Open-mid back unrounded vowel

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IPA – number	314
IPA – text	ʌ
IPA – image
Entity	ʌ
X-SAMPA	V
Kirshenbaum	V
Sound sample (help·info)

The open-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, and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is V. The IPA symbol is an inverted letter v 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

Contents 1 Features 2 Occurrence 3 References 4 Bibliography

[edit] Features

• Its vowel height is open-mid, which means the tongue is positioned halfway between an open 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.

[edit] Occurrence

Language		Word	IPA	Meaning	Notes
English	Newfoundland English[1]	plus	[plʌs]	'plus'	Less fronted than other dialects. See English phonology
	Philadelphia[2]
Irish		ola	[ʌlˠə]	'oil'	See Irish phonology
Korean		벌	[pʌl]	'punishment'	See Korean phonology
Vietnamese		ân	[ʌn]	'favour; grace'	Also analyzed as central [ɜ]. See Vietnamese phonology

Before World War II, Received Pronunciation had phoneme /ʌ/ as being 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].^[3] In American English varieties, the typical phonetic realization (e.g. in Ohio or Texas English) 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] occur in Newfoundland English, Philadelphia English, some African-American Englishes, and (old-fashioned) white Southern English in coastal plain and Piedmont areas.^[4] Despite this, the symbol < 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.^[5].

[edit] References

[edit] Bibliography

• Jones, Daniel (1972), written at Cambridge, An outline of English phonetics (9th ed.), W. Heffer & Sons Ltd.
• Roca, Iggy & Wyn Johnson (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