Roundedness


In phonetics, vowel roundedness refers to the amount of rounding in the lips during the articulation of a vowel. It is labialization of a vowel. When a rounded vowel is pronounced, the lips form a circular opening, and unrounded vowels are pronounced with the lips relaxed. In most languages, front vowels tend to be unrounded, and back vowels tend to be rounded. However, some languages, such as French, German and Icelandic, distinguish rounded and unrounded front vowels of the same height, and Vietnamese distinguishes rounded and unrounded back vowels of the same height. Alekano has only unrounded vowels. In the International Phonetic Alphabet vowel chart, rounded vowels are the ones that appear on the right in each pair of vowels. There are also diacritics, and, to indicate greater and lesser degrees of rounding, respectively.

Types of rounding

There are two types of vowel rounding: protrusion and compression. In protruded rounding, the corners of the mouth are drawn together and the lips protrude like a tube, with their inner surface visible. In compressed rounding, the corners of the mouth are drawn together, but the lips are also drawn together horizontally and do not protrude, with only their outer surface visible. That is, in protruded vowels the inner surfaces of the lips form the opening, whereas in compressed vowels it is the margins of the lips which form the opening. observes that back and central rounded vowels, such as German and, are typically protruded, whereas front rounded vowels such as German and are typically compressed. Back or central compressed vowels and front protruded vowels are uncommon, and a contrast between the two types has been found to be phonemic in only one instance.
There are no dedicated IPA diacritics to represent the distinction, but the superscript IPA letter or can be used for compression and for protrusion. Compressed vowels may be pronounced either with the corners of the mouth drawn in, by some definitions rounded, or with the corners spread and, by the same definitions, unrounded. The distinction may be transcribed vs .
The distinction between protruded and compressed holds for the semivowels and as well as labialization. In Akan, for example, the is compressed, as are labio-palatalized consonants as in Twi "Twi" and adwuma "work", whereas and simply labialized consonants are protruded. In Japanese, the is compressed rather than protruded, paralleling the Japanese. The distinction applies marginally to other consonants. In Southern Teke, the sole language reported to have a phonemic, the labiodental sound is "accompanied by strong protrusion of both lips", whereas the found as an allophone of before in languages such as English is not protruded, as the lip contacts the teeth along its upper or outer edge. Also, in at least one account of speech acquisition, a child's pronunciation of clown involves a lateral with the upper teeth contacting the upper-outer edge of the lip, but in crown, a non-lateral is pronounced with the teeth contacting the inner surface of the protruded lower lip.
Some vowels transcribed with rounded IPA letters may not be rounded at all. An example is, the vowel of lot, which in Received Pronunciation has very little if any rounding of the lips. The "throaty" sound of the vowel is instead accomplished with sulcalization, a furrowing of the back of the tongue also found in, the vowel of nurse''.
It is possible to mimic the acoustic effect of rounded vowels by narrowing the cheeks, so-called "cheek rounding", which is inherent in back protruded vowels. The technique is used by ventriloquists to mask the visible rounding of back vowels like. It is not clear if it is used by languages with rounded vowels that do not use visible rounding.
FrontCentralBack
Semivowel
Close
Near-close
Close-mid
Open-mid

The central and the back have not been reported to occur in any language.

Spread and neutral

The lip position of unrounded vowels may be classified into two groups: spread and neutral. Front vowels are usually pronounced with the lips spread, and the spreading becomes more significant as the height of the vowel increases. Open vowels are often neutral, i.e. neither rounded nor spread, because the open jaw allows for limited rounding or spreading of the lips. This is reflected in the IPA's definition of the cardinal, which is unrounded yet not spread either.

Roundedness and labialization

Protruded rounding is the vocalic equivalent of consonantal labialization. Thus, rounded vowels and labialized consonants affect one another by phonetic assimilation: Rounded vowels labialize consonants, and labialized consonants round vowels.
In many languages, such effects are minor phonetic detail, but in others, they become significant. For example, in Standard Chinese, the vowel is pronounced after labial consonants, an allophonic effect that is so important that it is encoded in pinyin transliteration: alveolar 'many' vs. labial 'wave'. In Vietnamese, the opposite assimilation takes place: velar codas and are pronounced as labialized and or even labial-velar and, after the rounded vowels and.
In the Northwest Caucasian languages of the Caucasus and the Sepik languages of Papua New Guinea, historically rounded vowels have become unrounded, with the rounding being taken up by the consonant. Thus, Sepik and are phonemically and.
In the extinct Ubykh, and were phonemically and. A few ancient Indo-European languages like Latin had labiovelar consonants.

Phonemic roundedness in English

It is rare for accents of English to differentiate vowels only by their roundedness. Minimal pairs like this can be found in some British dialects as well as in General South African English. Most commonly, they involve a contrastive pair of close-mid vowels, with the unrounded vowel being either or a monophthongal and the rounded counterpart being . Contrasts based on roundedness are rarely categorical in English and they may be enhanced by additional differences in height, backness or diphthongization.
General South African English is unique among accents of English in that it can feature up to three front rounded vowels, with two of them having unrounded counterparts.
The potential contrast between the close-mid and the open-mid is hard to perceive by outsiders, making utterances such as the total onslaught sound almost like the turtle onslaught.