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In general, tense vowels are more close (and correspondingly have lower first formants) than their lax counterparts.Tense vowels are sometimes claimed to be articulated with a more advanced tongue root than lax vowels, but this varies, and in some languages, it is the lax vowels that are more advanced, or a single language may be inconsistent between front and back or high and mid vowels. [3]
Tense–lax neutralization refers to a neutralization, in a particular phonological context in a particular language, of the normal distinction between tense and lax vowels. In some varieties of English, this occurs in particular before /ŋ/ and (in rhotic dialects ) before coda /r/ (that is, /r/ followed by a consonant or at the end of a word ...
lax tense lax tense lax tense; Close: ɪ ... Vowels are shortened when followed in a syllable by a voiceless consonant. [65] This is known as pre-fortis clipping.
For other vowels, there is a necessary movement of the vocal tract and tongue away from the neutral position, either up/down or backward/forward. The next dimension for vowels are tense/lax; here we can distinguish high/mid/low dimensions and the front/central/back dimensions. In other words, all vowels but schwas.
One may distinguish the English tense vs. lax vowels roughly, with its spelling. Tense vowels usually occur in words with the final silent e , as in mate. Lax vowels occur in words without the silent e , such as mat. In American English, lax vowels [ɪ, ʊ, ɛ, ʌ, æ] do not appear in stressed open syllables. [15] In traditional grammar, long ...
The terms checked vowel and free vowel correspond closely to the terms lax vowel and tense vowel, respectively, but linguists often prefer to use the terms checked and free, as there is no clear-cut phonetic definition of vowel tenseness, and, because by most given definitions of tenseness, / ɔː / and / ɑː / are considered lax—even though ...
An example of that is the common German name Hans, which is pronounced in GA with the tense /ɑ/ rather than lax /æ/ (as in Britain's Received Pronunciation, which mirrors the German pronunciation with /a/: also has a lax vowel). [62] All of the tense vowels except /ɑ/ and /ɔ/ can have either monophthongal or diphthongal pronunciations (i.e ...
ATR vowels involve a certain tension in the tongue, often in the lips and jaw as well; the ear can often perceive this tension as a "brightness" (narrow formants) compared to RTR vowels [citation needed]. Nonetheless, phoneticians do not refer to ATR vowels as tense vowels since the word tense already has several meanings in European phonetics.