CSP
Introduction
In Linguistics, vowels are the sounds made when air passes freely through the mouth without any obstruction. They are produced by changing the position of the tongue and lips. To study vowel sounds clearly, linguists made a system known as the Cardinal Vowel System. This system was developed by the famous phonetician Daniel Jones in the early 20th century. He created this system to help students and learners understand vowel sounds from different languages.
Meaning of Cardinal Vowels
Cardinal vowels are a set of reference vowels used by phoneticians to describe and compare vowel sounds of different languages. They are not from one single language. Instead, they help us understand how vowel sounds are made. Cardinal vowels are fixed positions of the tongue in the mouth. Other vowel sounds of any language can be studied by comparing them with these fixed positions.
Daniel Jones once said,
“The cardinal vowels are standard reference points by which the vowels of all languages can be described.”
Purpose of the Cardinal Vowel System
This system helps learners to describe vowels in a clear and scientific way. It acts like a map of vowel sounds. Every vowel sound in any language can be located near one of these standard vowels. By learning the cardinal vowels, we can understand how sounds differ in height, frontness, and rounding.
Features of Cardinal Vowels
- Height of the tongue – How high or low the tongue is inside the mouth.
- Frontness or backness – Whether the tongue is towards the front or the back.
- Lip rounding – Whether the lips are rounded or spread.
These three points help in finding the right position of each vowel.
Types of Cardinal Vowels
There are eight primary cardinal vowels. They are arranged in pairs of front and back vowels. These vowels form a kind of framework to describe all other vowels.
| No. | Cardinal Vowel | Description | Position |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | [i] | Close front unrounded | as in see |
| 2 | [e] | Half-close front unrounded | similar to say |
| 3 | [ɛ] | Half-open front unrounded | as in bed |
| 4 | [a] | Open front unrounded | like father |
| 5 | [ɑ] | Open back unrounded | like spa |
| 6 | [ɔ] | Half-open back rounded | as in saw |
| 7 | [o] | Half-close back rounded | like go |
| 8 | [u] | Close back rounded | as in too |
Jones said,
“These eight vowels form a natural scale of sound, beginning with the highest front and ending with the highest back.”
Explanation of Positions
When we pronounce vowel [i], the tongue is raised high and forward. For [a], the tongue is low and forward. For [u], the tongue is high and back with rounded lips. The vowels between these points form a smooth path from front to back.
This system helps phoneticians to study vowel sounds accurately. Even if two languages have different vowels, they can still be described by using these standard points.
Secondary Cardinal Vowels
There are also secondary cardinal vowels, which are produced by changing the lip position of the primary vowels. In secondary vowels, the front vowels become rounded and the back vowels become unrounded. They are useful for describing more vowel sounds found in world languages.
Daniel Jones described them as
“A second series formed by changing the lip position of the first set.”
These secondary vowels also help linguists describe vowels in languages like French or German.
Diagram of Cardinal Vowel Positions
Below is a simple diagram of the Cardinal Vowel Chart:
Front Central Back
High [i] [u]
|
Mid-high [e] [o]
|
Mid-low [ɛ] [ɔ]
|
Low [a] [ɑ]This diagram is shaped like a quadrilateral (four-sided figure). It represents the position of the tongue inside the mouth. The front vowels are on the left, and the back vowels are on the right. The high vowels are near the top, and the low vowels are near the bottom.
How to Practice
To learn these sounds, students must listen carefully to recordings made by trained phoneticians. The ear must be trained to recognize small changes in tongue height and lip shape. Daniel Jones trained his students to produce these vowels correctly, which helped them describe other languages with precision.
Importance in Linguistics
- Helps compare vowel sounds of different languages.
- Acts as a standard reference system.
- Makes pronunciation study more scientific.
- Used in IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) for accurate transcription.
Conclusion
The Cardinal Vowel System is one of the most important tools in the study of phonetics. It gives us a clear and universal way to describe vowel sounds. By learning these vowels, students can understand how languages differ in sound and pronunciation. Daniel Jones’s work made this system popular all over the world, and it remains useful for linguists and language learners even today.
Summary Points:
- Cardinal vowels are reference vowel sounds.
- They were developed by Daniel Jones.
- They are described by tongue height, position, and lip rounding.
- There are 8 primary and several secondary vowels.
- They help in describing and comparing vowel sounds globally.