Vowel
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
In phonetics, a vowel is a sound in spoken language that is characterized by an open configuration of the vocal tract, in contrast to consonants, which are characterized by a constriction or closure at one or more points along the vocal tract. The word vowel comes from the Latin word vocalis, meaning "uttering voice" or "speaking". Vowels usually form the peak or nucleus of a syllable, whereas consonants form the onset and coda. Some languages allow sounds that wouldn't normally be classified as vowels to form the nucleus of a syllable, such as the sound of m in the English word prism, or the sound of r in the Czech word vrba (="willow"). Sometimes vowels are defined by the criteria of whether it forms a nucleus of a syllable, and by that criterion these sounds are vowels, but usually the sounds that can form the nucleus of a syllable are called sonorants.
The features that distinguish different vowels in a language, such as tongue position and lip roundedness, are said to determine the vowel's quality. See the table of vowels. A vowel sound whose quality doesn't change over the duration of the production of the vowel is called a monophthong. A vowel sound that glides from one quality to another is called a diphthong, and a vowel sound that glides between three qualities is a triphthong. All languages have monophthongs and many languages have diphthongs, but triphthongs or vowel sounds with even more target qualities are relatively rare cross-linguistically. English has all three types: the vowel sound in hit is a monophthong, the vowel sound in boy is a diphthong, and the vowel sound in mail is a triphthong. In phonology, diphthongs and triphthongs are distinguished from sequences of monophthongs by whether or not the vowel sound constitutes one or more syllables. For example, the vowel sounds in the two-syllable word flower phonetically form a triphthong, but are phonologically a sequence of a diphthong (represened by the letters "ow") and a monophthong (represented by the letters "er").
The name "vowel" is often used for the symbols used for representing vowel sounds in a language's writing system, particularly if the language uses an alphabet. In the Latin alphabet, the vowel letters are usually A, E, I, O, U, and in some languages Y, as in English and W, as in Welsh.
There is necessarily not a direct one-to-one correspondence between the vowel sounds of a language and the vowel letters. Many languages that use a form of the Latin alphabet have more vowel sounds than can be represented by the standard set of five vowel letters. In the case of English, the five primary vowel letters can represent both long and short vowel sounds (some of the long vowel sounds in English are actually diphthongs). Furthermore, in English some vowel sounds are represented by combinations of vowel letters, such as the ea in beat or by a vowel and a glide (Y or W), as theow in how and the oy in boy.
Other languages also attempt to overcome the limitation in the number of Roman vowel letters in similar ways. Many languages, like English, make extensive use of combinations of vowel letters to represent various sounds. However, it is also very common for languages to add diacritical marks to vowels, such as accents or umlauts, to represent the variety of possible vowel sounds. Some languages have also constructed additional vowels that are based on the standard Roman vowels, such as ae or o that are found in some of the Scandinavian languages. The International Phonetic Alphabet has a set of 28 symbols to represent the range of basic vowel qualities, and a further set of diacritics to denote variations from the basic vowel.
The semantic significance of vowels varies widely depending on the language. In some languages, particularly Semitic languages, vowels mostly serve to denote inflections, and omitting them doesn't impede understanding. As a result, the alphabets used to write these languages, such as the Hebrew alphabet and the Arabic alphabet, do not ordinarily mark vowels. These alphabets are called abjads.
In most languages, however, vowels are very important. Although in some simple cases English can be understood without written vowels (cn y rd ths?), for long passages, including the vowels is essential for understanding. In some languages with few consonants, the vowels are also more important to the structure of the word. Pacific languages such as Maori and Fijian are of this sort. In languages that have a large vowel inventory, like Sedang, a relative of Vietnamese, which contrasts 55 different vowel qualities, vowels are critically important to understanding.
The most common vowel system, in both natural languages and constructed languages, is this one:
u iThe reason for this seems to be that it makes the most efficient use of the vowel space. Latin and Ancient Greek had this vowel system; it is for this reason that the Cyrillic, Greek and Latin alphabets have five vowel letters.o e a
Languages can distinguish different vowel qualities in a variety of ways:
- Height and Frontness. This is illustrated by the above triangle. u and o are back, a is central and low, i and e are front. i and u are high. In languages with four steps the height order is high, open, closed, low. Three-vowel systems have been noted in a number of forms. These include:
- front vowel
- near-front vowel
- central vowel
- near-back vowel
- back vowel
- Roundedness is simply whether the lips are rounded, or not. Simply having a rounded vowel is not using this contrast because it must also have an unrounded version of the same vowel. French, German, and some dialects of English use roundedness as a contrast. Half rounded vowels are also possible, as in Swedish.
- Length is how long the vowel is said. Japanese, Arabic and Latin use this contrast. Modern English uses this contrast in the minimal pairs hit-heat, bed-bad; other long vowels of Old English became diphthongs. Estonian and Wichita have short, half-long, and long vowels. Long vowels are usually written in the IPA with a colon. For some reason, in the Germanic languages, long vowels tend to be very unstable.
- Nasalization has air going through the nose. French uses this contrast.
- Tenseness is the amount of energy expended in producing the vowel, so that tense vowels have higher formants and generally greater tongue involvement in the production of the sound that their lax counterparts. English contrasts vowels using this relatively rare feature: leap and suit are the tense versions of lip and soot, which are called lax.
- Voicing describes whether a vowel is fully spoken or whispered. Several Native American languages, such as Cheyenne and Totonac, contrast voiced and devoiced vowels. English vowels are de-voiced in whispered speech, and in Japanese, vowels that are low pitched and between voiceless consonants are de-voiced.
- Creaky voice, breathy voice, and murmured voice can also be used contrastively. Often, these co-occur with tones or stress patterns; in the Mon language, vowels pronounced in "high tone" are also given a creaky voicing. In such contexts, it can be unclear whether it is the tone, the voicing type, or the pairing of the two that is being used for phonemic contrast.
- Retracted tongue root is also used in African languages. This rare contrast is difficult for Europeans to perceive, but is used extensively in Maasai and other East African languages. It resembles the lax/tense contrast in sound, but the contrasts are produced differently vis-a-vis articulation.
- Pharyngealisation occurs in some languages; Sedang uses this contrast.
¹ Some linguists claim that it is possible to posit only one vowel in some Abkhaz dialects, though the general consensus seems to be that that is stretching things a bit.
See also