Phonetics: Oral and Nasal Cavities

• Oral vowels occur when the velum is raised, cutting off the entry of the airstream into the nasal cavity.
• Nasal vowels are created when the velum lowers, permitting the airstream to flow through both the oral and nasal cavities
• The vowels produced with more tension and more constriction of the vocal tract are called tense vowels.
• Vowels with less tension and constriction are lax vowels.
• The vowel called schwa [ə] is lax and is characterized by a briefer duration than any other English vowel. It is also an example of a reduced vowel.
• R-coloring of a vowel means that a vowel partially takes on the sound qualities of an r sound that follows it and the vowel frequency is lowered.
• In English, one-syllable words spoken individually never end in lax vowels.