Peculiarities of English vowels

In the system of the English vowels there are the following peculiarities, which do not exist in the system of the Ukrainian vowels:

(1) long and short vowels /i: – I /, /:כ– כ/, /u: – υ/, / ∂: – ∂ /, /a: – Λ /;

(2) slightly rounded, but not protruded vowels /u:, כ:/;

(3) vowels articulated with the "flat" position of the lips in the /i:, I, e, ei/ production;

(4) very low vowels, such as /æ, כ/;

(5) front-retracted and back-advanced / I, υ, a:/;

(6) mixed / ∂, ∂:/;

(7) diphthongoidal pronunciation of /i:, u:/ and stable articulation in the /כ:/ pronunciation;

(8) diphthongs /ei, ai, כi, i ∂, ε ∂, υ ∂, аυ, оυ/.

In connection with these peculiarities Ukrainian students make the following mistakes:

(1)they do not observe the quantitative character of the vowel (that is the length);

(2)they do not observe the qualitative difference in the articulation of such vowels as /i: – I /, /u: – υ/, /כ: – כ/;

(3)they substitute English vowels by similar Ukrainian vowels;

(4)they pronounce /i:, I, e, ei/ without the "flat position" of the lips;

(5)they raise the middle part of the tongue to adapt the vowel to the preceding consonant and soften consonants which precede front vowels as a result of which the latter become more narrow /i:, I, e, æ, ei/ (this phenomenon is known as adaptation) and the former are palatalized;

(6)they articulate /כ, כ:, υ, u:, oυ/ with the lips too much rounded and protruded;

(7)they make the sounds /æ, כ/ narrow because they do not open the mouth properly;

(8)they do not observe the positional length of vowels;

(9)they make both elements of the diphthongs equally distinct;

(10)they pronounce initial vowels with a glottal stop.

Recommended Literature on the topic:

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(12) Соколова М.А., К.П. Гинтовт, И.С. Тихонова, Р.М. Тихонова. Теоретическая фонетика английского языка. – М.: Владос, 1996. – 285 с.; Соколова М.А., К.П. Гинтовт, Л.А. Кантер и др. Практическая фонетика английского языка. – М.: Владос, 1997. – 384 с.; Leonteva S.F. A Theoretical Course of English Phonetics. – M.: Vyshaya Shkola, 1980. – 271 p.; Babiychuk L.V., Bekhta I.A. Lecture Notes on the English Phonetics. – Lviv: Aral, 2008. – 106 p. Pike, Kenneth L. (1943). Phonetics: A critical analysis of phonetic theory and a technic for the practical description of sounds. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press; Ladefoged, Peter (1996). Elements of Acoustic Phonetics (2nd ed.). The University of Chicago Press, Ltd. London; Stevens, Kenneth (2000). Acoustic Phonetics (Current Studies in Linguistics). The MIT Press, New Ed edition;

(13) Fant, Gunnar. (1960). Acoustic theory of speech production, with calculations based on X-ray studies of Russian articulations. Description and analysis of contemporary standard Russian (No. 2). Gravenhage: Mouton. (2nd ed. published in 1970); Jakobson, Roman; Fant, Gunnar; & Halle, Morris. (1952). Preliminaries to speech analysis: The distinctive features and their correlates. MIT acoustics laboratory technical report (No. 13). Cambridge, MA: MIT.; Johnson, Keith. (2003). Acoustic and auditory phonetics (2nd ed.). Cambridge, MA: Blackwell Publishers.; Liberman, A.M. (1957). "Some results of research on speech perception". Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 29(1): 117–123.; Warren, R.M. (1970). "Restoration of missing speech sounds". Science 167: 392–393.; Garnes, S., Bond, Z.S. (1976). "The relationship between acoustic information and semantic expectation". Phonologica 1976: 285-293.; Massaro, D.W. (1989). "Testing between the TRACE Model and the Fuzzy Logical Model of Speech perception". Cognitive Psychology 21: 398–421.