A very precise system used by phoneticians for describing vowels is the cardinal vowel system, elaborated by Daniel Jones and adopted by the International Phonetic Association (IPA). This system picks certain vowels as basic or cardinal and describes all other vowels in terms of their relation-ship to these cardinal vowels.
On the chart in Figure 9.2, the enclosed figure defines the extreme limits of vowel production. The tongue position for [i] is shown by a solid line, and the tongue position for [å] by a broken line. The black dots show the tongue position of the highest point of the tongue for cardinal vowel [i], the highest and farthest front vowel that you can make, and the highest point of the tongue for cardinal vowel [å], the lowest and farthest back vowel that you can make. This figure is usually altered to the stylised quadrilateral
Extended rounding
Figure 9.1 Lip rounding. Extended rounding is found with back vowels and retracted rounding with front vowels
Retracted rounding
[i]
[å]
Figure 9.2 The extreme limits of vowel production
shown in Figure 9.3. The black dots again show the positions of cardinal vowel [i] and cardinal vowel [å].
Figure 9.4 shows the vowel quadrilateral divided equally from high to low. The dots in the corners correspond to the limits of the possible vowels that can be made: [i] and [u] are the highest vowels that can be made, [a]
and [å] the lowest, [i] and [a] the farthest front, and [u] and [å] the farthest back. The vowel [a] is similar to English [æ] but at the low front extreme.
The quadrilateral has been divided into three equal parts from high to low. A diagonal line has been drawn showing the position of central vowels. The vowel quadrilateral represents the entire space where a vowel can be made. Any vowel can be described by showing its position inside this figure or on its edges.
Figure 9.5 (overleaf) shows the entire repertoire of cardinal vowels. Here, unrounded and rounded vowels are shown on different charts. It is com-mon, however, for unrounded and rounded vowels to be shown on the same chart with the reader expected to know from the symbols whether a vowel is rounded or not.
å
i
Figure 9.3 The cardinal vowel quadrilateral showing the cardinal vowels [i] and [å]
Figure 9.4 The vowel quadrilateral showing the extreme vowels and the internal divisions
u
a å
i
}
Figure 9.5 The cardinal vowels
We can use the cardinal vowel chart to locate any vowel. If we want to describe a particular vowel of a particular language, for example, the vowel of English hat, someone familiar with this system listens to the sound, and relates it to the fixed cardinal vowels.
The process goes something like this: ‘The vowel in English hat is a little higher than cardinal vowel [a], and a little farther back’.
A dot for English [æ] can now be placed on
the cardinal vowel chart as in Figure 9.6. The advantage of this system is that one person can learn and record a vowel on a chart, and another person, seeing this chart with no further information, can reproduce it quite accurately. Experiments have shown a high degree of accuracy in using this system (Ladefoged, 1967).
Although the pronunciation of the cardinal vowels is best learned from someone already familiar with them, you can make a fairly close approxima-tion by noting the following observaapproxima-tions. Several of the French vowels are very close to cardinal vowel positions: in particular [i e ´ a å] (vie, thé, mettre, patte, pâte). RP speakers have a vowel close to cardinal [ø] in law.
Cardinal [o u] are similar to the French vowels in beau, tout, but farther back.
Cardinal vowel symbols are used in two slightly different ways. They can be used to symbolise the cardinal vowels themselves. Other vowels can be located on the chart in relation to the cardinal vowels. Alternatively, the symbols can be used in a non-cardinal sense. Suppose that we plot dots for the vowels of some language on a cardinal vowel chart. We now want symbols for these vowels. We can attach the cardinal vowel symbols to the vowels of this language, choosing the symbol of the nearest cardinal vowel.
Not infrequently, a language has a transcription tradition which differs from the IPA principles. By the principles just advocated, the vowel in English hat should be transcribed [a], not [æ]. Some authors do this, but u
Consider now a language with nine vowels as shown in Figure 9.8. If we assign the closest cardinal symbols to these, as we did in Figure 9.7, we discover a problem. This language simply has more vowels than we have appropriate cardinal symbols. We have used [i] and also [e], but we need a symbol for a vowel between these. This situation is not uncommon in the languages of the world, and consequently, we sometimes have to resort to extra symbols, which the IPA has thoughtfully provided. Note that these extra symbols do not represent cardinal vowels; they are to be used in a general area of the vowel space, but they do not have a fixed definition as does a cardinal vowel. They are extra symbols to be used in addition to the cardinal symbols when describing a particular language. They are not to be used if an appropriate cardinal vowel symbol is available. We can now solve our problem in the language with nine vowels by symbolising the extra vowel as [ˆ].
Extra symbols with the areas where they are to be used (Figure 9.9, over-leaf) are:
[ˆ] lower high front unrounded, between [i] and [e]
[Á] lower high front rounded, between [y] and [ø]
[æ] higher low front unrounded, between [´] and [a]
[¨] lower high back rounded, between [u] and [o]
[á] higher low central unrounded, between [´¢] and [√¢]
If we have a six-vowel system as shown in Figure 9.7, we would use for these vowels the symbols shown there. The symbols must be used so as to suggest an approximately accurate sound to the reader. We pick [e] rather than [´] as the symbol for the front mid vowel because the vowel in our hypothetical language is closer to cardinal vowel [e] than to cardinal vowel [´]. Similarly, we pick [ø], not [o].
We tend to find the vowels [i e ´ a å ø o u] more often than [y ø œ Œ Å √ { }]. The first group is sometimes called primary as opposed to secondary for the second group; they differ only in having reversed rounding. In most follow the strongly established tradition of using [æ]. Note that this tradition of using [æ] instead of [a] only applies to English.
i
Figure 9.7 A hypothetical language with six vowels
Figure 9.8 A hypothetical language with nine vowels
Figure 9.9 Extra symbols ˆ, Á
æ
¨
á
\
\›
\≠ \™\¢
Figure 9.10 Use of vowel diacritics
Table 9.1 Formant frequencies of the cardinal vowels (Catford, 1988)
Unrounded Rounded
F1 F2 F1 F2
i 240 2400 y 235 2100
e 390 2300 ø 370 1900
´ 610 1900 œ 585 1710
a 850 1610 Π820 1530
å 750 940 Å 700 760
√ 600 1170 ø 500 700
{ 460 1310 o 36 640
} 300 1390 u 250 595
discussing vowels, I will often use the primary vowels with the under-standing that whatever is said could, in principle, be applied to the secondary vowels as well.
Most of the cardinal vowel symbols have a long-established tradition.
However, some of the central vowels [û ü ± É], were given more specific definitions in the 1993 revision of the IPA. You may find slightly varied use of these symbols in earlier works.
Figure 9.10 shows how vowel diacritics can be used to indicate small dif-ferences. For example, starting with [\] as a mid-central vowel, a vowel a bit to the front of this is shown with a subscript plus [\≠]. Other diacritics are [\™ \¢ \›] to indicate, respectively, vowels which are a bit farther back, lower, higher than the basic [\]. These diacritics could of course be applied to any vowel.
Formant frequencies
Table 9.1 shows average frequencies of the first two formants for the cardi-nal vowels spoken by a male (Catford, 1988). By comparing the frequencies
in Table 9.1 for unrounded and rounded vowels, you can see that rounding lowers the frequency of both formants, particularly the second. In general, the formant frequencies correspond to the pattern described in Chapter 8 for English, especially for the front vowels.