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Vowels are made without an obstruction in the vocal tract, so they are quite sonorous. The body of the tongue moves in the mouth to shape each vowel, and for some vowels, the lips are rounded as well. Linguists classify vowels according to four pieces of information: tongue height, tongue backness, lip rounding, and tenseness.
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2.5 Sonority, Consonants, and Vowels. 2.6 Classifying...
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Exercise 1. In some varieties of English, mostly spoken in...
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Values of phonetic symbols are defined in terms of a variety of primarily articulatorily defined phonetic dimensions as in (2). A diphthong is a sequence of vowel-like elements – vowels and glides – in one syllable. The three most important properties for defining vowels are height, backness, and roundness.
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Dec 6, 2023 · The primary distinction between lax and tense vowels lies in their length and the tension of the muscles used in their production. Lax vowels are shorter and produced with relatively loose muscles in the vocal apparatus. In contrast, tense vowels are longer and require relatively tense muscles for their articulation.
- Lax vowels are shorter sounds produced with relatively loose muscles in the vocal apparatus. They occur in words like “bit,” “bet,” and “hat.”
- Tense vowels are longer sounds produced with relatively tense muscles in the vocal apparatus. They typically occur at the end of one-syllable words...
- The main difference between lax and tense vowels is their length and the tension of the muscles used to produce them. Lax vowels are shorter and pr...
- Mastering the distinction between lax and tense vowels is important for accurate pronunciation in American English. Understanding and correctly pro...
- Practicing and refining the pronunciation of lax and tense vowels can lead to improved language fluency and clarity in speech. Focus on recognizing...
In phonology, tenseness or tensing is, most broadly, the pronunciation of a sound with greater muscular effort or constriction than is typical. [1] More specifically, tenseness is the pronunciation of a vowel with less centralization (i.e. either more fronting or more backing), longer duration, and narrower mouth width (with the tongue being perhaps more raised) compared with another vowel. [2]
- Vowel Quality
- Nasality
- Length
- Multiple Vowel Qualities in Sequence
- Putting It All Together!
Vowel phones can be categorized by the configuration of the tongue and lips during their articulation, which determines the vowel’s overall vowel quality. Vowel quality is often much more of a continuum than consonant categories like place and manner. A slight change in articulation makes little difference in what a vowel sounds like, but it can ha...
In Section 3.4, we talked about how the velum can move to make a distinction between oral and nasal stops based on whether or not air can flow into the nasal cavity. The same distinction can be found for vowels. If a vowel is articulated with a raised velum to block airflow into the nasal cavity, the vowel is called oral. If instead the velum is lo...
In addition to differences in vowel quality and nasality, vowels may also differ from each other in length, which is a way of categorizing them based on their duration. In most spoken languages where vowel length matters, there is just a two-way distinction between long vowels and short vowels, with long vowels having a longer duration than their s...
Many vowels of the world’s spoken languages have a relatively stable pronunciation from beginning to end. These kinds of stable vowel phones are called monophthongs. However, just as there are dynamic consonant phones (affricates), vowel phones may also change their articulation from beginning to end. Most of these are diphthongs, which begin with ...
There is not as much consistency in the order of descriptions for vowels as for consonants. Perhaps the most common order is height – backness – rounding, but rounding is sometimes given first instead, and though height is usually given immediately before backness, these can also be switched. Thus, the vowel in the English word betmight be describe...
Mar 18, 2024 · The property of whether a vowel is tense or lax is called tenseness. The different positions of the tongue root for tense and lax vowels are shown in Figure \(\PageIndex{5}\). Figure \(\PageIndex{5}\): Two categories of tenseness: tense with an advanced tongue root as in beat (left) and lax with a retracted tongue root as in bit (right).
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Dec 29, 2021 · The terms "tense" and "lax" are generally only used to describe vowels, specifically [i e o u] (tense) versus [ɪ ɛ ɔ ʊ] (lax). However, tense and lax is exceptionally used to refer to Korean consonants; furthermore, the terms "fortis" and "lenis" used to talk about consonants, such that [p t k] would be fortis (strong) and [b d g] would be ...
