Vowel Length, Nasalization, Rhoticity, and Harmony
Chapter Objectives
By the end of this chapter, you will be able to:
- Distinguish phonetic duration from phonological length.
- Identify vowel nasalization and rhoticity in controlled data.
- Interpret the diacritics for length, nasalization, and rhoticity introduced in this chapter.
- Explain introductory vowel harmony as a system-level pattern.
- Distinguish phonation differences from simple quality differences.
- Analyze a vowel system in which two or more of these dimensions interact.
An Observable Problem
Chapters 14 through 17 described a vowel using height, backness, rounding, and — for diphthongs — a starting and ending quality. Those dimensions describe vowel quality. But two vowels can share exactly the same quality and still contrast, or vary predictably, along dimensions that quality alone does not capture. Compare the vowel in Finnish tuli "fire" with the vowel in Finnish tuuli "wind": the vowel quality in the relevant syllable is the same in both words, yet the words are different, and duration is the reason.
Similarly, French beau "beautiful" and a hypothetical form with the same oral vowel quality but airflow escaping through the nose would not sound the same, even though height, backness, and rounding could be identical. And in a language with vowel harmony, a single suffix vowel may surface with different qualities depending on the vowel earlier in the word, without the underlying suffix "changing" in any way a learner memorizing forms in isolation would expect.
This chapter asks three questions:
- When does a difference in how long a vowel is pronounced reflect a phonemic contrast, and when is it just a predictable effect of context?
- What articulatory and acoustic evidence distinguishes an oral vowel from a nasalized one, or a plain vowel from a rhotic or non-modally phonated one?
- How can a whole set of vowels in a word pattern together, and what should a transcription do about it?
Before continuing, say the English words bead and beat aloud and pay attention to the length of the vowel in each. Predict whether you think this difference is likely to be phonemic in English or a predictable effect of what follows the vowel.
Duration Versus Phonological Length
Purpose: separate the measurable, continuously variable property of duration from the categorical, phonemic property of length, and give learners a procedure for telling them apart.
Duration is a measurable property of any vowel: every vowel takes some amount of time to produce, and that amount varies with speech rate, stress, emotion, following consonant voicing, and many other factors. Phonological length is different: it is a categorical contrast in which a language treats "long" and "short" versions of what is otherwise the same vowel quality as distinct phonemes, or as a systematic property of the syllable.
Every vowel has duration. Not every language uses length contrastively. English is a useful caution here: the vowel in bead is measurably longer than the vowel in beat, but most analyses attribute this difference to the voicing of the following consonant, not to an underlying long-short vowel contrast. Finnish, by contrast, contrasts short and long vowels as separate phonemes in the same environment, as in tuli "fire" versus tuuli "wind."
| Symbol | Name | Meaning | Example |
|---|---|---|---|
| ː | Length mark | Follows a segment to show full phonological length. | tuːli — Finnish, long vowel |
| ˑ | Half-length mark | Follows a segment to show intermediate duration, used only when a language or analysis distinguishes more than two duration levels. | used only where analytically justified |
| ◌̆ | Extra-short mark | Shows a vowel or consonant shorter than the language's typical short value. | used only where analytically justified |
To decide whether a duration difference is phonological length or predictable phonetic duration, look for a minimal or near-minimal pair in which vowel quality and following context are held constant while duration is the only varying property. Finnish tuli / tuːli meets this test: same quality, same following consonant, only duration differs, and meaning changes. English biːd / biːt does not meet this test in most analyses, because the vowel-duration difference co-occurs with a voicing difference in the following consonant rather than standing alone.
Do not treat every long vowel as a doubled short vowel. In many languages a long vowel is a single segment held for a longer duration, not two short vowels in sequence, and a language may treat long vowels as occupying two moras for purposes of stress or rhythm without treating them as two separate segments.
Vowel Nasalization
Purpose: extend the oral-versus-nasal airflow distinction from Chapter 11's consonants to vowels, and distinguish phonemic nasal vowels from predictable nasalization near nasal consonants.
A vowel is nasalized when the velum lowers during its production, allowing air to resonate in the nasal cavity as well as the oral cavity. As with consonant nasals in Chapter 11, this is a matter of velic control, not tongue or lip position, and nasalization can in principle combine with any vowel quality.
Two very different situations produce a nasalized vowel, and this chapter asks learners to keep them separate:
- Contextual nasalization. In many languages, including most varieties of English, a vowel adjacent to a nasal consonant is automatically nasalized to some degree, purely as a matter of coarticulation. This nasalization is predictable from context and is not contrastive.
- Phonemic nasalization. In languages such as French or Portuguese, nasalized vowels contrast with oral vowels of the same quality in the same environment, independent of any adjacent nasal consonant. French beau "beautiful," with an oral vowel, contrasts with bon "good," whose vowel is nasalized and, in the standard pronunciation, not followed by a pronounced nasal consonant at all.
| Symbol | Name | Meaning | Example |
|---|---|---|---|
| ◌̃ | Nasalization diacritic | Combining tilde placed above a vowel symbol to show nasal airflow during its production. | bɔ̃ — French bon, reference: standard French |
Standard French is commonly described as having a small set of phonemic nasal vowels that contrast with a larger set of oral vowels, rather than treating nasalization as a general option available to every vowel quality. The exact number of contrasting nasal vowels varies somewhat by source and by generation of speaker, which is itself a useful reminder that a phoneme inventory is an analytical claim about a described variety at a described time, not a permanently fixed fact.
Do not transcribe every vowel next to a nasal consonant with a nasalization diacritic unless the chapter's task specifically calls for that level of phonetic detail. In a broad transcription of English, contextual nasalization is normally left unmarked, consistent with the broad-versus-narrow policy from Chapter 24.
Rhoticity and Vowel Phonation
Purpose: introduce r-colored vowels as a further independent dimension of vowel description, and distinguish phonation differences in vowels from simple changes in height, backness, or rounding.
A rhotic, or r-colored, vowel is a vowel produced with an accompanying constriction or tongue shape associated with rhotic consonants, discussed for consonants in Chapter 12. Rhoticity is analyzed as a property that can accompany a vowel quality, not as a replacement for height, backness, or rounding. Varieties of English that pronounce historical post-vocalic r, such as most varieties of American English, commonly analyze the stressed vowel of bird as a single rhotic vowel rather than a vowel followed by a separate consonant.
| Symbol | Name | Meaning | Example |
|---|---|---|---|
| ˞ | Rhoticity hook | Attached to a vowel symbol to show r-coloring, used only when the analysis treats the r-quality as part of the vowel rather than a separate consonant. | bɝd — rhotic General American, one possible analysis of bird |
| ◌̤ | Breathy voice diacritic | Two dots beneath a segment, showing audibly breathy phonation during an otherwise vowel-like or voiced sound. | recognition level in this chapter |
| ◌̰ | Creaky voice diacritic | Tilde beneath a segment, showing creaky or laryngealized phonation. | recognition level in this chapter |
Phonation differences of this kind are distinct from quality differences: a breathy or creaky vowel can, in principle, share the same height, backness, and rounding as its modal counterpart while differing only in laryngeal setting, exactly as Chapter 6 established for consonant voicing and phonation. Some languages use vowel phonation contrastively; in others, phonation variation is a predictable effect of stress, intonation, or utterance position and is not phonemic.
Whether a given English variety has rhotic vowels at all is a matter of regional and social variation. Many varieties, including most varieties of England, Wales, Australia, and New Zealand, are commonly described as non-rhotic, so that the same word is analyzed with a plain vowel and no r-coloring. Neither pattern is more correct than the other; a transcription using the rhoticity hook must state the variety it represents.
Vowel Harmony
Purpose: introduce vowel harmony as a system-level pattern in which vowels across a word agree along some feature, at a level appropriate for learners who have not yet studied formal phonological rule-writing.
Vowel harmony is a pattern in which the vowels within a word, especially across a root and its suffixes, agree with one another along some phonetic dimension, most commonly backness or rounding. Harmony is a property of the whole word-level system, not of any single vowel in isolation, which is why it belongs in this chapter alongside length, nasalization, and rhoticity as a dimension beyond basic vowel quality.
Turkish is a frequently cited example. Many Turkish suffixes have more than one surface form, and which form appears depends on the backness, and in some suffixes the rounding, of the preceding vowel in the word. A learner who memorizes a single fixed shape for such a suffix will produce forms that are not well formed for the language; the productive pattern must be learned as a system, not as a list of exceptions.
The coarticulatory assimilation previewed in Chapters 11 and 23 typically affects sounds that are immediately adjacent. Vowel harmony can extend across an entire word, skipping over intervening consonants, because it operates on the tier of vowels as a class rather than on strict linear adjacency. This is one reason harmony is usually introduced as a system-level pattern rather than folded into ordinary coarticulation.
This chapter does not require learners to write formal harmony rules. The learning target is recognition: given a short set of related word forms, learners should be able to identify which vowel feature is harmonizing and state the pattern in prose.
Interacting Dimensions in One System
Purpose: show that length, nasalization, rhoticity, and harmony are not mutually exclusive, and give learners a method for analyzing a dataset in which more than one dimension is active at once.
A single vowel system can use more than one of these dimensions at the same time. French, for instance, has both an oral-versus-nasal contrast and a length distinction in some analyses. A language could in principle combine vowel harmony with a length contrast, so that both short and long vowels participate in the same harmony pattern. When analyzing a dataset with more than one active dimension, work through the dimensions separately before combining them:
- Hold quality constant and check whether duration alone distinguishes forms with different meanings.
- Check whether nasal and oral vowels of the same quality contrast in the same environment, independent of an adjacent nasal consonant.
- Check whether a rhotic and non-rhotic vowel of otherwise similar quality contrast, and confirm which reference variety the data represents.
- Check whether vowels across related word forms agree along backness or rounding in a way that changes with the root, suggesting harmony rather than a single fixed vowel.
- Only after checking each dimension separately, state which combination of dimensions is active in the system and support each claim with its own evidence.
A vowel chart built for this kind of system may need more than height, backness, and rounding to stay accurate: length can be shown with the length mark on each symbol, nasalization with a separate row or column, and rhoticity or phonation with a footnote or diacritic key. Do not compress a multidimensional inventory into a single two-dimensional chart without a key explaining what the additional marks represent.
Across Languages
Standard Japanese is commonly analyzed as contrasting short and long vowels, as in obasan "aunt" versus obaasan "grandmother," while lacking phonemic vowel nasalization and lacking a vowel-harmony system of the Turkish type. This illustrates that a language may use one dimension from this chapter productively while making no use of the others at all.
Standard Turkish is commonly described as having a vowel harmony system in which suffix vowels agree with the preceding vowel in backness, and in certain suffixes also in rounding, producing multiple surface forms of what is analyzed as a single underlying suffix. This system operates independently of the length and nasalization dimensions discussed earlier in this chapter, since Turkish is not commonly described as having a phonemic length or nasalization contrast in its native vowel inventory.
European and Brazilian varieties of Portuguese are commonly described as having phonemic nasal vowels that pattern alongside, but not always symmetrically with, the oral vowel inventory, and analysts have proposed different treatments of nasal diphthongs in the language. This is a useful reminder from the Master Instructions' evidence policy that even a well-studied dimension like nasalization can remain a live point of analytical discussion.
Common Mistakes
Error: Treating every long vowel as if it were phonetically two copies of the same short vowel joined together.
Correction: A long vowel is normally analyzed as a single segment held for a longer duration, though it may pattern as two moras for purposes of stress or rhythm in some languages. Do not assume the internal structure of length without checking the language's own evidence.
Error: Marking nasalization on every vowel adjacent to a nasal consonant, regardless of the requested transcription level.
Correction: Contextual nasalization near a nasal consonant is common and often predictable; mark it only when the task calls for that level of phonetic detail, consistent with the broad-versus-narrow policy introduced in Chapter 24 and previewed throughout this unit.
Error: Assuming every language with r-colored vowels analyzes them the same way, or assuming rhoticity is a universal property of "the letter r."
Correction: Rhoticity is variety-specific and analysis-specific. State the variety represented, and recognize that some analyses treat r-coloring as part of the vowel while others treat it as a following consonant.
Chapter Review
Part A — Duration and Length
1. Explain the difference between phonetic duration and phonological length, and describe a test for distinguishing them.
2. Using the Finnish example from this chapter, explain why tuli and tuːli support a phonological-length analysis.
Part B — Nasalization, Rhoticity, and Phonation
1. Distinguish contextual nasalization from phonemic nasalization, and give one example of each type discussed in this chapter.
2. Explain why a breathy or creaky vowel is described as a phonation difference rather than a quality difference.
Part C — Harmony and Interacting Systems
1. Explain what vowel harmony is and why it is treated as a system-level pattern rather than ordinary adjacent-sound assimilation.
2. Describe the five-step procedure this chapter recommends for analyzing a vowel system in which more than one dimension may be active.
Cumulative Review
1. From Chapter 11: Explain how the oral-versus-nasal airflow distinction taught for consonants extends to the vowel nasalization discussed in this chapter.
2. From Chapter 6: Explain how the concept of phonation established for consonant voicing applies to the breathy and creaky vowel diacritics introduced here.
3. Preview for Chapters 19-23: This chapter treated length as a property of individual vowels. Predict how syllable weight, to be introduced in Chapter 19, might make use of vowel length.
Self-Check
Before moving to Chapter 19, confirm that you can do the following without looking at your notes:
- Distinguish phonetic duration from phonological length using a minimal-pair test.
- Identify contextual and phonemic vowel nasalization.
- Apply the rhoticity hook and identify breathy and creaky phonation diacritics.
- Explain vowel harmony as a system-level pattern.
- Work through a dataset combining more than one of these dimensions using the five-step procedure.
If any of these tasks are difficult, review the relevant section before reading Chapter 19. Chapter 19 completes the vowel-and-consonant foundation built in Parts II and III and begins Part IV by moving to syllables and phonotactics — how segments combine into larger structures.
Answer Key (click to expand)
Transcription and Analysis Exercises — Exercise A
1. Phonological length: identical quality and following context, with duration as the only difference and a corresponding change in meaning, is the diagnostic pattern for a length contrast. 2. Predictable duration: a duration difference that co-occurs consistently with a following consonant's voicing, and does not by itself change meaning, is evidence for phonetic duration rather than phonological length.
Transcription and Analysis Exercises — Exercise B
1. oː. 2. ã. 3. ɜ˞ (or ɚ, the pre-composed rhotic mid-central symbol, where the project's font and convention support it).
Transcription and Analysis Exercises — Exercise C
Answers depend on the supplied dataset. A complete answer names the harmonizing feature (most commonly backness or rounding), states the direction of the pattern (typically root-to-suffix), and supports the claim with at least two contrasting root-suffix pairs from the data.
Chapter Review — Part A
1. Phonetic duration is the measurable time any vowel takes and varies with rate, stress, and context; phonological length is a categorical, contrastive property in which long and short versions of a vowel function as distinct phonemes. The test is a minimal or near-minimal pair holding quality and following context constant while only duration and meaning vary. 2. Because the two Finnish words share the same vowel quality and the same following consonant, and differ only in vowel duration and in meaning, the data meets the diagnostic test for a length contrast rather than a predictable duration effect.
Chapter Review — Part B
1. Contextual nasalization is a predictable coarticulatory effect near a nasal consonant, as commonly described for English vowels adjacent to nasal consonants; phonemic nasalization is an independent, contrastive property, as in French bɔ̃ versus an oral counterpart. 2. A phonation difference changes the laryngeal setting (modal, breathy, or creaky) while height, backness, and rounding can remain constant, paralleling the voicing and phonation distinctions already established for consonants in Chapter 6, rather than involving a change in tongue or lip position.
Chapter Review — Part C
1. Vowel harmony is a pattern in which vowels across a word, especially a root and its suffixes, agree along a feature such as backness or rounding; it is treated as system-level because it can extend across intervening consonants and applies to the class of vowels in a word rather than only to strictly adjacent sounds. 2. The five steps are: check duration alone with quality and context held constant; check nasal-oral contrast independent of an adjacent nasal consonant; check rhotic-nonrhotic contrast and confirm the reference variety; check for harmony across related word forms; and only then state which dimensions are active together, supporting each with its own evidence.
Cumulative Review
1. Chapter 11 established that nasal airflow results from a lowered velum during consonant production; this chapter applies the same velic mechanism to vowels, so that a nasalized vowel involves the same articulatory control extended across the vowel's duration rather than a separate mechanism. 2. Chapter 6 established phonation (modal, breathy, creaky) as a property of laryngeal activity independent of place and manner for consonants; this chapter applies the same phonation categories to vowels, so that a breathy or creaky vowel reflects the same laryngeal settings rather than a difference in tongue or lip position. 3. Chapter 19 is likely to treat a long vowel as contributing extra weight to its syllable, for example by counting as two moras or by attracting stress, connecting the segmental length distinction from this chapter to the syllable-level structure developed next.
Looking Ahead
What You Can Now Do
With Chapters 14 through 18 together, you have a complete practical toolkit for vowel analysis: height, backness, and rounding; the IPA vowel space and reference-vowel method; monophthong inventories and allophony; diphthongs and vowel sequences; and now length, nasalization, rhoticity, phonation, and harmony. You can analyze a vowel system in which several of these dimensions interact and support each claim with appropriate evidence.