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front vowel

front vowel

6.5
A vowel sound made with the tongue near the front of the mouth, like in man
  • noun
  • /frʌnt vaʊəl/
  • Specialized
translation icon : vocal frontal
  • In addition to the acoustic cues, visual cues also influence the perception of high-front vowels.
  • Dutch front vowels
  • high-front vowels

Examples

  • In the present study, we investigated the audiovisual perception of the Dutch high- and mid-high-front vowels i, y, e, Y, which are represented as shaded circles in Figure 1.

    Academic text (2012)
  • The choices were presented on the screen as buttons labeled 'eh' or 'ae' for the front vowel block and 'uh' or 'u' for the back pair block.

    Academic text (2012)
  • OK, now I've kind of color-coded the vowels here you can see there are some front vowels that are red and some back vowels that are blue.

  • On the other hand, we note that our etymon SYRINGA does in fact have the requisite front vowel for such a process to have taken place.

    Academic text (1993)
  • A. Alonso, for example, notes that 18 sometimes palatalizes before non-front vowels and sometimes fails to palatalize before front vowels.

    Academic text (1993)
  • Summary of the features of the Dutch front vowels used as stimuli, with an articulation example taken from the experimental stimuli (the section from around the mouth was cut from a still frame from the corresponding stimuli).

    Academic text (2012)
  • The objective of this study was to investigate whether the influence of visual cues on vowel perception extends to incongruent vowels, in a manner similar to the McGurk effect observed with consonants. Method: Identification of Dutch front vowels.

    Academic text (2012)
  • The front vowel in the word 'beet' is pronounced with the tongue positioned towards the front of the mouth.

  • In the sentence 'The cat sat on the mat,' the 'a' in 'cat' is a front vowel sound.

  • When learning English, it's important to recognize the front vowels like 'e' in 'gel' and 'i' in 'pin'.

How Front

front vowel
  • Specialized
6.5
central vowel
  • Specialized
8.4
back vowel
  • Specialized
7.0

Surface Forms

front vowel singular
front vowels plural

Morphology

front + vowel

The meaning is directly compositional: 'front' (forward) + 'vowel' (speech sound) yields a vowel produced toward the front of the mouth. Although technical, the concept follows transparent descriptive logic found across languages (e.g. Spanish 'vocal anterior'), so a B1 learner who knows both words can infer the meaning.

Etymology

Front vowel comes from a simple picture: the vowel sound is made with the tongue near the front of the mouth, so a 'front vowel' means a vowel sound made with the tongue forward, as in the first sound of 'man'.