# English Vowels I: the Quadrilateral Languages I · English Phonetics and Phonology · https://tryals.app/learn/languages-i/english-vowels-i-the-quadrilateral ## Describing a Sound With No Contact Consonants involve contact. Vowels do not, so phoneticians describe them using three dimensions: - **Height**: how close the tongue is to the roof of the mouth. - **Backness**: how far forward or back the tongue is. - **Rounding**: whether the lips are rounded. Plotting height against backness gives the **vowel quadrilateral**. ### Cardinal vowels Daniel Jones devised the **cardinal vowels** as reference points around this space. They are **not the vowels of any language**. Instead, they provide a universal coordinate grid for transcribers. ### The monophthongs of English Standard British English is analysed with **12** monophthongs. English uses both vowel quality and duration to distinguish them. Crucially, **English vowels are substantially longer before voiced consonants than before voiceless ones**. > **Common pitfall:** treating "long" and "short" as pure duration labels. Context heavily alters actual length. ### Accents Diverge in the Vowels Consonants vary little across accents. Major differences lie in vowel systems: - The **trap–bath split**: southern British English uses different vowels in *trap* and *bath*. Northern England accents use the same vowel. - The **cot–caught merger**: speakers in North America merge two vowels that stay distinct in RP. - The **foot–strut split**: northern England retains one vowel where the south has two. Each change affects the phonological **system**, not just isolated words. ## Practice questions 10 of this lesson's 13 practice questions, with answers. The full set is in the app. ### 1. Why are vowels described by tongue position rather than by place of articulation? A. Vowel quality is determined entirely by lip shape and vocal fold vibration B. There is no contact between articulators, so there is no place to name C. The tongue remains completely stationary throughout vocalic production D. Place of articulation is reserved exclusively for unvoiced speech sounds **Answer:** B. There is no contact between articulators, so there is no place to name **Why:** Because a place of articulation names **where two articulators meet**, and in a vowel nothing meets anything. The tract is open throughout, so the description has to be a position in a space rather than a point of contact, which is why the vowel chart is a map and the consonant chart is a table. Page: https://tryals.app/practice/languages-i/english-vowels-i-the-quadrilateral/why-are-vowels-described-by-tongue-position-rather-than-by-place-of ### 2. Phonetic vowel length depends on both lexical vowel category and the following consonant. What follows from this interaction for a transcriber measuring vowel duration? A. Consonantal voicing alters the vowel quadrilateral position rather than length B. Vowels before voiced consonants lose their distinctive phonemic vowel qualities C. Lexically long vowels are consistently longer than short ones in every context D. Short vowels before voiced codas can exceed long vowels before voiceless ones **Answer:** D. Short vowels before voiced codas can exceed long vowels before voiceless ones **Why:** Pre-fortis clipping shortens vowels before voiceless consonants, meaning physical duration does not map cleanly onto phonological categories. Quality remains stable even when phonetic length fluctuates. Page: https://tryals.app/practice/languages-i/english-vowels-i-the-quadrilateral/phonetic-vowel-length-depends-on-both-lexical-vowel-category-and-the ### 3. Daniel Jones's cardinal vowels are the vowels of Received Pronunciation. **Answer:** False **Why:** **False.** They are eight reference points around the edge of the vowel space, belonging to no language, and exist to give transcribers a fixed frame for locating the vowels of real languages. Treating them as an inventory misses the point of having them. Page: https://tryals.app/practice/languages-i/english-vowels-i-the-quadrilateral/daniel-joness-cardinal-vowels-are-the-vowels-of-received ### 4. Sort each accent feature by whether it is a MERGER or a SPLIT. **Answer:** - Merger: Cot and caught have the same vowel in much of North America, Put and putt are homophones in much of northern England - Split: Trap and bath have different vowels in southern British English, Foot and strut have different vowels in the south of England **Why:** The same historical event is described either way depending on which accent you take as the starting point, the foot–strut split in the south is the absence of a merger in the north. What matters is that both describe a change in the **system**, so a speaker with a merger cannot recover the distinction by trying harder. Page: https://tryals.app/practice/languages-i/english-vowels-i-the-quadrilateral/sort-each-accent-feature-by-whether-it-is-a-merger-or-a-split ### 5. How many monophthongs does the standard analysis of Received Pronunciation recognise? **Answer:** 12 **Why:** **12 monophthongs**, plus 8 diphthongs, giving the 20 vowels of the 44-phoneme inventory. General American is usually given fewer, principally because it lacks the centring diphthongs and often merges cot with caught. Page: https://tryals.app/practice/languages-i/english-vowels-i-the-quadrilateral/how-many-monophthongs-does-the-standard-analysis-of-received ### 6. Which are true of vowel length in English? A. The traditional long and short labels also encode differences in quality B. Duration alone reliably distinguishes the long vowels from the short ones C. Vowels are longer before voiced consonants than before voiceless ones D. The duration difference is a major cue to the identity of the final consonant **Answer:** A. The traditional long and short labels also encode differences in quality; C. Vowels are longer before voiced consonants than before voiceless ones; D. The duration difference is a major cue to the identity of the final consonant **Why:** The fourth fails on measurement: a following voiceless consonant shortens the preceding vowel so much that a "long" vowel in *beat* can come out shorter than a "short" one in *bid*. The labels are names for categories that also differ in quality, not descriptions of duration. Page: https://tryals.app/practice/languages-i/english-vowels-i-the-quadrilateral/which-are-true-of-vowel-length-in-english ### 7. Match each dimension of vowel description to what it specifies. **Answer:** - Height → How close the tongue body is to the roof of the mouth - Backness → How far forward or back the tongue body sits - Rounding → Whether the lips are protruded - The quadrilateral → Height plotted against backness **Why:** Three dimensions and a two-dimensional chart, which is why rounding is shown by pairing symbols at the same point rather than by a third axis. Most languages use rounding predictably, English rounds its back vowels, so the compression rarely loses information. Page: https://tryals.app/practice/languages-i/english-vowels-i-the-quadrilateral/match-each-dimension-of-vowel-description-to-what-it-specifies ### 8. Complete the description of the vowel space. **Answer:** Vowels are described by height, **backness** and rounding. Plotting the first two against each other gives the vowel **quadrilateral**. Jones's eight reference points are the **cardinal** vowels, and RP is analysed with **12** monophthongs. **Why:** The last blank catches people out because 20 is the total vowel count including diphthongs. Keeping the two numbers apart matters when comparing accents, since it is almost always the diphthongs that differ. Page: https://tryals.app/practice/languages-i/english-vowels-i-the-quadrilateral/complete-the-description-of-the-vowel-space ### 9. Arrange these vowels from the highest tongue position to the lowest. **Answer:** 1. The vowel of see 2. The vowel of bed 3. The vowel of cat 4. The vowel of father **Why:** The ordering also runs the other way acoustically: the highest vowel has the **lowest** first formant, near 300 hertz, and the most open has the highest, near 700. That inversion is why acoustic vowel charts are drawn with F1 increasing downwards, so the plot resembles the articulatory quadrilateral. Page: https://tryals.app/practice/languages-i/english-vowels-i-the-quadrilateral/arrange-these-vowels-from-the-highest-tongue-position-to-the-lowest ### 10. The consonant inventories of English accents differ far less than their vowel inventories. **Answer:** True **Why:** **True.** Accents of English are told apart overwhelmingly by their vowels; rhoticity and glottalling aside, the consonant systems are nearly identical. It is why the vowels take two lessons in this unit and why transcription practice concentrates on them. Page: https://tryals.app/practice/languages-i/english-vowels-i-the-quadrilateral/the-consonant-inventories-of-english-accents-differ-far-less-than