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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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Mar 18, 2024 · T he tense vowels of English also tend to inherently be a bit longer than their lax counterparts. For example, the tense vowel in the English word beat is longer than the lax vowel in bit. Consonants may also differ from each other in length. Long consonants are often called geminates, while short consonants are called singletons.
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.
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]
tense y ʉ u high lax ʏ ʊ tense ø ɵ o lax œ ɔ mid Œ ɒ low Front unrounded Central unrounded Back unrounded While this yields a fairly symmetrical system of symbols and articulatory classifications, there are gaps such as the lack of tense/lax distinctions among low vowels or central vowels except for the [ ʌ] ~ [ ə] distinction.
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TENSE AND LAX VOWELS TENSE VOWELS are produced with a general tension of the speech muscles. LAX VOWELS are produced with a more relaxed speech muscle movement. The terms TENSE/LAX do not capture significant phonetic differences. TENSENESS/LAXNESS have to be interpreted as a complex of articulatory characteristics. 1.
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1. Chapter 1 – Vowel Sounds. INTRODUCTION. Five or six letters in the alphabet are used to represent vowels in writing: a, e, i, o ,u and sometimes y. In this book, however, we will focus on pronunciation rather than the letters in the alphabet. There is a system for representing the pronunciation of vowels in writing.