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Phonological and non-phonological features in the system of english vowels (11)

Substitution gives us a useful tool for establishing contrastive units, phonemes. The basic method of establishing a phoneme inventory is finding a minimal pair of words which form contrast in one segment only, like hot/cot. Similarly, in word sets like heed, hid, head, had, etc, any 2 words can form a minimal pair in which there’s contrast in respect of one vowel segment only.

There’re 20 vowel sounds which have a distinctive function in RP. Here are the words illustrating the contrasts established by replacing one vowel for the other (this will give us 17 phonemes):

Features which distinguish the vowel sounds in the minimal pairs

The basic classifying features of English vowels are quality, length, position of the lips, among which quality is the only phonemic one as a change in quality creates contrast and serves to distinguish words and their forms

  1. Vowel quality which depends on the height and the front-back position of the tongue.

According to the vertical position of the tongue, vowels can be:

a) close (high):

b) mid:

c) open (low)

According to the horizontal position of the tongue, they are classified into:

  1. front [i:], [e], [ei], [æ],[εə]

  2. central [], [3:], [ə ], [3u], [εu]

  3. back [o], [o:], [u:], [a:]

  1. Stability of articulation:

    1. monophthongs,

    2. diphthongs,

    3. diphthongoids.

Monophthongs don’t change their articulation during the pronunciation (with the exception of [i:] – [u:]). They are divided into short and long.

  1. Vowel length gives us two groups of vowel sounds:

      1. long;

      2. short

which are distinct in a number of features, such as:

  1. Tenseness – characterizes the state of the organs of speech at the moment of production a vowel. Long vowels, including diphthongs, are tense, short vowels are lax,

  2. Energy discharge – the quality depends on the character of the articulatory transition from a vowel to a consonant. Long vowels are unchecked (free), and short vowels are checked, i.e. produced with accompanying glottal activity, involving a rapid energy discharge in a short time interval,

  3. Position of the lips may distinguish:

        1. rounded;

        2. unrounded vowels

The higher the tongue raises the more rounded the lips are.

  1. Position of the soft palate: all English vowels are oral; other languages, like French, for example, may have nasal vowels; English vowels may be nasalized before a nasal consonant but the nasal quality change is not phonemic as it is not contrastive, it is allophonic.

All the 20 vowel phonemes can be distinguished by quality alone, and that makes this feature phonemic.

Thus the 20 RP English vowels are grouped in the following way: twelve monophthongs (seven short vowels and five long ones) and eight diphthongs:

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