PHONETICS AND PHONOLOGY
Segmental Aspects
MONOPHTHONGS (PURE VOWELS)
British English monophthongs: Ʌ e ɪ ɒ ʋ ə æ ɑ: i: ͻ: u: ɜ:
American English monophthongs: Ʌ ɛ ɪ ʊ ə æ ɑ i ͻ u ɜ ɚ ɝ
Slovak monophthongs: a á e é i í o ó u ú æ
As it has already been mentioned, the transcription symbols for the English vowels used in this textbook correspond to IPA. The symbols for the Slovak vowels are adjusted to preserve mutual compatibility and to enable the following of the contrastive point of view between English and Slovak.
The criteria for classification of English and Slovak vowels presented in theoretical literature are quite similar. The following features are included:
- the length of vibration of the vocal folds – vowels are recognised as either short or long
- the position of the soft palate – vowels are naturally oral, but when the adjacent consonant is a nasal consonant (i.e. m, n, or η), it influences the “colouring” of the following or preceding vowel/s which is/are thus pronounced as nasalised. In such cases, the soft palate is slightly lowered
- the shape of the lips – vowels are either rounded, spread or neutral
- the part of the tongue which is raised – vowels are front, central or back
- the muscular tension of the tongue – greater force for tense (long vowels) or lower force for lax (short vowels)
- the position of the mandible and the height of the tongue – vowels are classified as close, close-mid, open and open-mid
(Pavlík, 2000)
For the American English monophthongs, criterion number 6 is specified in Jones´s Pronouncing Dictionary when he says that “in British phonetics we talk about close and open vowels, whereas American phoneticians more often talk about high and low vowels” (Jones, 2003, p. 583):
Criterion number 6 concerning the position of the tongue in vertical direction, classifies the Slovak vowels as “nízke, prostredné, vysoké” (Mistrík, 1984, p. 24), translation of these terms into Slovak being “low, mid, high”, hence the same as Jones (2003) presents for the American English monophthongs.
British English monophthongs:
ɪ short, spread, front, close, lax
i: long, spread, front, close, tense
ʊ short, rounded, back, close, lax
u: long, rounded, back, close, tense
ɒ short, rounded, back, open
ᴐ: long, rounded, back, close
ᴧ short, neutral, central, open
a: long, neutral, back, open
ə short, neutral, central, mid
ɜ: long, neutral, central, open
e short, neutral, front, mid
ӕ short, spread, front, open
Daniel Jones defines American ɑ i ͻ u ɜ as tense vowels corresponding to the British English long vowels, and he classifies the rest of American vowels as follows:
American English lax vowels: Ʌ e ɪ ʊ ə æ
American English tense vowels: ɑ: i: ͻ: u: ɜ: eɪ oʊ
American English wide diphthongs: aʊ aɪ ͻɪ
Retroflexed vowels (“r-coloured”) ɚ ɝ
(Jones, 2003, p. x)
Jones considers lax vowels “lower and made with less oral tension. They do not usually end syllables” (Jones, 2003, p. ix). He also analyses the occurrences of the American vowel /æ/ stating that this phoneme is either found in the same words as the British /æ/, e.g. bad /bæd/, or it replaces the British /a:/, e.g. the word ask pronounced as /a:sk/ in British English whereas /æsk/ in American English.
British English short /ɒ/ is pronounced in a ´more open´ way in American English, so in the literature specializing in phonetics and phonology, it is not mentioned as a segment of American Phonemic Inventory. American English /æ(:)/ is generally pronounced in words containing the British broad /α:/. An exception is its pronunciation before the letter r (e.g. father). The sound /ɑ:/ is pronounced in both British and American English (Bázlik, Miškovičová, 2012).
American long /u:/ is often used instead of the British /ju:/, e.g. duty pronounced /dju:ti/ in British English, and /du:ti/ in American English (Jones, 2003, p. x).
Another fundamental feature of American English is rhoticity. While in British English, “r is only found before vowels (as in red /red/, around ə´raʊnd/), but never before consonants (as in cart /ka:t/) or before a pause (as in car /ka:/), in rhotic accents, r may occur before consonants (as in cart /ka:rt/) and before a pause (as in car /ka:r/)” (Roach, 2009, p. 73). In American rhotic variety, the “rhotic colouring” of all vowels preceding the letter r is audible (Jones, 2003, p. ix). For the schwa, classified as the r-coloured mid central vowel, the terms retroflex or rhotacised are used in American English, and specific transcription symbols /ɝ/ and /ɚ/ mark its quality before consonants or before a pause (it means word-finally). The symbol /ɝ/ is used for a long rhotacised vowel in stressed syllables, it means at the same positions as the long schwa /ɜ:/ in British English. The symbol /ɚ/ is used for a short rhotacised vowel in unstressed syllables, it means similarly to the British English short schwa /ə/, e.g. bird, in British English pronounced as /bɜ:d/, in American English as /bɝd/, and mother, in British English pronounced as /mɅδə/, in American English as /mɅδɚ/.
Contrasting English and Slovak monophthongs:
English and Slovak vowels are classified according to the already-mentioned criteria as follows:
English /Ʌ/ is short, neutral, central, open-mid, Slovak /a/ is short, neutral, central, open
English /ɑ:/ is long, neutral, central-back, open, Slovak /a:/ is long, neutral, central, open
English /e/ is short, neutral, front, mid, Slovak /e/ is short, neutral, front, mid
in English /e:/ does not exist, Slovak /e:/ is long, neutral, front, mid
English /ɪ/ is short, spread, front-central, close-mid, lax, Slovak /i/ is short, spread, front, close
English /i:/ is long, spread, front, close, tense, Slovak /i:/ is long, spread, front, close
English /ɒ/ is short, rounded, back, open, Slovak /o/ is short, rounded, back, mid
English /ͻ:/ is long, rounded, back, close-mid, Slovak /o:/ is long, rounded, back, mid
English /ʋ/ is short, rounded, central-back, close-mid, lax, Slovak /u/ is short, rounded, back, close
English /u:/ is long, rounded, back, close, tense, Slovak /u:/ is long, rounded, back, close
English /ə/ is short, neutral, central, mid, /ə/ is not a phoneme in Slovak
English /ɜ:/ is long, neutral, central, open-mid, in Slovak, it is not a phoneme
English /æ/ is short, spread, front, open, whereas Slovak ä /æ/ is short, spread, central, open.
In everyday common pronunciation, /e/ replaces a higher-style pronunciation of /æ/ in words.
In English, every short vowel and its long counterpart differ in both quality and quantity (as could clearly be seen in the diagrams). In Slovak, the only difference between short and long vowels lies in their quantity. The Slovak long vowels “have practically the same quality and are produced in the same place as short vowels, thus creating only six different tongue positions (long and short vowels plus /æ/), whereas in English we have twelve different tongue positions” (Pavlík, 2000, p. 255). It means that Slovak short and long vowels differ only in quantity, not in quality, as is the case in English.
Slovak short vowels can be classified into lax, long and tense. Slovak long vowels last approximately twice as long as short vowels (Kráľ, Sabol, 1989). In Slovak, /ə/ and /ɜ:/ are not speech sounds. They are used as “sounds”, but they do not have a distinctive function in words, so they are not defined as phonemes in Slovak. The Slovak short /e/ has its long counterpart, while English does not have /e:/ in its phonemic inventory.
In writing, Slovak users are required to distinguish between two written characters of the identically pronounced phoneme /i/, i.e. the so-called soft letter i or the so-called hard letter y. Their distribution is historically conditioned, as well as being conditioned by the phonetic environment, and in some cases also grammatically relevant. Among other sources dealing with this phenomenon, Böhmerová defines i/y and í/ý in Slovak as “positional graphical variants only, and the pronunciation of each pair of these variants is the same, i.e. /i/ and /í/ respectively” …” (cf. Böhmerová, 2001, p. 14). In her textbook Slovak for You. Slovak for Speakers of English – Textbook for Beginners intended for the speakers of English who are learning Slovak, the author further explains that “-i/-í is written after soft consonants, or after those which are pronounced as soft, i.e. palatals, e.g. cit, šije, divý, deti… -y/-ý is written after hard consonants, e.g. nohy, hýbe, ranný, dotýka…” (ibid.). According to Böhmerová, the distribution of i/y and í/ý does not depend on the preceding consonant “when the spelling is governed by the form of the grammatical ending, e.g. pekný, pekní”, or “when the word is a foreign one, in which case the foreign spelling can be preserved, e.g. kilo, kybernetika” (ibid.).
The Slovak ä is pronounced in a similar way as the English /æ/. At present, Slovak ä can be heard only in the higher formal style or on stage, while in casual everyday communication, it does not occur any more, it is replaced by /e/, e.g. mäso /mæso/ or /meso/.
It has already been mentioned, that regarding British English pure vowels, short and long monophthongs differ in both quantity and in quality. This means that the pronunciation of 12 monophthongs requires 12 different positions of articulators. Slovak pure vowels differ only in their quantity. Long monophthongs are pronounced twice as long as short vowels. No differences in their quality (meaning the tongue position for short and long counterpart vowels) have been identified in their recordings.