To articulate a vowel sound, the tongue, jaw and lips are placed to create a tube between larynx and lips .

Vowel Articulation in Phonology and Phonetics Subject

1. Vowel Articulation Phonology and Phonetics

2. English Vowels

3. Vowel Articulation To articulate a vowel sound, the tongue, jaw and lips are placed to create a tube between larynx and lips (see MRI images below). The soft palate is normally raised, sealing off the nasal cavity (except in nasalized vowels). No constriction occurs that might cause turbulence (frication).

4. Tongue Position

5. Lip Position

6. Cardinal Vowel Cardinal Vowel is a vowel sound produced when the tongue is in an extreme position, either front or back, high or low. In summary, cardinal vowels are a set of reference vowel sounds that are pronounced with the mouth in a standard neutral position.

7. The cardinal vowels set out the limits of the vowel quadrilateral. We can now locate any particular vowel quality as a position in the chart by comparing its quality to each of the cardinal vowels. For Standard Southern British English (SSBE) the monophthongal vowels are located approximately as shown below:

8. Acoustics of Vowel Production The most powerful explanatory model we have for the spectra of speech signals is called the source-filter model . In this model, sounds are generated and then independently shaped (filtered) by the vocal tract acting as a resonating tube. For example, the source of sound in a vowel is vocal fold vibration while the filtering is performed by a characteristically-shaped vocal tract tube extending from larynx to lips. The pitch and voice quality of a vowel is changed by modifying the source; the phonetic quality of a vowel is changed by modifying the filter: i.e. changing the shape of the vocal tract tube. Next diagram shows three different tubes generating three different vowel sound spectra from the same larynx buzz spectrum.

9. Diphthongs Diphthongs are vowels which change in quality, as if they were made from two vowel qualities glued together. The gliding movement of a diphthong is caused by movement of the articulators during their production. We can graph this on the vowel quadrilateral. Here for the British English diphthongs:

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