LECTURE 3
CARDINAL VOWELS AND SHORT VOWELS
Difference between vowels and consonants
Vowel
Consonant
With the other group of speech sounds, the vowels, the air from the lungs is not blocked. There are a
number of cases where the distinction is not clear-cut, such as the [j] at the beginning of the English
word yes where there is only very slight friction, and linguists have sometimes called these semivowels or semi-consonants.
Cardinal vowel:
CARDINAL VOWEL is “any of the vowels in the cardinal vowel system. The cardinal vowel system was
invented by Daniel Jones as a means of describing the vowels in any language. The cardinal vowels
themselves do not belong to any particular language, but are possible vowels to be used as reference
points.”
Positions of cardinal vowel:
Their primary function:
LIP POSITION
There are three basic lip positions:
Tongue position (Underhill, 2005, p. 10):
English short and long vowels (Underhill, 2005, p. 10):
Enslish short vowels examples:
Ološtiak, 2007, p. 52:
The comparison of English and Slovak vowels:
List of resources:
Cruttenden, A. Gimson’s Pronunciation of English. Hodder Education, 2008.
Crystal, D. A Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics. Blackvell Publishing, 2008.
Davenport M. – Hannahs S. Introducing Phonetics and Phonology. Hodder Arnold, 2005.
Ološtiak, M. Jayykovoštruktúrny a komunikačno-pragmatický status vlastného mena (adaptácia
anglických proprií v slovenčine. FF PU v Prešove, 2007.
Richards, J. – Schmidt, R. Longman Dictionary of Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics.
Longman, 2010.
Roach, P. English Phonetics and Phonology. Cambridge University Press, 2009.
Underhill, A. Learning and teaching pronunciation. Macmillan, 2005.