The English vowel system. Cardinal vowels.

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 724.

Vowels.

System of Ukrainian and Russian vowel phoneme.

The English vowel system. Cardinal vowels.

PHONOLOGICAL SYSTEM.

ENGLISH VOWELS AS THE UNITS OF THE

Lecture 6.

1. Classification of English vowels.
2. Stability of articulation. English diphthongs.
3. The system of English vowel phonemes as compared with the

1. Differences in the articulatory bases of English and Russian

The English vowel system is less controversial than the system of consonants. The typology of the system of vowels, the most general phonic and phonological categories upon which it is based can be found only among the lines of modeling the system of vowels.

The problem of modeling is not infrequently reduced to the problem of choosing among several possible descriptions: the one that represents the given phonemes and their variants in a more symmetrical way than the others. But what actually should be done to uncover the symmetry which really exists in a given language?

The importance of modeling in phonology cannot be overestimated especially if we take into account the fact that one of the most urged problems in modern linguistics is the problem of the so-called “overall linguistic system”(a uniform description of the structure of a language which would include all its variants, social and territorial dialects). Until quite recently the phoneticians aiming at the description of the phonetic system of a language described, took as a rule, only one of the existing social or territorial dialects of a given language. But to give an overall system of English vowels one must create a hypothetical-deductive model, taking into consideration all the concrete realization and grouping them around a limited number of “prop” elements.

One of the suggested models of this kind is the chart which represents the points where the cardinal vowels are positioned. What is a cardinal vowel?