Vowel chart A graphical device for showing the locations of vowels within the vowel space.

Vowel classification The description of vowels in terms of phonetic parameters, most often height, backness and rounding, and sometimes also further parameters such as length and nasalization. Vowel echo The phenomenon in which an underlyingly unspecified vowel automatically takes on the identity of the vowel in an adjoining syllable. For example, Klamath has a causative prefix snVwhose vowel is always identical to the vowel in the next syllable: sne-ge: jiga makes tired, sno-bostgi makes something turn black, sninklilka makes dusty, and so on. Vowel harmony 1. The phenomenon, occurring in some languages, in which only certain combinations of the languages vowel phonemes are permitted to occur within some specified phonological domain, most usually a single phonological word; the permitted combinations are usually those which agree (harmonize) in respect of one or more phonetic features, such as [back], [round] or [ATR]. Turkish is a famous example: in Turkish, a word must consist entirely of front vowels or entirely of back vowels, and an unrounded vowel cannot be followed by a rounded vowel. Some vowel-harmony systems contain neutral vowels which do not participate in the harmony, and some systems exhibit an unusual type of dominant/recessive vowel harmony. 2. (also metaphony) Any phonological process in which the quality of a vowel is altered in such a way as to make it more similar to another vowel in the same phonological word: assimilation of non-adjacent vowels. Some analysts restrict the term vowel harmony to instances of left-to-right assimilation, preferring other terms, such as umlaut or affection, for cases of right-to-left assimilation. Cf. consonant harmony. Vowel height The parameter which represents the vertical dimension within the vowel space and which corresponds, at least in principle, to the physical height of the highest point of the tongue in the mouth during the articulation of a vowel. Vowel quadrilateral A stylized four-sided figure conventionally used for representing the vowel space and for marking the positions in the vowel space of both cardinal vowels and real vowels produced by real speakers of a language. By convention, high vowels are at the top and low vowels at the bottom; back vowels are on the right and front vowels on the left. A contrast between rounded and unrounded vowels in the same position cannot be easily represented.

Vowel quality The totality of those distinguishing characteristics of a particular vowel which result from the positions of the tongue and the lips during its articulation, but excluding such features as pitch, loudness, duration and usually also phonation type. Analysts differ as to whether they regard nasalization and its absence as part of the vowel quality or as an independent characteristic; the IPA transcription of vowels effectively adopts the second position, while acoustic analysis in terms of formants favours the first. Vowel reduction Any phonological process in connected speech which makes a vowel shorter, less loud, lower in pitch or more central in quality, or which neutralizes some vowel contrasts in unstressed syllables. Vowel space The space available within the oral cavity for the production of vowels. Vowel system The total inventory of the vowel phonemes of a particular language or language variety, especially when presented in an orderly manner more or less corresponding to the positions of those vowels within the vowel quadrilateral. Symmetrical vowel systems are often classified according to the approximate shape of the figure produced when the vowels are so displayed: hence vertical, triangular, quadrangular, etc., vowel systems. See under phoneme system for references.