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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" are used to talk about consonants, such that [p t k] would be fortis (strong) and [b d g] would ...
The main difference is that when you make T using the tip of your tongue you get a slightly lower pitched sound, and when you say T using the blade of your tongue you get a slightly higher pitched sound.
The opposite quality to tenseness is known as laxness or laxing: the pronunciation of a vowel with relatively more centralization, shorter duration, and more widening (perhaps even lowering). Contrasts between two vowels on the basis of tenseness, and even phonemic contrasts, are common in many languages, including English.
Mar 17, 2024 · It can be hard to feel the physical difference between tense and lax vowels, but the distinction is actually an important one in the mental grammar of English. When we observe single-syllable words, we see a clear pattern in one-syllable words that don’t end with a consonant.
Trisyllabic laxing is a process which has occurred at various periods in the history of English: The earliest occurrence of trisyllabic laxing occurred in late Old English and caused stressed long vowels to become shortened before clusters of two consonants when two or more syllables followed.
May 20, 2022 · There’s one other feature we need for categorizing the vowels of English, and that’s the tense/lax distinction. We label the tense vowels as [+tense] and the lax vowels as [-tense]. There’s a full chart of features for the segments of English presented below, but don’t be intimidated by it.
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environments (*[dɪ], *[bɪð], *[rɛ.ot]). On the other hand, lax vowels may occur preceding /ŋ/ (hung [hʌŋ], sing [sɪŋ], etc.), and in monomorphemes, lax vowels may precede consonant clusters containing a noncoronal (wisp [wɪsp], mask [mæsk], etc.). Tense vowels are not found in these environments (*[toŋ], *[tosp]) (Green 2001).
