Articulatory classification of English vowels

Lip rounding

• Any back vowel in English is produced with rounded lips
• the degree of rounding is different and depends on the height of the raised part of the tongue
• the higher it is raised the more rounded the lips are.

Character of the vowel end

• This quality depends on the kind of the articulatory transition from a vowel to a consonant.
• This transition (VC) is very closed in English unlike Russian.
• → all English short vowels are checked when stressed.

Character of the vowel end

• The degree of checkness may vary and depends on the following consonants.
• Before fortis voiceless consonant it is more perceptible than before a lenis voiced consonant or sonorant.
• All long vowels are free.

Vowel length or quantity

• A vowel like any sound has physical duration.
• Sounds are used in connected speech are influenced by one another.

Vowel length or quantity

• Duration of a vowel depends on:
• its own length;
• the accent of the syllable in which it occurs;
• phonetic context;
• the position in a rhythmic structure;
• the position in a tone group;
• the position in an utterance;
• the tempo of the whole utterance;
• the type of pronunciation, etc.

Tenseness

• characterizes the state of the organs of speech at the moment of vowel production
• ↓ ↓
• historically long vowels are tense while historically short are lax