ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the way in which phoneticians describe vowel sounds, introduces the Cardinal Vowels, and outlines the principal parameters of vowel quality variation. It describes vowels and consonants and explains the vowel labelling system employed by phoneticians. The chapter explores the representations of vowels, including waveforms and spectrographic images and impressionistic records. Vowels are made well back in the vocal tract, using only the body of the tongue – the front, centre and back. In terms of place of articulation, therefore, they are located between palatal and velar. As a phonetician, Daniel Jones knew about the sonorant nature of vowels and about the vowel articulatory space. Vowel quality refers to the nature of the sound. It is the name given to the combined auditory effect of the three principal parameters of variation – the unique Backness-Openness-Rounding combination. Returning to speech and vowel representation, vowel waveforms are periodic.
