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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.
But for [i], the muscles are more tense than for [ɪ]. The same is true for the vowels in late and let, [e] and [ɛ]. And also for the vowels in food and foot, [u] and [ʊ] 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.
- Catherine Anderson
- 2018
low lax æ ɑ(ː) Round(ed) vowels: u ʊ o ɔ In English the round vowels are all back and non-low. Tense vs. lax Conventionally a distinction is made between ‘tense’ and ‘lax’ vowels in English, at least for high and mid vowels. The tense vowels, when not part of a diphthong, are phonetically long.
4.4 Natural Classes. It’s possible to describe an individual speech segment in terms of its phonetic features. It’s also possible to group sounds that share features into natural classes. Natural classes of sounds tend to behave similarly because they have features in common. We can distinguish obstruents, sonorants, glides, and vowels ...
- Catherine Anderson
- 2018
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.
The 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.
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Contrasts between two vowels on the basis of tenseness, and even phonemic contrasts, are common in many languages, including English.For example, in most English dialects, beet and bit are contrasted by the vowel sound being tense in the first word but not the second; i.e., / iː / (as in beet) is the tense counterpart to the lax / ɪ / (as in bit); the same is true of / uː / (as in kook ...