page_title: Vowel
section_title: Articulation
hierarchical_section_title: Vowel / Articulation
caption_attribution_description: X-ray photographs of the tongue positions of Jones' cardinal vowels [i, u, a, ɑ] (adapted from Jones 1972: frontispiece). The photographs are of Jones' mouth during vowel production. Jones writes: "A chain of small lead plates strung together was placed on the tongue to show its outline. The large dot added on each photograph marks the highest point of the tongue. The cross is a point of reference (near the end of the hard palate).... The photographs were taken by Dr. H. Trevelyan George in St. Bartholomew's Hospital, London, in January, 1917". And on p. 32: "They were taken ... by Dr. E. A. Meyer's method of placing a very thin metal chain on the tongue. They were first published in the Proceedings of the Royal Institution, Vol. XXII, Part 1, Oct., 1919. The originals may be seen in the Department of Phonetics, University College, London, W.C.1." For this image, Jones' large dots are overlaid with large red dots to aid the viewer. Jones' photographs are in the public domain in the United States.
context_page_description: A vowel is a syllabic speech sound pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract. Vowels are one of the two principal classes of speech sounds, the other being the consonant. Vowels vary in quality, in loudness and also in quantity. They are usually voiced, and are closely involved in prosodic variation such as tone, intonation and stress.
  The word vowel comes from the Latin word vocalis, meaning "vocal". In English, the word vowel is commonly used to refer both to vowel sounds and to the written symbols that represent them.
context_section_description: The traditional view of vowel production, reflected for example in the terminology and presentation of the International Phonetic Alphabet, is one of articulatory features that determine a vowel's quality as distinguishing it from other vowels. Daniel Jones developed the cardinal vowel system to describe vowels in terms of the features of tongue height (vertical dimension), tongue backness (horizontal dimension) and roundedness (lip articulation). These three parameters are indicated in the schematic quadrilateral IPA vowel diagram on the right. There are additional features of vowel quality, such as the velum position (nasality), type of vocal fold vibration (phonation), and tongue root position.
  This conception of vowel articulation has been known to be inaccurate since 1928. Peter Ladefoged has said that "early phoneticians... thought they were describing the highest point of the tongue, but they were not. They were actually describing formant frequencies." (See below.) The IPA Handbook concedes that "the vowel quadrilateral must be regarded as an abstraction and not a direct mapping of tongue position."
  Nonetheless, the concept that vowel qualities are determined primarily by tongue position and lip rounding continues to be used in pedagogy, as it provides an intuitive explanation of how vowels are distinguished.
caption: X-rays of Daniel Jones' [i, u, a, ɑ].
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