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Topic: Reduced vowels

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vowel roundedness

vowel height

front vowel

close vowel

rounded vowel

open vowel

open back unrounded vowel

mid vowel

vowel harmony

unrounded vowel

Great Vowel Shift

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	Reduced Vowels
		This vowel occurs in an unstressed word or syllable; examples are the words the, a, the first syllable of about, and the last syllable of sofa.
		One characteristic of a reduced vowel is that its formants cannot readily be pinned down to the same degree of accuracy that the non-reduced vowels can.
		Reduced vowels also lack the sustained period of stability provided by other vowels, and for the same reason cited above: they are too short to reach or stay at the target frequencies.
	cslu.cse.ogi.edu /tutordemos/SpectrogramReading/cse551html/cse551/node29.html (369 words)

	REFLECTIONS ON ASPECTS OF VOWEL REDUCTION
		It is often assumed that the formant patterns of reduced vowels shift towards the centre of the vowel diagram.
		The formant frequencies of the reduced /ê/ from "miljoen" and the reduced /O/ from "bioscoop" in the fourth group are close to the schwa positions that are predicted by this model (for the specific contexts /m'ljun/ and /bij'sko:p/).
		Most competence models of vowel reduction take mainly the role of word stress into account; vowels in syllables without primary or secondary word stress are reduced to schwa (usually under some extra restrictions with respect to, for instance, vowel type or the position of the vowel in the word).
	www.fon.let.uva.nl /Proceedings/Proceedings18/Dick_van_Bergem/Dick_v_BergemProc18.html (7642 words)

	Vowel reduction and the perception of words (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-09)
		For type of vowel, lower word rates where found for words with the vowels /a/ and /o/, whereas words with nasals after the reduced vowel tended to result in higher word rates.
		A suitable manipulation is to remove the vowel in the pre-stress syllable, since in Swedish, a vowel in this position often is deleted or reduced in spontaneous speech.
		For the vowels, the average word judgement rate is lower for stimuli where the deleted vowels are /a/ (46%) and /o/ (45,1%) than for the other vowels (58,5% - 60,6%).
	www.ling.lu.se /persons/JohanF/misc/papers/fon98.html (1830 words)

	Acoustic consonant reduction
		It is a universal phenomenon that reduces the distinction of vowels in informal speech and unstressed syllables.
		The boundaries between vowels and consonants were placed, as much as possible, on waveform zero-crossings that corresponded to "visible" changes in the spectral composition of the waveform.
		Duration is one of the strongest correlates of vowel reduction (e.g., Lindblom, 1963).
	fonsg3.let.uva.nl /Proceedings/Proceedings_19/ConsonantRed_RvS/Consonantreduction.html (3275 words)

	Lexical Stress Encyclopedia Article @ Wearily.net (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-09)
		On a full vowel: An unstressed syllable with a full vowel also corresponds to secondary stress in the traditional account, and to tertiary stress in the fuller account.
		On a reduced vowel: An unstressed syllable with a reduced vowel is said be unstressed or to have quaternary stress.
		acute accent on the vowel, or the first two vowels in case of a diphthong, of the stressed syllable.
	www.wearily.net /encyclopedia/Lexical_stress (1500 words)

	Unstressed vowel - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
		An unstressed vowel is the vowel sound that forms the syllable peak of a syllable that has no lexical stress.
		In many languages, vowel reduction happens when a vowel changes from stressed to unstressed position, i.e., an unstresed vowel becomes a reduced vowel, such as schwa.
		As a result, the pronunciation of, e.g., a letter E may significantly differ in the same syllable, but in stressed and unstressed positions.
	en.wikipedia.org /wiki/Unstressed_vowel (136 words)

	Learning Portuguese - Vowels (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-09)
		Reduced ‘o’ is represented by the letter ‘u’, because the English pronunciation of a ‘u’ is very similar to the Portuguese reduced ‘o’, but remember to weaken the sound of the vowel slightly.
		Vowels that are followed by m or n, or have a tilde (~) over them are pronounced nasally, and this is represented in the pronunciation guides by ‘[ng]’.
		Listening to the isolated vowels, the differences are too subtle for me to hear, and I think probably not completely representative of how they sound in context.
	www.learningportuguese.co.uk /pronunciation/vowels.html (1246 words)

	SingaporeMoms - Parenting Encyclopedia - Yer
		In the Old Church Slavonic language, the yer was a vowel letter, indicating the so-called "reduced vowel": ъ = [ŭ], ь = [ĭ] in the conventional transcription.
		From the twelfth to the fourteenth centuries, the original [ъ] sound became extinct in all Slavic languages; this so-called fall of the yers is typically considered as marking the final disintegration of Common Slavonic.
		In Bulgarian, the er golyam is used for a vowel, [ə] (Schwa).
	www.singaporemoms.com /parenting/Yer (741 words)

	Glosses.net : makeup your mind » 2003 » May (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-09)
		It is usually explained as “every syllable has to end in a vowel”, but this process is in fact about sonority (the total energy with which a sound is shaped).
		Vowels have a higher sonority than consonants, within consonants, sonants (m, n, r) and glides (w, j) have higher sonority then obstruents; thus the common syllable structure in late Common Slavic is CV or CSV.
		From the point of view of the reduced vowels, the main text looks 13th century-ish; in the postscriptum, almost all the reduced vowels are preserved, ie it confirms to 12 century standarts.
	glosses.net /archives/2003/05/page/2 (1454 words)

	LINGUIST List 2.82: Language Families & Unstressed Vowels
		`Reduced' is not a well-defined concept in phonetics or phonology.
		In English phonology, "reduced" means among other things, central, short and unstressed.
		For example, stress placement in English is regular, but stress may not fall on reduced vowels (since they are exponents of absence of stress).
	www.ling.ed.ac.uk /linguist/issues/2/2-82.html (787 words)

	South-East Dekavurian
		As a result of vowel harmony, many suffixes developed two variants, one with front vowels and one with back; for example, the nominative plural suffix was variously /+as +os +us/ for back-vowel words and /+æs +øs +ys/ for front-vowel words.
		This meant that stressed vowels followed by a single consonant, or an obstruent followed by /l/ or /r/, are phonetically long; thus the first /a/ in akra "field" is noticeably longer than both the second and the /a/'s in kalba "calf".
		The thematic vowel in the first conjugation alternates between /a æ/ and /i/; in the second it is /o ø/, and in the third /e/.
	www.cix.co.uk /~morven/lang/dek_se.html (4166 words)

	Setsuko's Home Page
		Vowel reduction (durational and spectral) has been observed in many languages; however, only a few studies have been conducted research on Japanese phonetic vowel reduction.
		Durational and spectral vowel reductions for [a] were observed, which raised a question: whether duration is the only factor that causes spectral vowel reduction.
		In the undershoot hypothesis, the short duration of reduced vowels leads to the spectral vowel reduction; in other words, duration is the only factor that causes spectral vowel reduction.
	home.myuw.net /ssetsuko (993 words)

	Diphthongs as Moving Vowels
		In all other cases the nucleus is perceived as the first vowel, with the second vowel constituting a sort of off-glide.
		The essence of a diphthong is the continuous movement of the articulators from the initial vowel position to the terminal vowel position.
		The stable vowels are represented by points on the vowel quadrilateral, whereas the diphthongs are symbolized by trajectories of tongue and jaw movement.
	cslu.cse.ogi.edu /tutordemos/SpectrogramReading/cse551html/cse551/node28.html (843 words)

	LINGUIST List 2.92: Vowels and Stress
		Coleman's remark: "'Reduced' is not a well-defined concept in phonetics or phonology") and is concerned about it (cf.
		I said "Languages whose vowels are all schwa in unstressed syllables, presumably like English...." I am of course aware that English has more than one unstressed vowel--I don't have to search the literature for obscure dialects to get that information: in my dialect too the unstressed vowel in "tory" and "obey" is not schwa.
		But the reason that I was moved to venture such a remark is this: in pursuing this research I have gotten the impression that the idea (the "myth") that English vowels all neutralize/reduce to schwa in unstressed syllables is, though little-examined, widely assumed.
	www.ling.ed.ac.uk /linguist/issues/2/2-92.html (1258 words)

	Unit Two Summary
		Reduced vowels only appear under guttural letters and replace the function of the vocal sheva for those letters.
		When it opens a syllable it sounds almost as if you were trying to pronounce the letter by itself (usually I will transliterate a vocal sheva with an "e" (or sometimes with an apostrophe); we will not transliterate the silent sheva (sheva nach, or resting sheva) at all.
		A diphthong is a cluster or combination of vowels acting as a unit and producing a unique sound.
	www.hebrew4christians.com /Grammar/Unit_Two/Summary/summary.html (539 words)

	MU-Talk Text-to-speech System
		GTP rules tend to greatly under-produce reduced vowels because only the most complex rules deal with orthographic strings that consist of more than one syllable.
		Word stress rules require a word-stress post-processor module which applies vowel reduction rules once the syllabic structure of the word and the vowel in each syllable is known.
		In cases where the probability of two alternative reduced pronunciations are approximately equal, it may be necessary to select the original unreduced form.
	www.shlrc.mq.edu.au /speech/mutalk/gtp/gtp_stress.html (350 words)

	Language Log: Mispronunciation -- or prejudice?
		A true schwa vowel between /l/ and /r/ is unlikely, but partial or complete vocalization of the /r/, if it happened, would be an instance of a widespread pattern.
		In the speech of the South Midlands, reduced vowels are often transformed by assimilation into lengthening of adjacent consonants or vowels, as can be heard in this example of speech from a woman from Tennessee (waveform and spectrogram below).
		Note that the treatment of reduced vowels around /l/ or /r/ is at stake in three of the five cited cases.
	itre.cis.upenn.edu /~myl/languagelog/archives/000279.html (689 words)

	Glosses.net : makeup your mind » Hysterical jers (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-09)
		These vowels are called the jers, the hard jer indicated in OCS by the grapheme ъ, and the soft jer by ь.
		Like the original acute, the neoacute was associated with long vowels, either etymological or newly created in the pre-weak-jer syllable due to compensatory lengthening.
		(Also epenthetic vowels in clusters and cluster simplification etc) Ultimately the loss of jers in weak position dispenses with the law of the open syllables (new consonantal clusters appear as well) and their fall signals the end of the PSl period.
	glosses.net /archives/2006/01/29/hysterical-jers (661 words)

	Untitled Document
		A, i, and u are considered prime vowels, as they can produce a longer sound than the vowel e.
		E is known as a reduced vowel because its sound is shorter than the other vowels, a, i, and u.
		Unlike the other three vowels, e cannot be doubled, cannot be paired with another vowel, and does not work to change the sounds of certain consonants (See When Letters Sound Different).
	www.alutiiqmuseum.com /files/sounds/vowels.htm (287 words)

	Smithsonian Speech Synthesis History Project (dk_760.htm)
		Thus, for example, in the word "photograph," the second vowel is reduced to a short-duration mid schwa vowel
		However, it is not clear that this is simply an effect of reduced source intensity; usually the glottal waveform becomes more breathy as well, with a strong fundamental component and weaker high-frequency harmonics (Bickley, 1982).
		The lexicon and/or stress rules determine which consonants and vowels of a word are stressed and hence longer in duration than unstressed and reduced vowels.
	www.mindspring.com /~ssshp/ssshp_cd/dk_760.htm (762 words)

	International Phonetic Alphabet for English - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
		For this reason, the consonants of English are discussed together, while vowels will be explained in three sections: Received Pronunciation, General American, and General Australian.
		While the slashes and brackets around IPA symbols are not part of the IPA itself, language professionals have adopted them to distinguish between two main types of transcription, phonemic and phonetic.
		Note: the vowels /e/ and /o/ are usually diphthongal, so the transcriptions /eɪ/ and /oʊ/ are also often used.
	en.wikipedia.org /wiki/International_Phonetic_Alphabet_for_English (592 words)

	Athabaskan languages and the schools - ATHABASKAN SOUND SYSTEMS
		The vowel charts are arranged according to where the tongue is when a particular vowel is pronounced.
		For example, when someone speaking Tanaina says the vowel i the tongue is in a high, front position relative to the rest of the vowels; a is low and central; and u is high and back.
		Lengthening of a vowel sound is usually represented in practical orthographies by doubling the vowel character.
	www.alaskool.org /language/Athabaskan/Athabas_Sounds.htm (1132 words)

	[No title]
		Recently I have applied the unified approach in an analysis of phonetic and phonological vowel reduction in which both patterns derive from the Dispersion Theory constraints (2005a).
		Phonetically, the low vowel [a] is raised in unstressed syllables, so its quality is closer to the vowel in English 'cut' (phonetic reduction).
		I argue that these patterns are related: raising of low vowels in unstressed syllables is motivated by effort constraints keep seven vowels distinct from each other, so the number of contrasts is reduced.
	web.mit.edu /~flemming/www/phonetic.html (614 words)

	Linguistics 103 - Vowel Chart with Sound Files
		In particular, you can hear Peter Ladefoged's versions of the vowels here, and Ladefoged's renditions are compared with those of two other leading phoneticians here.
		In addition, the use of the IPA vowel symbols in the description of real languages can be seen scattered through the IPA Handbook Archive, as well as Peter Ladefoged's archive.
		The non-peripheral vowels are more problematic (see this spreadsheet for why), and I hope to record more accurate versions when I have the time.
	www.linguistics.ucla.edu /people/hayes/103/charts/VChart (545 words)

	Tense/lax
		In German, the differences between vowels (as the main elements carrying the stressed/unstressed distinction) inside and outside of a stressed syllable can be influenced (biased) by the tense/lax vowel contrast, so that the search for word stress correlates should take tenseness into account.
		In general, lax vowels are shorter, have higher first formant (F1) frequencies and a more centralized F2[3] then tense vowels.
		Jessen (1993) found that the distinction between tense and lax vowels fully manifests itself under main stress, whereas on lower stress levels the difference between tense and lax vowels is reduced.
	www.ims.uni-stuttgart.de /phonetik/EGG/pagel3.htm (525 words)

	Megdevi or The Folly of Youth
		The main difference between these vowels was orthographic, as the reduced vowels were diacritics while the full vowels were characters in their own right (like in the orthography of Arabic with the long and short vowels).
		The vowels differed in one respect: If a suffix beginning with a vowel was added to a word ending in a reduced vowel, the reduced vowel was deleted.
		The vowel [ɛ] is somewhere halfway between being treated by the orthography as a full vowel and a diacritic/reduced vowel.
	dedalvs.free.fr /megdevi.html (7798 words)

	LINGUIST List 11.616: Underlying Schwa?
		I understand it to mean the SPACE in which contrasts may STILL be made is reduced, such that there are fewer distinctions, and, as the history of English (inter alia) informs us, great potential for eventual merger and even loss.
		Most scholastic to me are the kinds of arguments that revolve around such considerations as whether certain unstressed vowel should be associated with certain stressed vowels, e.g., the second vowel of "syllable" with the stressed vowel of "syllabic".
		I can only hear a difference in vowel-quality if the length of the so-called "reduced" syllable is slightly longer than I would normally assign to such a syllable, and the only way that would happen would be to give it special emphasis.
	www.linguistlist.org /issues/11/11-616.html (904 words)

	Chapter 4
		Examples of vowels in stressed and unstressed syllables and in reduced syllables.
		The distribution of tense and lax vowels in stressed syllables in American English.
		The distribution of tense and lax vowels in stressed syllables in British English.
	hctv.humnet.ucla.edu /departments/linguistics/VowelsandConsonants/course/chapter4/4vowels.html (108 words)

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