Vowels

Vowels

• Vowels – the air is going freely out of us (open vocal tract shaped differently for each vowel)

• A – jaw is down, tongue is down – different resonance (because of a different shape) than e(í) – jaw is up, and tongue is up

• Usually tonal – regular changes, voiced

• Higher amplitudes – why? We are not blocking the air, we have an open mouth – we will perform louder sounds and higher amplitudes (amplitude = distance from a silence)

• Usually divided into front, central and back vowels

• Front – The tongue is fairly close to the roof of the mouth

• Central – the tongue is in the centre of the mouth

• Back - the tongue is close to the back surface of the vocal tract

• Vowels can be described as rounded and unrounded

• frequency (Hertz – 1 Hz – 1 pulse per second) = the number of complete repetitions (cycles) of a pattern of air pressure variation occurring in a second

• Pharyngeal cavity is resonating frequency F1 - The one with the lower pitch (distinguishable in creaky voice)

• oral cavity is F2 – higher one (the one heard when whispering)

• Resonating frequency can’t be same for two vowels

• tone = have a melody, regular, repetition

• noise = irregular, unpredictable changes

• formants = characteristic overtones of the vowels

• pitch allows us to put a tone on a scale from high to low (bigger frequency -> higher pitch)

• intonation = the pitch pattern in a sentence (question – higher pitch)

• it can convey information about the speaker's age, sex, emotional state, and attitude toward the topic under discussion

Vowels are described by these three factors:

1.the height of the body of the tongue

2. the front/back position of the tongue (he/who)

3. the degree of lip rounding

Diphthongs

• sounds that consist of a combination of two vowel sounds

• movements from one vowel to another within a single syllable

• [aɪ] buy, eye, I, my, pie, sigh

• [oʊ] boat, home, throw, toe

• [aʊ] bough, doubt, cow

• [ɔɪ] boy, noise

• [eɪ] bait, eight, great, late, say

Phonetic transcription

• Broad transcription = indicates only the most noticeable phonetic features of an utterance

• Narrow transcription = encodes more information about the phonetic variations of the specific allophones in the utterance