The vowels of English

We have seen that speech sounds show great variation, but much of this variation is irrelevant linguistically, because no linguistic difference hinges on it. We will see further examples of this.

For your convenience the Jones vowel chart is shown here again. In what follows we will schematize this chart (which is itself a schematization of the vowel space, that is, the oral cavity, in everyday words, the inside of the mouth).

Like many other languages, English does not contrast vowels by liprounding: front and low vowels are unrounded, back nonlow vowels are rounded. We coloured the boxes containing the vowels green for unrounded and red for rounded vowels. Other dimensions of vowel contrasts are active: three different types are distinguished in the high–low and three in the front–back dimensions. (We see four levels in the chart below, but the highest front and back segments are not vowels, but glides: j and w.)

There are a number of comments due about the vowel system presented here. The two symbols in parentheses, j and w are not vowels strictly speaking, they take the place of i and u in the chart, and do not occur as vowels on their own, only in combination with other vowels, in so-called diphthongs (more on which below). Two pairs of vowels share a box (o and ɔ, a and ɑ). These vowels are not in contrast, ie a and ɔ only occur short (eg in pat pat or pot pɔt), ɑ and o only occur long (eg in part pɑːt or port poːt). Thus we have six contrasting vowels, which may occur short or long: (1) ɪ, (2) ɛ, (3) a/ɑ, (4) ə, (5) ɔ/o, and (6) ʉ.

Short vowels

We will use the following symbols for the six contrasting short vowels in current British English: ɪ, ɛ, a, ɔ, ə, and ʉ. They are exemplified below.

The words given as examples are keywords selected for standard lexical sets by John Wells. The words are very often used to identify the vowels of English across accents in an unambiguous way. The following examples show the contrasts for the short vowels.

Any two words of this chart are a minimal pair, and there are no further possible words in English of the p_t shape, with a short vowel between the two consonants, therefore this is the complete set of short vowels in the language.

It is tempting to replace some of these odd looking symbols with better-known ones: ɪ→i, ɛ→e, ɔ→o, and ʉ→u, but we will not follow this practice here. Other alternative symbols used by dictionaries are: æ for our a (eg trap træp), ɒ for our ɔ (eg lot lɒt), and ʊ for our ʉ (eg foot fʊt). Here is a comprehensive list of the vowel symbols used in the British tradition.

Descriptions of English often use different symbols for the last vowel of comma and strut on the grounds that the former is not stressed: kɔ́mə, but the latter one is: strə́t. The symbol ʌ is used for stressed schwa (strʌ́t). However, this is not warranted either on phonetic grounds — the two vowels are often pronounced identically — or on phonological grounds — the two vowels never contrast. Analysts who follow this practice insist that vowels in stressed position are different from those in unstressed position. Of course this is trivially true if we use different symbols to transcribe them…

Long vowels

We have already shown that the length of vowels may be contrastive in English. The only difference between very vɛrɪj and vary vɛːrɪj is in the length of the first, stressed vowel. Such minimal pairs can be found for almost every other short vowel: eg bid bɪd vs beard bɪːd, widow wɪdəw vs weirdo wɪːdəw, hat hat vs heart hɑːt, back bak vs bark bɑːk, body bɔdɪj vs bawdy boːdɪj, posh pɔʃ vs Porsche poːʃ, etc.The lack of minimal pairs of ʉ vs ʉː may be blamed on the limited distribution of both of these vowels. We have mentioned above that a and ɑː, ɔ and oː also differ in their quality. But since these different vowel qualities follow from the length of the vowel, we may safely disregard them and take these pairs to be short–long pairs.Speakers of Hungarian are able to compare this to the same situation with short–long pairs in this language: hat hɑt vs hát haːt, mez mɛz vs méz meːz, etc.

We here only mention one standard lexical set for the vowels oː and ɑː. We hope you have followed the link above to standard lexical sets and found that there were several items for oː (force, north, thought) and for ɑː (start, bath, palm). This indicates that the vowel of these words are different in some varieties of English, but not in current British English. In General American, for example, start is ɑr, but palm is ɑ (withouth r), while bath is a, ie the trap vowel.

Let us note that most speakers have replaced ʉː by one of its two “neighbours”, usually oː, sometimes əː, ie they pronounce cure as kjoː or kjəː. These speakers have only five long vowels. Here’s the collection of minimal pairs involving these five long vowels:

As we are going to see, three of the long vowels, ɑː, əː, and oː, ie the nonfront ones, form a subgroup based on their phonotactic behaviour.

Diphthongs

Standard analyses of English discuss a third type of vowel, namely, diphthongs. We have seen that diphthongs may be falling or rising, depending on which half is syllabic (ie vowel-like). Both types occur in English: however, there is clear evidence that rising diphthongs are better analysed as consonant+vowel sequences. The article before words that begin with a rising diphthong pattern with consonant-initial words: a bell, a well, a ewe ə jʉw, not with vowel-initial ones: an apple, an ouzel ən ʉwzəl. The evidence for analysing falling diphthongs as vowel+consonant sequences is less obvious. The main reason why English is claimed to have falling diphthongs is that these have developed from earlier long vowels, and still alternate with short vowels in some lexicalized pairs,Lexicalized practically means irregular. exemplified below.

feed fɪjd—fed fɛd, thief θɪjf–theft θɛft;
cave kɛjv–cavity kavətɪj, fable fɛjbəl–fabulous fabjələs;
hide hɑjd–hid hɪd, mime mɑjm–mimic mɪmɪk;
south sawθ–southern səðən, pronounce prənawns–pronunciation prənənsɪjɛjʃn;
go gəw–gone gɔn, close kləwz–closet klɔzət;
lose lʉwz–lost lɔst, goose gʉws–gosling gɔzlɪŋ

The falling diphthongs of English end in one of two offglides: j (ɪj, ɛ, ɑj, oj) or w (ʉw, əw, aw). Another possible categorization of diphthongs is based on the distance of the vowel and its offglide. Accordingly, we have wide, narrow, and marginal diphthongs.

narrow diphthongs Narrow diphthongs are one step removed, their two components are not immediate neighbours. In fact, for each of the two marginal diphthongs there is a narrow diphthong counterpart whose first element is one step lower in the vowel chart: ɪj~ɛj, ʉw~əw.əw is pronounced ow in General American. We will see that the o is preserved also in British English when this vowel is followed by R. British English has fronted ow to əw in most environments.

wide diphthongs Both marginal and narrow diphthongs are composed of parts that agree in being front (ɪj ɛj) or central/back (ʉw əw). Unlike them, wide diphthongs are composed of parts that disagree in the front–back dimension: front a with back w yield aw, back o and ɑ with front j yield oj and ɑj.The diphthong ɑj is transcribed as ʌj by some authors. Thus the two halves of wide diphthongs are “far from each other” in the vowel chart (their two parts are separated by three “box boundaries”, narrow diphthongs by two, marginal diphthongs by one).

The standard lexical sets for the seven diphthongs are shown below.

As we are going to see, the wide diphthong oj sticks out of the system of diphthongs in several ways.Many diphthongs developed from Middle English long vowels, except for oj, which was always a diphthong in ME too.

Minimal pairs for the diphthongs may be selected from the following set.

Simple vowel symbols

The symbols we have been using so far are phonetically precise, but contain detail that is unnecessary phonologically. The symbols a and ɑ, on the one hand, and ɔ and o, on the other, are in complementary distribution: the first of each pair occurs in the short vowel and the second ones in the long vowels. That is, these symbol pairs do not contrast.

It is also unnecessary to use ɪ, ɛ, or ʉ if they do not contrast with i, e, or u, respectively. Thus we can freely replace the symbols used so far with well-known Roman letters with the exception of one, ə. The resulting vowel system is as follows:

The conversion between the simple and the CUBE symbols is listed here:

• ɪ ↔ i
• ɛ ↔ e
• ʊ ↔ u
• a before ː/j → ɑ, elsewhere → a
• short o → ɔ, elsewhere → o

The distribution of vowels

The grouping of sound segments can be based on two types of criteria, the physical properties of segments (ie phonetic criteria) and the language-specific behaviour of segments (ie phonological criteria). In the lucky case the result of these two types of categorization converge, that is, segments that sound similarly, also behave in a similar way. Let us see the grouping of CUBE vowels. For a first approach, we will examine three basic phonotactic environments, we will see which vowels can occur before a consonant, before a vowel, and at the end of the word. The following chart contains the result of this test.

We see that any vowel may occur in preconsonantal position (__C). This is not a surprising result, it is possibly true for vowels in most natural languages.Note that unstressed ə may occur word finally. We will discuss the distribution of unstressed vowels later. Short vowels may not occur word finally, ie they can only occur if followed by a consonant. This consonant “checks” them: the traditional name for these vowels is checked vowels.

Long monophthongs and all diphthongs may occur word finally, but only diphthongs may occur before a vowel. Since diphthongs all end in an offglide, it seems that there is no hiatusA hiatus is two adjacent vowels without a consonant between them. The word hiatus itself is an example, at least in many languages, perhaps not English: hajéjtəs. in CUBE.

Long monophthongs do not occur before another vowel within a word. When a word-final long vowel is followed by a suffix or another word that begins with a vowel, speakers of CUBE typically insert an r between the two vowels. This is why we will call long vowels R vowels.

It is only diphthongs that may occur freely in any of these contexts, we will call them free vowels.

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