Open-mid back unrounded vowel

v • d • e Vowels [ e• d• enlarge] Front Near-front Central Near-back Back Close i · y ɨ · ʉ ɯ · u ɪ  · ʏ   ʊ e · ø ɘ · ɵ ɤ · o ə ɛ · œ ɜ · ɞ ʌ · ɔ æ ɐ a · ɶ ɑ · ɒ Near‑close Close‑mid Mid Open‑mid Near‑open Open Where symbols appear in pairs, the one to the right represents a rounded vowel. See also IPA · Consonants (template)

IPA – number	314
IPA – text	ʌ
IPA – image
Entity	ʌ
X-SAMPA	V
Kirshenbaum	V
Sound sample (help·info)

The open-mid back unrounded vowel is a type of vowel sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ʌ, and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is V. The IPA symbol is an inverted letter v and both the symbol and the sound are commonly referred to as either a wedge, a caret, or a hat. In transcriptions for some languages (including several dialects of English), this symbol is also used for the Near-open central vowel

[edit] Features

• Its vowel height is open-mid, which means the tongue is positioned halfway between an open vowel and a mid vowel.
• Its vowel backness is back, which means the tongue is positioned as far back as possible in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant.
• Its vowel roundedness is unrounded, which means that the lips are not rounded.

[edit] Occurrence

Before World War II, Received Pronunciation had phoneme /ʌ/ as being phonetically close to a back vowel [ʌ]; this sound has since shifted forward towards [ɐ] (a Near-open central vowel). Daniel Jones reports his speech (southern British), as having an advanced back vowel [ʌ̘] between his central /ə/ and back /ɔ/; however, he also reports that other southern speakers had a lower and even more advanced vowel approaching cardinal [a].^[3] In American English varieties, the typical phonetic realization (e.g. in Ohio or Texas English) of the phoneme /ʌ/ is a central vowel that can be transcribed as [ɜ] (open-mid central). Truly backed variants of /ʌ/ that are phonetically [ʌ] occur in Newfoundland English, Philadelphia English, some African-American Englishes, and (old-fashioned) white Southern English in coastal plain and Piedmont areas.^[4] Despite this, the symbol < ʌ > is still commonly used to indicate this phoneme, even in the more common varieties with central variants [ɐ] or [ɜ]. This may be due to both tradition as well as the fact that some other dialects retain the older pronunciation.^[5].

[edit] References

[edit] Bibliography

• Jones, Daniel (1972), written at Cambridge, An outline of English phonetics (9th ed.), W. Heffer & Sons Ltd.
• Roca, Iggy & Wyn Johnson (1999), Course in Phonology, Blackwell Publishing
• Thomas, Erik R. (2001), "An acoustic analysis of vowel variation in New World English", Publication of the American Dialect Society (Duke University Press for the American Dialect Society) 85