Cardinal Vowels

September 27, 2013

Future Plans, Re-revised• Transcription homeworks are due!

• Today we’ll talk about Cardinal Vowels, and maybe Place of Articulation, too.

• Transcription exercise on Place of Articulation will be assigned for next Friday.

• Production Exercise #1: Say your name backwards.

• Due Wednesday, October 2nd.

• Any questions so far?

Vowel Review• Vowel articulations can be characterized along four

dimensions:

1. Height (of tongue body)

• high, mid, low

2. Front-back (of tongue body)

• front, central, back

3. Roundedness (of lips)

• rounded vs. unrounded

4. “Tenseness”

• tense/lax

The Vowel Space

Other Vowel Features• Rounding:

• are pronounced with rounded lips

• the other English vowels are not

• “Tenseness”

• a “tense” vowel is closer to the edge of the vowel space

• a “lax” vowel is closer to the center

• Ex: [i] is tense, is not.

• Tense/lax distinctions:

• found predominately in Germanic languages

• are very hard for non-native speakers of English to hear

Tense vs. Lax• There are five lax vowels that can be stressed in English.

Tense Lax

heed hid

hayed head

who’d hood

hod hud

hoed [hoʊd] had

• These lax vowels do not appear at the end of a syllable.

• They also often have a offglide.

• Lastly: they are shorter than their tense counterparts.

The Cardinal Vowels• A set of 8 reference vowels

• Brainchild of English Phonetician Daniel Jones

(1881-1967)

• “Cardinal Vowels can only be learnt from a teacher who knows how to make them or from a gramophone record or tape record.”

Lineage• Henry Sweet taught phonetics to Daniel Jones.

• Daniel Jones taught David Abercrombie.

• David Abercrombie taught Peter Ladefoged.

• Peter Ladefoged taught Sarah Dart.

• Sarah Dart taught me.

• I am teaching you.

The Cardinal Vowels• So let’s learn about the Cardinal Vowels.

• Two “anchor” vowels:

• [i] - Cardinal Vowel 1 - highest, frontest vowel possible

• - Cardinal Vowel 5 - lowest, backest vowel possible

• Remaining vowels are spaced at equal intervals of frontness and height between the anchor vowels.

• Note: [u] - Cardinal Vowel 8 - may serve as a third anchor as the highest, backest, roundest vowel possible

Cardinal Vowel Diagram

o

Secondary Cardinal Vowels

Origins?• Why are the primary Cardinal Vowels primary and not

secondary?

• Possible influence of late 19th/early 20th century French vowel system:

1. [i] lit [li] ‘bed’

2. [e] les [le] ‘the’

3. lait ‘milk’

4. [a] la [la] ‘the’ 5. lache ‘loose’

6. loque ‘rag’

7. [o] lot [lo] ‘lot, share’

8. [u] loup [lu] ‘wolf’

• French phonetician Paul Passy was President of the IPA when it adopted the Cardinal Vowel system for vowel classification.

Caveats and Addenda• The Cardinal Vowels are not the vowels of any language; they are reference vowels.

• There were also two “central” Cardinal Vowels: and

• 17 - “barred i”

• 18 - “barred u”

• Central vowels only appear in unstressed syllables in English.

• ‘about’

• ‘roses’

• Also: New Zealand and Scottish English

Parting Shots• The Cardinal Vowels were based on an articulatory-

based, three-dimensional characterization of vowels:

1. Height (high, mid, low)

2. Front/central/backness

3. Roundedness

Ex: [i] is a high, front, unrounded vowel

is a low-mid, back, rounded vowel• With the invention of the sound spectrograph in World War II…

• an acoustic/auditory understanding of vowel distinctions superseded the old articulatory characterization.

Place of Articulation

September 27, 2013

Moving On• Hitherto: rapidly running through the vocal tract

• for English only

• From here on out:

• go back through the whole process in slow motion

• building up our understanding of how speech sounds are made in the process…

• for all the languages of the world.

• Goal: get from what we know about articulation to acoustics

• i.e., how speech sounds are transmitted through the air

Just So You Know• This (and most future lectures) will include sound samples from many different languages from around the world.

• Sound files may be found at:

http://www.phonetics.ucla.edu/index/sounds.html

http://www.phonetics.ucla.edu/course/contents.html

• And also on the Course in Phonetics CD

Back to the Big Picture• Through combinatorics…

• languages can make a large number of distinctions out of a small number of articulatory dimensions

• However--consider the gaps in the IPA chart

• Not all combinations of gestures are possible

• Not all combinations of gestures are likely

• Why?

• The dimensions interact

• They’re based on physical realities

• i.e., they are not abstract

Another Perspective• Note: all speech sounds involve the flow of air.

• Articulation and acoustics are linked through aerodynamics

• = the study of the flow of air (in speech sounds)

• Aerodynamics can also limit the combinatorial possibilities of speech.

An Aerodynamic Exception• Stops

• Stop the flow of air through the articulatory tract

• How is this done?

• By making an airtight seal between articulators

• Are there some places in the articulatory tract where this is easier than others?

• Try the tongue experiment.

• An easy place: between the lips

• A difficult (impossible?) place: between the teeth and lips

IPA Chart:Stops

• You are already familiar with Bilabial, Alveolar, Velar

• = the 3 most common places of articulation for stops

• UPSID Database (in Maddieson’s Patterns of Sounds, 1984)

• surveys 317 languages

• 314 have bilabial stops (Wichita, Hupa, Aleut)

• 316 have alveolar/dental stops (Hawaiian)

• 315 have velar stops (Hupa, Kirghiz)

Bilabials-Alveolars-Velars

Palatals

Palatal Stops

• Peter says:

• 59 languages in UPSID database have palatal stops

• Palatals vs. Velars in Ngwo (spoken in Cameroon)

Also: Palatal Nasals

• symbol:

• not to be confused with the velar nasal:

• PL:

• Examples from Hungarian