This document provides an overview of vowels and vowel-like articulations from Ladefoged's A Course in Phonetics. It discusses cardinal vowels as reference points for describing vowel quality, including their definition based on tongue height, backness, and lip rounding. It also covers secondary cardinal vowels, advanced tongue root, rhotacized vowels, nasalization, and semivowels. Finally, it discusses four types of secondary articulatory gestures that can be added to vowels: palatalization, velarization, pharyngealization, and labialization.

1. Vowels and Vowel-Like
Articulations
From Ladefoged ’s (2014). A Course in Phonetics– Ch9

2. TABLE OF CONTENTS
Cardinal
Vowels
Secondary
Cardinal
Vowels
Advanced
Tongue Root
01 02 03

3. TABLE OF CONTENTS
Rhotacized
Vowels
Nasalization Semivowels
04 05 06

4. TABLE OF CONTENTS
Secondary
Articulatory
Gestures
07

5. In previous chapters, we saw that there are three main
aspects of vowel quality:
(1) Vowel height
(2) Backness
(3) The degree of lip rounding
This chapter discusses these three features in greater detail
and also considers some additional, less prominent, features
of vowel quality.

6. Cardinal Vowels
01

7. Cardinal Vowels
o Phoneticians who want to describe the vowels of a certain dialect or of a
certain speaker often have to rely on their auditory abilities. They plot the
vowels on a vowel chart, so that anybody familiar with vowel charts can see
where the points are and can infer the quality of the vowels they are
describing.
o For a vowel chart to be truly interpretable, the vowels on it must be plotted
with reference to certain fixed points.
o There are several ways in which known reference vowels can be provided.

8. Cardinal Vowels
• In the first place, we can rely on
the fact that a vowel chart shows
the limits of possible vowel quality.
• Daniel Jones proposed a series
of eight cardinal vowels, evenly
spaced around the outside of the
possible vowel area and designed
to act as fixed reference points for
phoneticians.
• By definition, the cardinal vowels
are arbitrary reference points.
The Cardinal Vowels

9. Cardinal Vowels
The Cardinal Vowels
Two of the cardinal vowels are defined
in articulatory terms:
 Cardinal vowel (1)
is produced with the lips spread
and the tongue as high and far
forward as possible without
causing audible friction. It is
therefore something like the
vowel [ i ], but with a more
extreme quality.
The symbol for it is also [ i ].

10. Cardinal Vowels
The Cardinal Vowels
Two of the cardinal vowels are defined in
articulatory terms:
 Cardinal vowel (5)
is made with the lips in a neutral
far back as possible. It is something
like some forms of the American
English vowel [ɑ], or the British
English vowel [ɒ].
The symbol for it is [ɑ].

11. Cardinal Vowels
The Cardinal Vowels
 Cardinal vowels (2), (3), and (4)
are defined as front vowels that form
a series of auditorily equidistant
steps between numbers (1) and (5).
 Auditorily equidistant steps
implies that when these five vowels
are plotted on a formant chart, they
will be represented by points that
are equal distances apart.

12. Cardinal Vowels
The Cardinal Vowels
 Cardinal vowels (6), (7), and (8)
are defined as vowels that continue
from number (5), with the same-size
steps as in the first part of the series,
but are as back as possible

13. Cardinal Vowels
• The symbols for cardinal vowels (2), (3), and (4)
are [ e, ɛ , a ], respectively.
• The symbols for cardinal vowels (6), (7), and (8)
are [ɔ, o, u ].
• In accordance with the principles of the IPA, the symbols chosen for most of the
English vowels are those of the nearest cardinal vowels.
The major exception is the vowel in fat, which, following the tradition of
many English-speaking phoneticians, has been symbolized by [æ] rather
than [ a ].

14. Cardinal Vowels
Difficulties with the cardinal vowel system:
1. First, as Daniel Jones said: “The values of the cardinal vowels
cannot be learned from written descriptions; they should be learned
by oral instruction from a teacher who knows them.”

15. Cardinal Vowels
Difficulties with the cardinal vowel system:
2. The notion of auditory equidistance
between the vowels.
• This plot is somewhat in agreement with
the notion that vowel height corresponds
inversely to the frequency of formant one,
and backness corresponds to the distance
between formant two and formant one.

16. Cardinal Vowels
Difficulties with the cardinal vowel system:
3. There has been a great deal of
confusion over whether vowels
are being described in terms of
tongue height or in terms of
acoustic properties.
• The authors used instead the term
vowel height—meaning an auditory
quality that can be specified in acoustic
rather than articulatory terms.

17. Cardinal Vowels
Despite these problems, the cardinal vowel system has
worked fairly successfully.
It has allowed the vowels of many languages and dialects to be described
with far greater precision than by any other method.

18. Secondary
Cardinal Vowels
02

19. Secondary Cardinal Vowels
• The cardinal vowels have increasing
degrees of lip rounding.
• Most of the vowels of English would also fall
on this plane, although for many speakers of
American English, [ u ] is a back vowel that
is comparatively unrounded.
As a result, F2 is comparatively high, and
the location on the chart appears to
be farther forward than it would be if it
were rounded.
A three-dimensional
representation of the vowel space

20. Secondary Cardinal Vowels
Secondary cardinal vowels
• These vowels differ from the 8 primary
cardinal vowels in having an opposite
amount of lip rounding.
• Cardinal vowel (9) a vowel with the same
tongue position as cardinal vowel (1), but with
closely rounded lips.
• Cardinal vowels (10) through (16) have
the same tongue positions as cardinal vowels
(2) through (8), but continually decreasing—
instead of increasing—lip rounding.
• Cardinal vowel (16) is an unrounded
version of cardinal vowel (8).
The cardinal vowels

21. Secondary Cardinal Vowels
Some secondary cardinal vowels
and some central vowels
• The symbols [ɨ] and [ʉ] are used for
unrounded and rounded vowels midway
between cardinal vowels (1) [i] and (8)
[u].
• The symbol [ə] is not defined in terms of
cardinal vowels but is used for a range
of mid-central vowels.
• The symbol [ʌ], which is the symbol for
an unrounded cardinal vowel (6) [ɔ], is
sometimes used for a lowered mid-
central vowel.

22. Advanced Tongue
Root
03

23. Advanced Tongue Root
Akan Vowels (+ATR), (-ATR)

24. Advanced Tongue Root
Akan Vowels
There are two sets of vowels which differ
primarily in the size of the pharynx:
1. Advanced Tongue Root (+ATR): vowels
in which the root of the tongue is drawn
forward and the larynx is lowered so that the
part of the vocal
tract in the pharynx is considerably enlarged.
2. (- ATR vowels): vowels in which there is
no advancement of the tongue root or
lowering of the larynx.

25. Advanced Tongue Root
+ATR vowel
(Solid line)
−ATR vowel
(Broken line)

26. Advanced Tongue Root
+ATR vowel: should have a comparatively
large pharyngeal cavity.
−ATR vowel: has a comparatively
small one.

27. Advanced Tongue Root
In English, no pairs of vowels are distinguished simply by this
tongue gesture.
The tense high vowels [ i ] and [ u ], as in heed and who’d, have a more
advanced tongue root than the lax mid-high vowels [ ɪ ] and [ ʊ ], as in
hid and hood.
 The two sets of English vowels are divided by phonological
considerations.

28. Rhotacized Vowels
04

29. Rhotacized Vowels
 Many forms of American English have rhotacized or
r-colored vowels in words such as sir, cur, bird.
 It is symbolized as [ɚ].
 R-coloring can be produced in more than one way.

30. Rhotacized Vowels
• The bunched tongue ( ).
• The tongue-tip-up post-alveolar approximant
( ).
• Possible intermediate positions ( ).
Possible tongue positions for the vowel [ɚ] in American English

31. Rhotacized Vowels
 Rhotacization is an auditory quality, which,
like height and backness, is most appropriately
defined in acoustic terms.
 In a rhotacized vowel (or portion of a vowel)
there is a marked lowering of the frequency of
the third formant.
 The frequencies of the first two formants
determine the vowel height and backness.

32. Nasalization
05

33. Nasalization
 Vowels will be nasalized if the soft palate is
lowered to allow part of the airstream to
escape through the nose.
 The “tilde” diacritic [ ~ ] may be placed over
any vowel to indicate that it is nasalized.
 Vowels of this kind are commonly called
nasal vowels.

34. Nasalization
 Consonants such as [ m, n, ŋ ] are, of course, nasals, but they are not
nasalized.
 Contrasts between nasalized and non-nasalized consonants probably
do not occur in any language, but some consonants, such as [ w, j , l ],
may be nasalized if they occur next to nasalized vowels.
In Yoruba, the word for ‘they’ is [ w ɔ ] with the whole syllable being
nasalized.
~
~

35. Semivowels
06

36. Semivowels
o All sounds function either as the peaks of syllables or at the
syllable margins:
• Vowels are syllabic.
• Consonants are generally not syllabic.
o We can also divide sounds into:
• Vocoids: have no obstruction in the center of the mouth (vowels and
semivowels).
• Non-vocoids: have an obstruction in the center of the mouth (consonants).

37. Semivowels
Sounds can be classified as vocoids or non-vocoids and as syllabic
or non-syllabic.
Vocoids Non-vocoids
Syllabic Vowels [ i ] [ u ] [ a ] Syllabic cons. [ n ] [ l ]
Non-syllabic Semivowels [ j ] [ w ] Consonants [ p ] [ t ] [ k ]

38. Semivowels
o Semivowels, which are vocoids that function as the beginning or end of a
syllable.
o When at the beginning of a syllable, a semivowel usually consists of a rapid
glide from a high vowel position to that of the following vowel.
o The semivowels in English are [ j ] and [ w ], which are like nonsyllabic versions
of the English high vowels [ i ] and [ u ], respectively.

39. Semivowels
o The gesture for a semivowel is like that for an approximant in that it can be
considered to have a particular place of articulation, like other consonants.
• [ j ] is a palatal approximant
• [ w ] is a labial-velar approximant.

40. Semivowels
The English [ ɹ ], as in red, as a semivowel.
In the same way that [ w ] may be said to be a nonsyllabic counterpart of [ u ],
so [ ɹ ] may be said to be a nonsyllabic version of the vowel in American English fur.
• From a phonetic point of view, regarding [ ɹ ] in red as a semivowel may be a
valid description.
• But from a phonological point of view, it may not be appropriate in describing the
sound patterns that occur in English.

41. Secondary
Articulatory Gestures
07

42. Secondary Articulatory Gestures
They can usually be described as added vowel-like articulations
o A secondary articulation is a gesture with a lesser degree of
closure occurring at approximately the same time as another (primary)
gesture.
o We will consider four types of secondary articulation:
• Palatalization
• Velarization
• Pharyngealization
• Labialization

43. Secondary Articulatory Gestures
1. Palatalization
is the addition of a high front tongue gesture, like that in [ i ], to
another gesture.
o Palatalization can be symbolized by [ ʲ ] after a symbol.
o Instead of describing a secondary gesture, the terms palatalization and
palatalized are used to describe a process in which the primary gesture
is changed so that it becomes more palatal.
Thus, sounds are said to be palatalized if the point of articulation
moves toward the palatal region in some particular circumstance.

44. Secondary Articulatory Gestures
1. Palatalization
For example,
• The English / k / in key may be said to be palatalized because, instead
of the velar contact of the kind that occurs in car [ kaɹ ], the place of
articulation in key is changed so that it is nearer the palatal area.
• Similarly, palatalization is said to occur when the alveolar fricative [ z ] in
is becomes a palato-alveolar fricative in is she [ɪʒʃi ].

45. Secondary Articulatory Gestures
2. Velarization
involves raising the back of the tongue. It can be considered as
the addition of an [ u ]-like tongue position, but without the
addition of the lip rounding that also occurs in [ u ].
o In many forms of English, syllable final / l / sounds are
velarized and may be written [ ɫ ]

46. Secondary Articulatory Gestures
3. Pharyngealization
is the superimposition of a narrowing of the pharynx. Since cardinal vowel
(5)—[ ɑ ]—has been defined as the lowest, most back vowel possible without
producing pharyngeal friction, pharyngealization may be considered as the
superimposition of this vowel quality.
o One IPA diacritic for symbolizing pharyngealization is [ ] the same as for
velarization.
o If it is necessary to distinguish between these two secondary articulations, then
the IPA provides an alternative:
using small raised symbols corresponding to velar and pharyngeal fricatives,
representing a velarized alveolar nasal as [ nˠ ] and a pharyngealized alveolar
nasal as [ nˤ ].

47. Secondary Articulatory Gestures
4. Labialization
The addition of lip rounding, differs from the other secondary articulations
in that it can be combined with any of them.
o Even sounds in which the primary articulators are the lips, [ p, b, m ]
can be said to be labialized if they are made with added rounding and
protrusion of the lips.
o It is symbolized by a raised [ ].

48. RESOURCES
Ladefoged, P., & Johnson, K. (2014). A
course in phonetics. Cengage Learning.

49. THANK YOU…