low vowel
- noun
- /loʊ vaʊəl/
- Specialized
:
vocal baja
- So we talk about the high vowel like heat and the low vowel like hat.
Examples
-
The mid-posterior regions of the tongue were more affected than the anterior region, and low vowels were more significantly affected than high vowels (Yunusova et al., 2008).
Academic text (2012) -
Linguists often classify low vowels as those produced with the tongue in a low position inside the mouth.
-
In phonetics, the low vowel is represented by sounds like the 'a' in 'cat' or the 'o' in 'lot'.
-
Examples of low vowels in English include the 'a' in 'grass' and the 'o' in 'father'.
Synonyms
A vowel sound made with the tongue low in the mouth
Antonyms
How High
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning is directly compositional: 'low' describes vertical tongue height and 'vowel' is a speech sound, so 'low vowel' straightforwardly denotes a vowel produced with a low tongue position. Although phonetic terminology is somewhat technical, the semantic relation is transparent and cross-linguistically similar, so a B1 learner who knows both constituents can reasonably infer the meaning.
Etymology
Low vowel: The name low vowel comes from the image of the tongue sitting low in the mouth when you say a vowel like the 'a' in 'cat'. So the sound is called a low vowel because the tongue drops down and the sound is made 'low' in the mouth.
