1. Vowel

In phonetics, a vowel is a sound in spoken language, such as English ah! [ɑ:] or oh! [oʊ],

pronounced with an open vocal tract so that there is no build-up of air pressure at any point

above the glottis. This contrasts with consonants, such as English sh! [ʃ:], where there is a

constriction or closure at some point along the vocal tract. A vowel is also understood to be

syllabic: an equivalent open but non-syllabic sound is called a semivowel.

In all languages, vowels form the nucleus or peak of syllables, whereas consonants form

the onset and (in languages which have them) coda. However, some languages also allow

other sounds to form the nucleus of a syllable, such as the syllabic l in the English word table

[ˈteɪ.bl.] (the stroke under the l indicates that it is syllabic; the dot separates syllables), or the

r in Serbian vrt [vr.t] "garden".

There is a conflict between the phonetic definition of 'vowel' (a sound produced with no

constriction in the vocal tract) and the phonological definition (a sound that forms the peak

of a syllable).The approximants [j] and [w] illustrate this conflict: both are produced without

much of a constriction in the vocal tract (so phonetically they seem to be vowel-like), but

they occur on the edge of syllables, such as at the beginning of the English words 'yes' and

'wet' (which suggests that phonologically they are consonants). The American linguist

Kenneth Pike suggested the terms 'vocoid' for a phonetic vowel and 'vowel' for a

phonological vowel,so using this terminology, [j] and [w] are classified as vocoids but not

vowels.

The word vowel comes from the Latin word vocalis, meaning "speaking",

because[citation needed] in most languages words and thus speech are not possible without

vowels. Vowel is commonly used to mean both vowel sounds and the written symbols that

represent them.

Articulation

The articulatory features that distinguish different vowel sounds are said to determine

the vowel's quality. Daniel Jones developed the cardinal vowel system to describe vowels in

terms of the common features height (vertical dimension), backness (horizontal dimension)

and roundedness (lip position). These three parameters are indicated in the schematic IPA

vowel diagram on the right. There are however still more possible features of vowel quality,

such as the velum position (nasality), type of vocal fold vibration (phonation), and tongue

root position.

Monophthong, Diphthong, Triphthong, and Semivowel

A vowel sound whose quality doesn't change over the duration of the vowel is called a

monophthong. Monophthongs are sometimes called "pure" or "stable" vowels. A vowel

sound that glides from one quality to another is called a diphthong, and a vowel sound that

glides successively through three qualities is a triphthong.

All languages have monophthongs and many languages have diphthongs, but

triphthongs or vowel sounds with even more target qualities are relatively rare cross-

linguistically. English has all three types: the vowel sound in hit is a monophthong / ɪ/, the

vowel sound in boy is in most dialects a diphthong /ɔɪ/, and the vowel sounds of

flower, /aʊər/, form a triphthong or disyllable, depending on dialect.

In phonology, diphthongs and triphthongs are distinguished from sequences of

monophthongs by whether the vowel sound may be analyzed into different phonemes or

not. For example, the vowel sounds in a two-syllable pronunciation of the word flower

(/ˈflaʊər/) phonetically form a disyllabic triphthong, but are phonologically a sequence of a

diphthong (represented by the letters <ow>) and a monophthong (represented by the

letters <er>). Some linguists use the terms diphthong and triphthong only in this phonemic

sense.

Use of vowels in Language

The importance of vowels in distinguishing one word from another varies from language

to language. The alphabets used to write the Semitic languages, such as the Hebrew

alphabet and the Arabic alphabet, do not ordinarily mark all the vowels, since they are

frequently unnecessary in identifying a word. These alphabets are technically called abjads.

Although it is possible to construct simple English sentences that can be understood without

written vowels (cn y rd ths?), extended passages of English lacking written vowels can be

difficult to understand (consider dd, which could be any of add, aided, dad, dada, dead,

deed, did, died, diode, dodo, dud, dude, eddie, iodide, or odd).

In most languages, vowels serve mainly to distinguish separate lexemes, rather than

different inflectional forms of the same lexeme as they commonly do in the Semitic

languages. For example, while English man becomes men in the plural, moon is not a

different form of the same word. Vowels are especially important to the structures of words

in languages that have very few consonants, like Polynesian languages such as Maori and

Hawaiian, and in languages whose inventories of vowels are larger than their inventories of

consonants.Nearly all languages have at least three phonemic vowels, usually [i], [a], [u] as

in Classical Arabic and Inuktitut (or [æ], [ɪ], [ʊ] as in Quechua), though Adyghe and many

Sepik languages have a vertical vowel system of [ɨ], [ə], [a]. Very few languages have fewer,

though some Arrernte, Circassian, Ndu languages have been argued to have just two, [ə]

and [a], with [ɨ] being epenthetic.

The rarest vowel cataloged are ɜ (has just been cataloged in Paicĩ and English) and ʊ ̈

(Early modern english and Russian).

It is not possible to say which language has the most vowels, since that depends on how

they are counted. For example, long vowels, nasal vowels, and various phonations may or

may not be counted separately; indeed, it may sometimes be unclear if phonation belongs

to the vowels or the consonants of a language. If such things are ignored and only vowels

with dedicated IPA letters ('vowel qualities') are considered, then very few languages have

more than ten. The Germanic languages have some of the largest inventories: Standard

Swedish has seventeen contrasting simple vowels, nine long and eight short (/i: e: ɛ: ɑ: o: u:

ʉ̟: y: ø: ɪ ɛ a ɔ ʊ ɵ ʏ œ/), while the Amstetten dialect of Bavarian has been reported to have

thirteen long vowels: /i: y: e: ø: ɛ: œ: æ: ɶ: a: ɒ: ɔ: o: u:/. The Mon-Khmer languages of

Southeast Asia also have some large inventories, such as the eleven vowels of

Vietnamese: /i e ɛ æ ɑ ʌ ɔ ɤ o ɯ u/. Wu has the largest inventories of Chinese; the Jinhui

dialect of Wu (金汇方言 )) has also been reported to have eleven vowels: ten normal

vowels, /a e ɯ ɨ i ɞ ɵ ø u y/, plus restricted /ɿ/.

One of the most common vowels is [ac]; it is nearly universal for a language to have at

least one open vowel, though most dialects of English have an [æ] and a [ɑ]—and often an

[ɒ], all open vowels—but no central [a]. Some Tagalog- and Cebuano-speakers have [ɐ]

rather than [a], and Dhangu Yolngu is described as having /ɪ ɐ ʊ/, without any peripheral

vowels. [i] is also extremely common, though Quileute has [e:], [æ:], [a:], [o:] without any

close vowels, at least as they are pronounced when long. The third vowel of Arabic-type

three-vowel system, /u/, is considerably less common. A large fraction of the languages of

North America happen to have a four-vowel system without /u/: /i, e, a, o/; Aztec is an

example.

2. Consonants

In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with

complete or partial closure of the vocal tract. Examples are [p], pronounced with the lips;

[t], pronounced with the front of the tongue; [k], pronounced with the back of the tongue;

[h], pronounced in the throat; [f] and [s], which are noisy (fricatives); and [m] and [n], which

have air flowing through the nose (nasals). Contrasting with consonants are vowels.

Since the number of consonants in the world's languages is much greater than the

number of consonant letters in any one alphabet, linguists have devised systems such as the

International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) to assign a unique symbol to each attested consonant.

In fact, the Latin alphabet, which is used to write English, has fewer consonant letters than

English has consonant sounds, so digraphs like "ch", "sh", "th", and "zh" are used to extend

the alphabet, and some letters and digraphs represent more than one consonant. For

example, many speakers are not aware that the sound spelled "th" in "this" is a different

consonant than the "th" sound in "thing". (In the IPA they are transcribed [ð] and [θ],

respectively.)

The word consonant is also used to refer to a letter of an alphabet that denotes a

consonant sound. Consonant letters in the English alphabet are B, C, D, F, G, H, J, K, L, M, N,

P, Q, R, S, T, V, X, Z, and usually W and Y: The letter Y stands for the consonant [j] in "yoke",

and for the vowel [ɪ] in "myth", for example; W is almost always a consonant except in rare

words (mostly loanwords from Welsh) like "crwth" "cwm".

Each spoken consonant can be distinguished by several phonetic features:

The manner of articulation is the method that the consonant is articulated, such as

nasal (through the nose), stop (complete obstruction of air), or approximant (vowel

like).

The place of articulation is where in the vocal tract the obstruction of the consonant

occurs, and which speech organs are involved. Places include bilabial (both lips),

alveolar (tongue against the gum ridge), and velar (tongue against soft palate).

Additionally, there may be a simultaneous narrowing at another place of articulation,

such as palatalisation or pharyngealisation.

The phonation of a consonant is how the vocal cords vibrate during the articulation.

When the vocal cords vibrate fully, the consonant is called voiced; when they do not

vibrate at all, it's voiceless.

The voice onset time (VOT) indicates the timing of the phonation. Aspiration is a

feature of VOT.

The airstream mechanism is how the air moving through the vocal tract is powered.

Most languages have exclusively pulmonic egressive consonants, which use the lungs

and diaphragm, but ejectives, clicks and implosives use different mechanisms.

The length is how long the obstruction of a consonant lasts. This feature is borderline

distinctive in English, as in "wholly" [hoʊlli] vs. "holy" [hoʊli], but cases are limited to

morpheme boundaries. Unrelated roots are differentiated in various languages such

as Italian, Japanese and Finnish, with two length levels, "single" and "geminate".

Estonian and some Sami languages have three phonemic lengths: short, geminate,

and long geminate, although the distinction between the geminate and overlong

geminate includes suprasegmental features.

The articulatory force is how much muscular energy is involved. This has been

proposed many times, but no distinction relying exclusively on force has ever been

demonstrated.

All English consonants can be classified by a combination of these features, such as

"voiceless alveolar stop consonant" [t]. In this case the airstream mechanism is omitted.

Some pairs of consonants like p::b, t::d are sometimes called fortis and lenis, but this is a

phonological rather than phonetic distinction.

Assignment of English Phonology

Vowel and Consonant

I MADE RIAN IRWANTO

A1 D2 11 101

ENGLISH DEPARTMENT

THE FACULTY OF TECHERSHIP AND EDUCATION

HALUOLEO UNIVERSITY

KENDARI

2012