Polish-English Contrastive Grammar, Grzegorz Krynicki ILS Summer Semester 2010

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Topic 4: Cardinal Vowels. English and Polish Vowels

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Cardinal vowels and vowel quadrilateral



English dialects we will consider are

o RP – Received Pronunciation, received meaning „accepted‟, also known as Queen's English, BBC English;
o GA – General American, Midwestern accent spoken by newscasters.



A vowel quadrilateral (Germ. Vokalviereck, Vokaltrapez) was invented by
Daniel Jones (1887-1967) to represent the positions of the highest point of the
tongue during the production of the vowel.



It includes cardinal vowels - sounds produced when the tongue is in extreme
positions, either front or back, high or low, with lips being either rounded or
unrounded. Cardinal vowels define the space for all the other vowels.



It was later found to more exactly reflect some acoustic properties of vowels:
the frequencies of two high energy bands in a vowel sound spectrum (as the
one below for RP vowels), i.e. the first and second vowel formant (F1 and F2 below)

F3


F2



F1



In the vowel chart diagram below (cf. Wells 2000), the circled symbols represent primary cardinal vowels (i.e. without
lip-rounding; their rounded counterparts are called secondary cardinal vowels; not included in the diagram), the shaded
symbols represent Polish vowels, the remaining symbols represent English vowels.













front central back

high (close)

mid

low (open)









































ɚ



RP HOD



AmE POWER



AmE POD

FATHER

HEED

ROSES,
HAPPY

HID

HEAD

HAD

HUD

HORDE

HOOD

WHO’D

BIRD

ABOUT



AmE BIRD

Polish-English Contrastive Grammar, Grzegorz Krynicki ILS Summer Semester 2010

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Vowel qualities

Simple vowels (i.e. pure vowels or monophthongs) can be described with the following criteria

2.1 Position of the body of the tongue: vertical and horizontal

Tongue vertical position: high (=close), mid, low (=open) vs. tongue horizontal position: front, central, back. Sometimes the mid
region is divided into: high-mid (=half-close) and low-mid (=half-open) regions.

2.2 Lip position: rounded and unrounded

In English, the high back and mid back vowels (/

/, //, //) are rounded. Low back // gets slight rounding as well. The

remaining vowels are unrounded. Additionally, unrounded lip shapes are divided into neutral e.g. for /

/ and spread e.g. for //

and /

/.

2.3 Length and tenseness

Long/short distinction is replaced by vowel tenseness, with the “long” vowels being tenser than the “short” vowels, because



American equivalents of the RP short/lax vowels are not always so short - in many American accents, all vowels can
become lengthened for emphasis



Both in RP and GA, vowels are a bit longer before voiced consonants in a syllable-final position than before voiceless
consonants. This phenomenon is called Pre-fortis clipping (pre = before; fortis = voiceless; clipping = shortening). For
example, the vowel /

/ in „bat‟ // is shorter, because /t/ is unvoiced, while the same vowel in „bad‟ // is longer,

because /d/ is voiced.



Vowel stress in English also makes vowels longer, as English is a stress-timed language (in English time intervals
between stressed syllables are equal; in Polish, as a syllable-timed language, all syllables are of approx. equal length)

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English simple vowels

There are some differences between the vocalic system of GA and RP. Crucial differences are



no /

/ in GA;



rhotacized /



/ and /

/ are absent from RP;



GA has /

/ in most words where RP has //, e.g. //, // vs. //, //. However, in some of those words GA has

/

/, e.g. // vs. //;



RP has /

/ in some words where GA has //, e.g. //, //, // vs. //, //, /l/. But notice //,

/

/ for both.

In the table below, all GA and RP vowels are listed with their appropriate vowel quality descriptions

Symbol

Symbol name

Example

Tongue position

Lips

Length/

Tenseness

vertical

horizontal



script i (with triangular colon)

beat

high (close)

front

spread

long/tense



script i

roses /

/ high (close)

front

spread

short/lax



small capital i

bit

high (close)

front

spread

short/lax



script e

bet

mid

front

neutral

short/lax



ash, digraph a-e

bat

low (open)

front

neutral

short/lax



caret, wedge, turned v

cut

low (open)

central

neutral

short/lax



reversed epsilon, reversed open e

nurse

mid

central

neutral

long/tense



 (GA) rhotacized reversed epsilon

nurse

mid

central

neutral

long/tense



schwa

about /

/ mid

central

neutral

short/lax

 (GA) rhotacized schwa, schwa with hook color / / mid

central

neutral

short/lax



script a

palm

 low (open)

back

neutral

long/tense

 (RP) turned script a

lot

low (open)

back

rounded

short/lax



open o

caught

 mid

back

rounded

long/tense



upsilon

put

high (close)

back

rounded

short/lax



script u

boot

high (close)

back

rounded

long/tense

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English complex vowels

English complex vowels include diphthongs and triphthongs. Diphthong – a sequence of two vowels pronounced together, the two
vocalic elements being members of the same syllable. In English we have centring diphthongs and rising diphthongs. RP
centring and rising diphthongs are the following

Polish-English Contrastive Grammar, Grzegorz Krynicki ILS Summer Semester 2010

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front central back

high

mid

low



BEAR



BEER



POOR

front central back

high

mid

low



PAID



BITE



BOY



TOE



HOUSE

GA has only rising diphthongs

front central back

high

mid

low



PAID



BITE



BOY



LOUD



SO

In GA there are no centring diphthongs because GA is a rhotic accent and /

/, //, // become //, //, //. In rhotic accents /r/

can occur without a following vowel. RP is a non-rhotic language so /r/ does not occur unless a vowel follows.

triphthongs – have no phonemic status in English. They occur when the non-centring diphthongs are followed by schwa.



they occur before the /r/ contained in a suffix added to the root. Thus /

/, //, //, //, // become //, //, //,

/

/, // in (fire, employer, layer, mower, power)



as a separable element in a compounds (nowadays, throwaway)



as inseparable parts of a word (mayor, boa, fire, sour, soya)

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Selected differences between Polish and English vowels



numbers: 6 in Polish vs. 12 in English (excluding Polish nasals and English diphthongs)



quantity

o has a phonemic distinction in English;
o the contrast involves both quantity and quality, with a possible exception of the mid-central pair;
o lacking in Modern Polish but present in Old Polish



nasal vowels

o oral/nasal contrasts in Polish as opposed to a slight degree of nasalisation in English;
o nasal allophones in Polish [

ĩ ɨ̃ ũ ɑ̃] (instynkt, symfonia, kunszt, tramwaj)

o alternatively, Polish nasal vowels can be treated as sequences of vowel+consonant, e.g., /

kɛmpa/ kępa, /rɛŋka/

ręka; /

ŋ/ is then treated as a separate phoneme and not an allophone of /n/



diphthongs

o 8 BrE and 5 AmE English diphthongs
o Polish diphthongs in loanwords (Eu-ropa, au-tor); phonetically comparable sequences of vowel+glide in Polish,

e.g., maj; notice however that they are split by a syllable boundary (ma-ja), or by a morpheme boundary (da-j)



other

o lack of mid-central vowel in Polish
o rhotic/non-rhotic dialects of English; r-colouring with vowel followed by /r/
o /

æ/ ~ /ɑː/ pairs in AE and BE before /f, s, Ѳ, n/

References

Wells, J.C., 2000. Longman Pronunciation Dictionary. Second edition. Harlow: Pearson Education Limited.

http://www.hi.is/~peturk/KENNSLA/02/TOP/VowelsDiphth.html

http://www.ling.mq.edu.au/speech/phonetics/index.html

Iivonen, Antti. Vowel charts.

http://www.helsinki.fi/speechsciences/projects/vowelcharts/

E-DaF: Illustrationen 3.

http://zif.spz.tu-darmstadt.de/jg-07-1/beitrag/wchan4.htm

Vowel.

http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/Vowel

Burkhard Dretzke. 1998. Modern British and American English pronunciation. Paderborn: Schoening. p. 35