Complete the description of the vowel space.
Vowels are described by height, ______ and rounding. Plotting the first two against each other gives the vowel ______. Jones's eight reference points are the ______ vowels, and RP is analysed with ______ monophthongs.
Word bank: backness · quadrilateral · cardinal · 12 · rounding · 20
Hints
- The first blank is the dimension that is neither height nor lip position.
- The last blank is monophthongs only, not the whole vowel inventory.
Show the 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.
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.
Practise English Vowels I: the Quadrilateral
The app has 3 more questions on this lesson, and keeps your place in the course. Languages I is free to start.
More questions on English Vowels I: the Quadrilateral
- Why are vowels described by tongue position rather than by place of articulation?
- Phonetic vowel length depends on both lexical vowel category and the following consonant. What follows from…
- Daniel Jones's cardinal vowels are the vowels of Received Pronunciation.
- Sort each accent feature by whether it is a MERGER or a SPLIT.
- How many monophthongs does the standard analysis of Received Pronunciation recognise?
- Which are true of vowel length in English?
- Match each dimension of vowel description to what it specifies.
- Arrange these vowels from the highest tongue position to the lowest.
- The consonant inventories of English accents differ far less than their vowel inventories.