1. English Vowels and diphthongs
Welcome to E L 120
English Phonetics and Linguistics
Lecture 3
Unit 4: Phonetics 3
English Vowels and diphthongs
Unit 5: Phonology

2. Defining Vowel sounds
Vowel sounds are commonly voiced, and they occupy the nucleus of a syllable.
In the production of vowel sounds, there is no complete closure and no stricture (narrowing) close enough to cause friction(the airstream passes out freely through the vocal tract).
Although there are 5 vowel letters in English, over 20 significant vowel sounds are in speech.
A significant sound is a sound that changes the meaning of the word if it is used instead of another sound. Eg. hit, hat, heat, hot etc.
Classes of Vowel Sounds
Primary cardinal vowels (8): IPA is the reference chart to describe the sounds of human languages.
- See the chart in p. 48
The tongue and the lips play an important role in producing vowel sounds

3. The lips may be rounded or unrounded in the production of vowel sound.
The tongue may be further to the front or to the back or in the center of the mouth.
The tongue may be very high or very low in the mouth or midway b/w high and low.
The lips may be rounded or unrounded in the production of vowel sound.
Vowels can thus classified acc to
The height of the tongue in the mouth : high, low or mid
Position of the tongue in the mouth: front, back or central.
Position of lips: rounded or unrounded.
Vowel sounds are further classified into :
1. short 2. Long 3. Diphthong

4. Short Vowels
There are 7 short vowel sounds in RP
See the table in page 49
Long Vowels
There are 5 long vowel sounds in RP as in the table shown in page 50.
Diphthongs
A diphthong is a complex vowel sound which changes its quality within a single syllable.
A diphthong has an initial quality and a different end quality. For eg, ‘eye’
There are 8 Diphthongs in English RP, see page 51.

5. Phonology
It studies how speech sounds are combined or merged into each other to produce words and utterances.
Phonemic analysis is concerned with phonemes and allophones
Phonemes are meaningful sounds, if one is used instead of other in a word, its meaning will change.
Allophones are the varieties of a phoneme. They do not change the meaning of a word if one is used instead of the other.
In phonemic transcription, only the phonemes (44
sounds) are considered. Look at the examples of clear
and dark ‘l’. Eg, ‘l’ sound in the word ‘little’

6. Minimal pairs
The phonemes of a language are established through a process which uses a pair of words that differ only in a single sound.
In a minimal pairs test, we take off a sound in a word and replace it with other sounds.
When meaning changes, we can conclude that the replacement is a phoneme. eg, ‘site’ and ‘fight’
Assimilation
All sounds, vowels, diphthongs and consonants are influenced by surrounding sounds. This influence usually leads to sound changes known as assimilation.
eg, She is a good girl; He is good boy

7. The linking ‘r’
In connected RP speech, when a word ends in the ‘schwa’ and the next word begins with a vowel, a linking /r/ sound is commonly heard b/w them. Eg, later on, dear Allen.
The intrusive ‘r’
Sometimes the /r/ is inserted even when the previous word does not end in [r], eg, idea of, Asia and Africa.
This ‘r’ is called the intrusive ‘r’
Aspiration
Flickering produced with a puff of air is called ‘aspiration. Eg, ‘key’, ‘piece’, ‘tea’
A voiceless plosive [/k/, /p/, or /t/] is pronounced with a following puff of air when it is used at the beginning of a stressed syllable and before a vowel.

8. Consonant Clusters
In English words, two, three or more consonants may be grouped together to form clusters or groups.
Examples of consonant clusters in word- initial, medial, and final positions. See page 60.
Syllable Structure
English words are made up of one or more syllables and each syllable consists of one or more sounds, generally consonants or vowels.
The English syllable commonly contains a vowel or a diphthong regardless of the number of consonants used in it.
One vowel or diphthong can be a whole syllable, called minimum syllable as in the word ‘or’, or the word ‘eye’.
An exception to this rule is seen in cases like the words ‘mutton’ and ‘cattle.’

9. Although there is one vowel in each word, the number of syllables is two: the final /n/ in ‘mutton’ and /l/ in cattle are called syllabic, meaning that each one stands for a syllable.
Closed syllable: When a syllable consists of a vowel or a diphthong preceded or followed by one or more consonants on each side. Eg, bed, trim, test etc.
Open Syllable: The vocalic sound has one or more consonants on one side only. Eg, way, cry, up, act.
A word which has a single syllable is called mono-syllabic. Eg, rich, smart, soon etc.
Words which has more syllables are termed multi-syllabic. Eg, repeat, understand, happily.

10. Asst. Professor in English, AOU.
THANK YOU
Dr. Veena Vijaya
Asst. Professor in English, AOU.