1. Vowel Quality Pattern of the English Letter “U” in Initial Position
By: Gholamabbass Shahheidaripour
Date: July, 1998
1.0. Introduction
Generative phonology is a subsidiary or sub-discipline of generativism; the
approach to linguistics the aim of which is, to characterize the unconscious
knowledge of language. This innate knowledge may further be divided into
morphological, syntactic, semantic, and phonological knowledge, and as a result of
this, to specify what is that constitutes having a native accent.
1.1. Spelling-Sound Considerations
Native speakers of any language are aware of the rules of their language, and
by having this knowledge; they can easily pronounce any given word with
acceptable pronunciation even if they are encountering it for the first time. The first
account of describing pronunciation of words and sentences in English, phonological
analysis, goes back to the work of functional and structuralist linguists, who
believed in separation of levels. They believed in phonology as a list of phonemes,
and they considered conventional spelling inconsistent, thus an unreliable aid to
pronunciation. However, with the birth of generative grammar, new insights in
phonology were introduced. Recently considerable attempts have been made by
generative phonologists to describe pronunciation of words and sentences in terms
of their visual representations, spelling. Dr. Yarmohammadi (1996b) has stated, “In
cases such as English one can find fairly regular relationship between individual
sounds and specific letters.” They try to discover the rules which seem to be, more
or less, capable of predicting the genuine pronunciation of different English words,
as Dickerson (1982) has put it, “The ultimate purpose of prediction work is to
facilitate accurate production and discrimination.”
1.2. Application
In this regard, phonologists have tried to predict the sounds of consonant and
vowel letters of English. In Iran, Dr. Yarmohammadi has done his best to illustrate
this issue tangibly for pedagogical purposes. These efforts have led to discovery of
rules which predict stress patterns, consonant-corresponding patterns, and finally
vowel quality patterns. The rules of vowel quality pattern try to assign quality
patterns to five English vowel letters (a, e, i, o, u) in different environments. In this
small piece of writing I will try to infer and suggest rules concerning the vowel letter
“u” in initial position; however, all these three rules seem to be applicable to other
positions.
1.3. VQP of the letter “u” in initial position
In order to infer the rules related to the letter “u” in initial position,
Webster’s New World; college edition was consulted. The words studied numbered

2. to more than 1600. Seven different pronunciations are perceived, which are
illustrated below: (V stands for vowel and C for consonants).
1.3.1. ⁄ ü, yoo ⁄ vs. letter “U”
Rule one: UCV → long, /yoo, ū ⁄
Many words such as: ubiquity, Ulysses, una, Uniate, unite, Ural, uranology,
use, utensil, utopia, urea, are accounted for by this rule. However, there are
exceptions to this rule: all words with the prefix un-, undine, ulu, Unalaska,
Unamuno, uxorial, urumieh, upon, ulema, umiak. There are a few words which are
pronounced / yoo / in initial position but are not captured by a specific rule; uphroe,
upsilon, Uinta, Utrecht, utricle, uther.
1.3.2. ⁄ u, Λ ⁄
Rule two: UCC → short, ⁄ u, Λ ⁄
Many words are accounted for by the rule mentioned above , such as : all the
words with prefixes un- and up-, udder, ugly, ulcerate, ultimate, umbel, umbrella,
uncle, ustulate, utmost, utter. Exceptions are: until, unless, uhland, ulm, uxmal,
umlaut, ugh, ushas, and all words with UrC. Ut and us pronounced ⁄ Λ ⁄ and at the
moment there is no special rule to cover them.
1.3.3. ⁄ ủ, ε: ⁄
Rule three: UrC → short, ⁄ ủ‚ ε: ⁄
Many words are taken account of by this rule, such as: urban, urceolate,
urge, urn, Ursula, urticate. Exceptions to the UrC rule are: urfa, urga, uremia,
Urdu, ursprach.
1.3.4. ⁄ ū, ōō ⁄
No specific rule can be detected for / oo / pronunciation, and categorization
seems difficult since most of the words are proper nouns or from a foreign origin,
such as: Ubangi, udo, Uhland, ulema, Urdu, Uxmal.
1.3.5. ⁄ ǔ, υ ⁄
There are seven words with ⁄ υ ⁄ pronunciation which follow no fixed
patterns; ugh, Urfa, umlaut, urga, urumieh, urundi, ushas.
1.3.6. ⁄ ∂ ⁄
Three English words are pronounced with schwa in initial position; unless,
until, ushas.
1.3.7. ⁄ w ⁄
Two words are pronounced ⁄ w ⁄ in initial position and they are not English;
Uele, name of a river in Congo, uigar, a Turkish word.
1.4. Final remarks

3. From what was stated above, one can realize that there is a positive
relationship between spelling and the sounds of words. More than 90% of the words
are accounted for and the words which couldn’t be accounted for were mostly of
foreign origin or proper nouns. This is promising and leads to simplification of
English pronunciation. My humble suggestion would be to considering a few points
in this regard:
1) Effect of adjacent letters on one another.
2) Letters representing two sounds, or two letters representing one sound.
3) Intrinsic and extrinsic ordering relations and hierarchy of the rules.
4) Economy of this kind of predictions.
References
Aitchison, J. 1992. Teach Yourself Linguistics. London: Hodder & Stoughton.
Carr, P. 1993. Phonology. London: McMillan Press Ltd.
Dickerson, W.B. 1980. A Pedagogical Interpretation of Generative Phonology.
TESOL, vol. 3.
______________. 1982. A Pedagogical Interpretation of Generative Phonology.
TESOL, vol. 5.
Fromkin, V. & Rodman, R. 1988. An Introduction to Language, 4th ed. Fort Worth:
Holt, Reinhart and Winston Inc.
Lyons, J. 1981. Language and Linguistics. Cambridge: CUP.
Yarmohammadi, L. 1996a. A Contrastive Phonological Analysis of Persian and
English. Shiraz: Shiraz University Press.
_________________, and Pouretedal, G. 1996b. A course in English Pronunciation.
Tehran: SAMAT.
g.s.