the back part of the tongue to such an extent that the mouth is wide open. 

This is the vowel the doctor tells you to say in order to look down your throat. The 

symbol is []. The other two corners of the vowel trapezium are 4 – a low front 

vowel [] (note that this is not the vowel in this position in the IPA chart, where the 

symbol [a] is used) and 8 – a high back vowel [u], which involves a considerable 

amount of lip-rounding. The other four primary cardinals are 2, a slightly larger 

cavity than [i], for which the symbol is [e], as in the French word bée, which, as you 

will notice, is very different from the nearest English equivalent in bay. Cardinal 3 

[] is closer to the French vowel in bête than that in the English word bet. The 

symbol for cardinal 6 is []. This is the symbol we would normally use for the vowel 

in caught. However, the cardinal is better exemplified by the sound in the French 

word côte (not to be confused with cot). Cardinal 7 is represented by [o], but is not 

the same as in bow, it’s more like the French beau. Both 6 and 7 involve lip 

rounding. Scottish English has vowels which are closer to the cardinals than does 

English English. 

The secondary cardinals reverse the lip settings of the primary set. All the front 

vowels and the low back [] involve spread or neutral lips, whilst the other back 

vowels involve lip rounding to some degree. Therefore the secondary set includes 

front rounded and back unrounded vowels. The two examples of secondary cardinals 

which can be found in English are 13 (rounded []) and 14 (unrounded []). It goes 

without saying that the English vowels are not exactly the same as the cardinal set. 

Cardinal 13 is represented by the symbol [] and 14 by the symbol []. 

13


We can now start to plot in the English set against these cardinal vowels. I shall start 

with the four corners of the chart and then go on to fill in the sides. Finally, we can 

go into uncharted territory and consider the vowels that are more centralised than 

those in the cardinal sets. The vowel we represent by the symbol [i] in English is 

somewhat lower than the cardinal, say [i]. Compare the sound in sea with the French 

si (or indeed the Scottish vowel, which is close to the French one). In most dialects of 

Southern British English (SBE), the equivalent to cardinal 4, is almost exactly that. 

Traditionally, the ash symbol [] was used for the vowel in hat and, if you examine 

the IPA chart, you’ll find that it’s a somewhat raised vowel relative to cardinal 4 (for 

which they use [a]). True cardinal 4 was found in Northern accents. However, the 

raised pronunciation of [] sounds very old-fashioned these days and most speakers 

use 4. 

The SBE equivalent of cardinal 5 – [] as in heart isn’t quite so far back as 5, it’s a 

little more centralised []. The truly back vowel is, however, found in South African 

English. 

Cardinal 8 [u] is slightly lowered in SBE and other similar dialects, including GA, and 

is centralised somewhat to [] in Scotland and Northern Ireland. 

Cardinal 2 [e] exists in its pure form in Scottish and close to this, although slightly 

lower, in Yorkshire. It’s diphthongised in SBE, as we shall see in due course. 

Cardinal 3 [] occurs in words like let in Yorkshire and Scotland but is raised slightly 

in SBE, keeping a distance from [] and [e]. 

Cardinal 7 [o] is roughly this in Scotland and a bit lower (almost a raised []) but still 

a monophthong in Yorkshire. Again in SBE it is diphthongised (see later). 

Cardinal 6 [] is raised both in both SBE and Scots. It’s more rounded and higher in 

SBE – similar to the Spanish vowel in loco but with more rounding and tenser. 

The nearest English equivalent to cardinal 13 [] is slightly raised. 

The vowel in hit [] doesn’t have an equivalent in the cardinal set. This vowel is 

shorter and laxer than [i]. The tenseness of [i] tends to increase the tongue height and 

push the vowel further to the front. Thus, [] is lower and more retracted than its 

counterpart. In Scots it’s centralised to [], as indeed it is in NZ English. 

At the back the vowel [u] has a partner [] which shares the same relationship with it 

as [] to [i]. That is to say that it’s more centralised and a bit lower, as well as being 

lax. It’s even more centralised in Scotland and Northern Ireland (barred [] – I don’t 

have the symbol for this). 

The English equivalent to cardinal 14 [] is more central in GA, Irish and Scots []. 

In SBE the vowel in hut is considerably further forward []. This vowel doesn’t occur 

at all in northern dialects of English where there is no contrast between could and cud 

both being pronounced with []. 

14


A central vowel, somewhat higher and tenser than [] is []. This is the vowel heard 

in bird, heard, word, absurd, herd etc. in non-rhotic dialects. In rhotic dialects like 

GA and south-western English this sound is a syllabic [] which may also be 

transcribed as [] or []. These last two symbols reflect the fact that the quality of 

this sound is similar to the non-rhotic version but with added rhoticity. This sound 

doesn’t occur in Scots. 

The schwa [] isn’t phonemic in any dialect of English. It’s the archetypal reduced 

vowel and can substitute for most other vowels: e.g. atom [tm] vs. atomic 

[tmk] telephone [tlfon] vs. telephony [tlfni]. 

The English pure vowels are shown below: 

[i] bead [] bid [] bed [] bad 

[] bard [] bod [] board 

[u] brood [] hood [] bird [] bud 

In addition English has 5 falling diphthongs: 

[e] bay [o] bow [a] buy [a] bough [] boy 

These can be divided into homogeneous and heterogeneous diphthongs. 

Homogeneous diphthongs involve only a small tongue movement. The first of these 

is [e]. This starts at a lower point than cardinal 2 (see the Yorkshire vowel above). 

The other possible symbol for this diphthong is [ej], reflecting the fact that length is 

carried by the [e] element and the rest is an offglide. 

The other one is [o], which, again, starts a bit lower than cardinal 7 and drifts up to 

[]. This can also be represented as [ow]. It’s claimed in some accounts that in RP 

English the start of this diphthong is unrounded at about [] or [] (see Gimson). This 

pronunciation sounds rather old-fashioned these days. 

The other three mentioned above are heterogeneous, as in buy, bough and boy. The 

first of these starts from a low central [a] and rises up to [] (or [j]), giving us [a], 

whilst the second starts at the same point but rises to the other side at [] (or [w]) 

yielding [a]. The diphthong in boy is the only one truly to cross the vowel space 

from the back rounded [] to the front unrounded [] (or [j]). 

Notice that all the diphthongs listed are what are known as ‘falling diphthongs’, that is 

they fall in sonority from the first to the second element (although they are articulated 

by raising the tongue in the mouth). The reverse order of sonority in a pair of vowels 

would not result (in English) in a diphthong. There are two homogeneous diphthongs 

[e] and [o], so called because the two parts of the diphthong remain in the same area 

of the vowel space, and three heterogeneous diphthongs [a], [a] and [], which are 

the result of the crossing of the vowel space. It could also be suggested that the 

sequence [ju] is a diphthong. This will be considered in some detail later. 

15


In addition to the above vowels, of course, there is one on the chart which is not listed 

as phonemic. This is schwa []. The reason it isn’t listed is that it isn’t phonemic. 

More on schwa later in the course. 

Listing the vowels in the way we have appears to indicate that the pure vowels behave 

in some sense as a set as do the diphthongs. However, notice that some of the pure 

vowels will occur minimally paired with the diphthongs in final open syllables 

whereas others may not. 

Thus: 

3. 

[e] bay [a] buy [a] bough [o] bow [] boy 

[i] bee [u] boo [] bar [] bur [] bore 

4. 

[] *b [] *b [] *b 

[] *b [] *b [] *b 

Notice from the above charts that the vowels are now grouped, not as pure and 

complex, but as long (3) and short (4). Long vowels may occur freely in open final 

syllables or in open monosyllables whereas short ones may not. Another way of 

distinguishing between the set of ‘long’ vowels and the set of ‘short’ ones is by 

describing the former as ‘tense’ and the latter as ‘lax’. These two labels correlate 

roughly with the feature [±ATR] although this correlation is problematic, because 

whilst for non-low vowels tenseness roughly corresponds to advanced tongue root, 

this is not true of low vowels. It is generally acknowledged that [] is [+ATR] and 

[] is [−ATR], the reverse of their settings for tenseness. 

(Non-rhotic) English also has what are known as ‘centring diphthongs’. Like the 

other English diphthongs, these diphthongs have the syllabic peak as the first element, 

however, in spite of the fact that the ‘offglide’ schwa may be more sonorous than the 

syllabic peak. ([] as in hear has a sonority profile of 45). In addition of these 

centring diphthongs there are also 2 triphthongs. All of these are listed below: 

[] hear *[] dare †[] poor †[] door **[a] hire 

[a] higher [a] hour 

* This diphthong has tended to be monophthongised as [:] (dare = [d:]) 

† Both the diphthongs [] and [] are very rarely heard, and the contrast between 

poor (formerly [p]), pour (formerly [p]) and paw has been neutralised as [p]. 

** For many speakers this diphthong does not exist and hire and higher are 

homophones [ha]. 

We shall be discussing this form of diphthong in the context of rime structure 

constraints and moraic structure later in the course. 

16


Phonetic symbols 

vowels 

17

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