Open-mid back unrounded vowel

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Vowels

See also: IPA, Consonants

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Front

Near-front

Central

Near-back

Back

Close

i • y

ɨ • ʉ

ɯ • u

ɪ • ʏ

• ʊ

e • ø

ɘ • ɵ

ɤ • o

ɛ • œ

ɜ • ɞ

ʌ • ɔ

a • ɶ

ɑ • ɒ

Near‑close

Close‑mid

Mid

Open‑mid

Near‑open

Open

Where symbols appear in pairs, the one to the right
represents a rounded vowel.

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

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
English	Philadelphia^[2]	plus	[plʌs]	'plus'	Less fronted than other dialects. See English phonology
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

^ Thomas (2001:27-28, 61-63)
^ Thomas (2001:27-28, 73-74)
^ Jones (1972:86-88)
^ Thomas (2001:27-28, 112-115, 121, 134, 174)
^ Roca & Johnson (1999:135)

[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