TURKISH VOWELS

The degree of lip rounding is another factor affecting vowel production. The lips may be rounded or flap in the production of a vowel.

Backness has three degrees: Front, central, back.

Turkish has only one low vowel – ‘a’ as in ‘ağla’. The IPA symbol for ‘a’ is /a/. Compare the production of vowel /a/ with /ə/. For /a/, the jaw opens more than it does for [ə].

The change in the quality of the vowels is a result of the movement of the tongue and the lips. How the tongue moves exactly to produce different vowels however is not very clear. That is because there are no distinct boundaries of tongue position when producing vowels as there are in consonant production.

The reference point is the vowel ‘schwa’ [ə], also called a neutral vowel because it is produced with the tongue at rest position. Try to produce a schwa. When you are not speaking, your tongue is at rest position. Open your lips a bit without moving your tongue. The sound you produce is [ə]. Vowels are said to be higher or more back than [ə].

English vowels are described in terms of tense/lax, height, backness, and rounding: • /i/ à tense high front unrounded • /ɪ/ à lax high front unrounded • /o/ à tense mid back rounded • /u/ à tense high back rounded • /ɛ/ à lax mid front unrounded • /ə/ à lax mid central unrounded • /ɔ/ à tense low back rounded • /e/ à tense mid front unrounded • /ʊ/ à lax high back rounded • /ʌ/ à tense mid central unrounded • /æ/ à lax low front unrounded • /a/ à tense low central unrounded In English, all back vowels are rounded, all rounded vowels are back. Inversely, all non-back vowels are unrounded, all unrounded vowels are non-back

It produces a continuum whereby there are no clear boundaries of tongue position for different vowels. Because vowel production is a continuum, it is possible to produce different vowels between any two vowels. The movement from one vowel to another changes the auditory quality of vowels.

In consonant production there is a constriction somewhere in the vocal tract. Thus consonants are defined in terms of where and how this constriction occurs. In vowel production there is no constriction. The air flows through the vocal tract relatively freely.

For the production of high vowels the tongue is raised towards the roof of the mouth. When the tongue is lowered, to a lower position than that of [ə], low vowels are produced. If the tongue height is similar to that of [ə], then the vowel is a mid vowel.

The only central vowel in Turkish is the initial sound of the following words: ‘an’, ‘anı’, ‘ara’, ‘ak’, etc. The IPA symbol representing for this vowel is /a/.

American English has 12 pure vowels (p: 38, Figure 3.4). All of the 12 vowels are distinct phonemes. Examples of each of the phonemes are given below. • /i/ à see, key, read, seem, mean, week • /ɪ/ à it, win, did, him, river, dinner, six • /e/ à say, day, may, rain, table, sail • /ɛ/ à red, head, ten, ready, guest, best • /æ/ à add, bad, man, answer, fat, apple • /a/ à stop, job, Mom, John, college • /ʌ/ à fun, run, sun, son, bus, study • /u/ à two, room, June, ruler, too, food • /ʊ/ à good, foot, wood, stood, cookie, books • /o/ à go, show, drove, open, no, pore • /ɔ/ à saw, song, dog, August, law, coffee • /ə/ à awhile, alive, a bus, arrive

Compare the position of the tongue for ‘i’ with [ə]. Start with [ə] and move to ‘i’. Notice that your tongue rises towards the roof of the mouth and the higher point of the tongue moves forward. Hence, ‘i’ is described as a high front vowel.

The initial sounds of the following words contain high vowels; ‘isim’, ‘ırmak’, ‘üzüm’, ‘umut’. The IPA symbols for these vowels are /i/, /ɯ/, /y/, /u/, respectively. Notice how the tongue is raised towards the roof of the mouth to form these vowels.

In describing consonants, a distinction between voiced and voiceless was necessary as voicing is the only distinction for some consonants produced at the same place and in the same manner. For vowels such a distinction is not necessary because all vowels are voiced.

The height of a vowel correlates with jaw opening. The lower the vowel is, the more open the jaw is. Compare ‘i’ and ‘a’ paying attention to jaw opening. While the mouth is relatively closed for ‘i’, the mouth opens for ‘a’. Therefore, ‘a’ is called a low vowel.

Vowel classification is based on how the vowels sound relative to other vowels. This gives high-low and front-back contrasts in the classification. The terms ‘high-low, front-back’ are just labels referring to auditory quality rather than tongue position.

As can bee seen in the above examples /i/ and /ɪ/, along with /e/ and /ɛ/, cannot be distinguished by these three de*ors. Therefore another de*or is necessary for English vowels. For English tense/lax distinction is used to distinguish such pairs. Tenseness is said to affect: • vowel length – tense vowels are longer • tongue position – tense vowels have more extreme tongue position • lip position – tense vowels have more extreme lip position

Start with [ə] and move to ‘a’. Now compare [ə] with ‘a’. To produce ‘a’, the tongue lowers at the center of the mouth. Notice that [ə] and ‘a’ are both central vowels (p: 35, Figure 3.2.). The difference between these two vowels is in the height dimension.

Vowel de*ion is based on auditory quality of the vowels because the position of the tongue is not clear in the production of vowels. Traditionally, vowels are described in terms of: • height • backness • lip position

Turkish /ɛ/ has three allophones. The more commonly used allophone is [ɛ] as in the words ‘eser’, ‘elma’, ‘eksi’. In words such as ‘eğer’, ‘eğlence’, ‘değil’ /ɛ/ is realized with a ‘j’ glide, thus sounding more like the English [e]. In some dialects, or idiolects, /ɛ/ is realized as [æ] in certain environments as in words such as ‘genç’, ‘Mehmet’ (first ‘e’), ‘mendil’. Consequently, the phoneme /ɛ/ has three allophones: [e] before ‘ğ’, speaker-dependent [æ], and [ɛ] elsewhere.

Height refers to the height of the tongue body in the vocal tract.

There are three heights in vowels: High, mid, low.

In Turkish, there are two high front vowels, /i/ and /y/. The only difference between these vowels is rounding. /i/ is unrounded while /y/ is rounded. The same is true for high back vowels as well. They differ form one another in lip rounding: /ɯ/ is unrounded, but /u/ is rounded. Front mid vowels also differ in terms of rounding. /ɛ/ is an unrounded vowel as in the word ‘emek’ whereas /œ/ is a rounded vowel as in the word ‘örümcek’. The back mid vowel /o/ is a rounded vowel without an unrounded counterpart (p: 37, Figure 3.3)

Some examples are: • /i/ à high front unrounded • /ɪ/ à high front unrounded • /e/ à mid front unrounded • /ɛ/ à mid front unrounded

The medial sounds in the following words are the back vowels in Turkish: ‘kın’, ‘sun’, ‘kon’. The IPA symbols for these vowels are /ɯ/, /u/, and /o/, respectively.

Backness refers to where in the oral tract the tongue has the highest point. Again, remember that these are relative to tongue positions of other vowels.

Start with [ə] and move to ‘u’. As you go from [ə] to ‘u’, the tongue is raised but this time the higher point of the tongue moves towards the back of the mouth. Thus, ‘u’ is called a high back vowel.

The following words have mid vowels in wordinitial position, ‘ekmek’, ‘övün’, ‘orman’. Produce these vowels. When compared to [ə], the height of the tongue for the mid vowels is the same as that of [ə], which is also a mid vowel. The IPA symbols for the inital sounds of the above words are as follows: /ɛ/, /œ/, /o/, respectively.

The initial sounds in the following words are the front vowels in Turkish: ‘in’, ‘ün’, ‘en’, ‘ön’. The IPA symbols for these vowels are: /i/, /y/, /ɛ/, and /œ/, respectively.

Rounding describes lip position. In the production of some vowels, the lips are rounded to form what is called rounded vowels. For some vowels, the lips are not rounded, rather they are spread. Such vowels are called unrounded vowels.

Turkish /a/ has three allophones: [a], [ʌ], [ə]. Compare the pronunciation of the two /a/’s in the word ‘masa’. The first /a/ is a schwa, a very short and almost nondistinctive vowel whereas the second /a/ is more like the English tense mid central vowel [ʌ]. Thus, the allophones of /a/ are: speaker-dependent [a], [ə] in the first syllable, [ʌ] elsewhere.

The high back vowel /u/ has two allophones: [u] and [ʊ]. Compare the words ‘tuğra’ and ‘tura’. /u/ in ‘tuğra’ is longer, more rounded, and produced with a more extreme tongue position than that of ‘tura’. The sound [u] occurs before ‘ğ’ and [ʊ] in other environments.

A diphthong is a vowel in which there is a change in quality during a single syllable. Thus, it is a vowel which starts as one vowel but ends as a different vowel within the same syllable (p: 39, Figure 3.5.).

The high front unrounded vowel /i/ has two allophones in Turkish: [i] before ‘ğ’ and [ɪ] elsewhere. This suggests that the occurrence of [i] is restricted to the environment of ‘ğ’. [ɪ] occurs in all other environments.

Turkish does not have diphthongs, but there are three diphthongs in American English: • /ai/ à my, lie, die, rye • /au/ à cow, how, now • /oi/ à boy, toy, royal

Turkish vowels presented above are the phonemic representations. In the actual realization of speech, however, variations of these vowels are used as allophones.