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Mid vowel

Class of vowel sounds including [ə]

Summary

Class of vowel sounds including [ə]

A mid vowel (or a true-mid vowel) is any in a class of vowel sounds used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a mid vowel is that the tongue is positioned approximately midway between an open vowel and a close vowel.

Other names for a mid vowel are lowered close-mid vowel and raised open-mid vowel, though the former phrase may also be used to describe a vowel that is as low as open-mid; likewise, the latter phrase may also be used to describe a vowel that is as high as close-mid.

Vowels

The only mid vowel with a dedicated symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet is the mid central vowel with ambiguous rounding .

The IPA divides the vowel space into thirds, with the close-mid vowels such as or and the open-mid vowels such as or equidistant in formant space between open or and close or . Thus a true mid front unrounded vowel can be transcribed as either a lowered (with a lowering diacritic) or as a raised (with a raising diacritic). Typical truly mid vowels are thus:

  • mid front unrounded vowel or
  • mid front rounded vowel or
  • mid central unrounded vowel or (most commonly written )
  • mid central protruded vowel or (most commonly written as if it were close-mid)
  • mid central compressed vowel
  • mid back unrounded vowel or
  • mid back rounded vowel or

Languages

Few languages contrast all three heights of mid vowel, because it is rare for a language to distinguish more than four heights of true front or back vowels.

The Kensiu language spoken in Malaysia and Thailand is highly unusual in that it phonemically contrasts true-mid vowels with close-mid and open-mid vowels without differences in other parameters such as backness or roundedness.

FrontCentralBackCloseNear-closeClose-midMidOpen-midOpenDiphthongs
ie
FrontCentralBackCloseNear-closeClose-midMidOpen-midOpenDiphthongs

References

References

  1. Wayland, Ratree. (2018). "Phonetics: A Practical Introduction". Cambridge University Press.
  2. Rogers, Henry. (2000). "The Sounds of Language: An Introduction to Phonetics". Longman.
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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