ABSTRACT
Overview of the English vowel system Let’s now examine in overview (Figure B3.1) the complete vowel system of English NRP.
The checked/free distinction The terms ‘checked’ and ‘free’ were introduced in Section A2, but we can now say a little bit more about this distinction. In English, checked vowels cannot occur in wordfinal stressed open syllables. This implies that there are no words like */Btx Bte/, etc., whereas we do find free vowels in this environment, e.g. /Btii Btax/ (tea, tie), etc. Since /e/ is never stressed, it must be regarded as lying outside the checked/free classification. As it is always short, we are discussing it here together with the checked vowels.
