Open-mid back unrounded vowel

Open-mid back unrounded vowel
ʌ
Image
IPA number	314
Encoding
Entity (decimal)	ʌ
Unicode (hex)	U+028C
X-SAMPA	V
Kirshenbaum	V
Sound

The open-mid back unrounded vowel, or low-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⟩, graphically a rotated lowercase vee (called a turned V, though it was created as a small-capital ⟨a⟩ without the crossbar), 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.

The IPA prefers terms "close" and "open" for vowels, and the name of the article follows this. However, a large number of linguists, perhaps a majority, prefer the terms "high" and "low", and these are the only terms found in introductory textbooks on phonetics such as those by Peter Ladefoged.

Features

IPA vowel chart
Front Near-​front Central Near-​back Back Close •iy •ɨʉ •ɯu •ɪʏ •ɪ̈ʊ̈ •ʊ •eø •ɘɵ •ɤo •e̞ø̞ ə •ɤ̞o̞ •ɛœ •ɜɞ •ʌɔ •æ ɐ •aɶ •ä •ɑɒ Near-close Close-mid Mid Open-mid Near-open Open
Paired vowels are: unrounded • rounded
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• Its vowel height is open-mid, also known as low-mid, which means the tongue is positioned halfway between an open vowel (a low 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.

Occurrence

Language		Word	IPA	Meaning	Notes
English	Newfoundland	plus	[plʌs]	'plus'	Less fronted than other dialects. See English phonology
	Philadelphia
Irish	Ulster dialect	ola	[ʌlˠə]	'oil'	See Irish phonology
Korean		벌	[pʌl]	'punishment'	See Korean phonology
Vietnamese		ân	[ʌn]	'grace'	Also transcribed as central [ɜ]. See Vietnamese phonology

Before World War II, the /ʌ/ of Received Pronunciation was 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]. In American English varieties, e.g., the West and Midwest, and the urban South, the typical phonetic realization 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] can occur in Inland Northern American English, Newfoundland English, Philadelphia English, some African-American Englishes, and (old-fashioned) white Southern English in coastal plain and Piedmont areas. Despite this, the letter ⟨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.

Bibliography

• Gordon, Matthew (2004a), "New York, Philadelphia and other Northern Cities", in Kortmann, Bernd, A Handbook of Varieties of English: Volume 1: Phonology, Walter de Gruyter, pp. 294–296, ISBN 3110175320 
• Gordon, Matthew (2004b), "The West and Midwest: phonology", in Kortmann, Bernd, A Handbook of Varieties of English: Volume 1: Phonology, Walter de Gruyter, pp. 340, ISBN 3110175320 
• Jones, Daniel (1972), An outline of English phonetics (9th ed.), Cambridge: W. Heffer & Sons Ltd. 
• Roca, Iggy; Johnson, Wyn (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, ISSN 0002-8207 
• Tillery, Jan and Guy Bailey (2004), "The urban South: phonology", in Kortmann, Bernd, A Handbook of Varieties of English: Volume 1: Phonology, Walter de Gruyter, pp. 333, ISBN 3110175320