• alveolar ridge – takes part in pronunciation, when it is touched or approached by the tongue

• hard palate – used for the articulation of palatal sounds (behind alveolar ridge)

• lips:

  • they make a closure for labial sounds (e.g. /p/, /b/)

  • vowels are produced with open lips

  • sound quality depends on the shape of the lips

    • fully opened – lips are apart (e.g. //)

    • closed – lips near each other, air friction is produced when pronouncing consonants (e.g. /v/)

    • rounded – there is a small opening:

      open rounded //

      close – rounded /u/

      unrounded

      spread – there is a narrow opening like in /i/

      neutral – neither rounded or spread, but apart (e.g. // ‘shwa’)

Vowels

Vowels and their qualification

The system of classification we are going to use was developed at the end of 19^th century. Now x-ray photography is only reliable tool helping to determine the position of articulators when vowels are produced.

It’s very hard to classify vowels – in their case “nothing touches nothing”.

Generally speaking the quality of a vowel depends on the shape of the tongue and lips.

When articulating any vowel the tongue takes the shape of a hump and changing the position of the highest point of this hump changes the quality of vowel.

The position of the tongue may be pin-pointed on two axes:

vertical (4 points)

horizontal (3 points)

Therefore, we classify vowels in terms of:

1. the degree of backness

2. the degrees of raising

1. The degree of backness

   1. front vowels: the tongue is raised toward the hard palate: / 

   2. central vowels: the tongue is raised towards the centre: / /

   3. back vowels: the tongue is raised toward the soft palate / /

2. The degree of raising

   1. high vowels: 

   2. mid vowels: 

   3. low vowels: 

The two dimension aren’t enough. We need the shape of the lips to provide the third dimension, as the lips can move quite independently from the tongue:

rounded – there is a small opening between them

open rounded – e.g. 

close rounded - e.g. 

unrounded

spread – there is a narrow opening 

neutral – neither rounded nor spread but apart

Semi-vowels / j, w / and the approximant / r /

The first two are often purely vocalic from a phonetic standpoint but in such words as “tune” and “queen” they tend to be voiceless. The friction that is phonetically characteristic of consonants.

Tense and wide vowels

are those during whose articulation the root of the tongue is drawn forward so the vocal tract in the pharynx is considerably enlarged. That is why they require more muscular effort (long vowels and diphthongs in American terminology )

Important

Syllable – final voiceless consonants shorten the preceding vowels (e.g. had – hat, bird – Bear, etc.)

Lax (= luźne) and Narrow Vowels

During their pronunciation there is no forward movement of the tongue and the vocal tract in the pharynx is narrow (they require less muscular effort). There are short vowels: /  /.

Rhotacized, R-coloured, Retroflex vowels

During their pronunciation the tip of the tongue is slightly raised. It’s common in American English (w Ameryce nie mają r)

All the foregoing vowels were pure vowels (monophthongs) – one sound “of one unchanging quality”.