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Close vowel

Class of vowel sounds

Summary

Class of vowel sounds

A close vowel, also known as a high vowel (in U.S. terminology{{cite web|title=VOWEL QUALITY

The term "close" is recommended by the International Phonetic Association. Close vowels are often referred to as "high" vowels, as in the Americanist phonetic tradition, because the tongue is positioned high in the mouth during articulation.

In the context of the phonology of any particular language, a high vowel can be any vowel that is more close than a mid vowel. That is, close-mid vowels, near-close vowels, and close vowels can all be considered high vowels.

Partial list

The six close vowels that have dedicated symbols in the International Phonetic Alphabet are:

  • close front unrounded vowel
  • close front compressed vowel
  • close central unrounded vowel
  • close central protruded vowel
  • close back unrounded vowel
  • close back protruded vowel

(IPA letters for rounded vowels are ambiguous as to whether the rounding is protrusion or compression. However, transcription of the world's languages tends to pattern as above.)

There also are close vowels that do not have dedicated symbols in the IPA:

  • close front protruded vowel
  • close central compressed vowel
  • close back compressed vowel

Other close vowels can be indicated with diacritics of relative articulation applied to letters for neighboring vowels, such as or for a close near-front unrounded vowel.

References

References

  1. Ottenheimer, Harriet. (2011). "The Anthropology of Language: An Introduction to Linguistic Anthropology Workbook/Reader". Cengage Learning.
Wikipedia Source

This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page.

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