PHONETICS AND PHONOLOGY
Segmental Aspects

The sounds sharing the same phonetic and phonological characteristics called vowels are classified as:

– monophthongs, also known as pure vowels, and

– diphthongs and triphthongs defined as gliding vowels.

Both monophthongs and diphthongs have in common the properties distinguishing them from consonants, The following characteristics do not differ with regard to English and Slovak.

Very similar definitions of the term vowel are given by prominent scholars, as testified below:

VOWELS ARE DEFINED AS:

“The class of sound which makes the least obstruction to the flow of air. They are almost always found at the centre of a syllable, and it is rare to find any sound other than a vowel which is able to stand alone as a whole syllable“ (Jones, 2003, p. 583).

“From a phonetic point of view, vowels are articulated with a relatively open configuration of the vocal tract: no part of the mouth is closed, and none of the vocal organs come so close together that we can hear the sound of the air passing between them…From a phonological point of view, vowels are units of the sound system which typically occupy the middle of a syllable, also called the nucleus” (Crystal, 2011, p. 238).

“The articulation of vowels is not accompanied by any closure or narrowing in the speech tract which would prevent the escape of the air stream through the mouth or give rise to audible friction…vowels have typically a central syllabic function” (Gimson, 1970, p. 28).

“Vowels are sounds in which there is no obstruction to the flow of air as it passes from the larynx to the lip through an unobstructed way” (Roach, 1996, p. 10).

Summing up the previously presented statements about vowels, phonetic definition states that vowels are the sounds in which there is no obstruction to the flow of air passing from the larynx to lips during their articulation, while phonological definition takes into consideration their function and position in syllables. They are placed at the centre of syllables.

All vowels in English and in Slovak are naturally voiced and oral. The term voiced means that the vocal cords vibrate during their pronunciation, and oral sounds are produced when the airstream used for phonation passes out through the oral cavity (it means that the soft palate is raised). Both English and Slovak vowels are possibly pronounced as slightly nasalised if there is a nasal consonant in the position of an adjacent (neighbouring) sound, compare e.g. the word must /mɅst/ and the word duck /dɅk/. The pronunciation of /Ʌ/ is slightly nasalised in /mɅst/ because the vowel /Ʌ/ is preceded by a nasal consonant. Nasalised vowels are pronounced in English words borrowed from the languages in which nasal vowels exist, for example French. Such a word is for example restaurant /restərõη/ in which the short o is transcribed with a tilde above the symbol o to mark its nasality.  

In contrast to consonants, vowels can form separate syllables without any consonants, as they themselves function as peaks of sonority (or syllable nuclei) of syllables, e.g. err /ɜ:/ or eye /aɪ/. Vowels are also called tones, while consonants are noises.