Cardinal Vowels
One of the traditional parts of practical phonetics training is learning to produce and transcribe Cardinal Vowels (Knight et al., 2014). Cardinal Vowels are a primarily perceptual classification system for vowels and are typically introduced after students are familiar with the articulatory classification of vowels. CVs do not occur in ‘real’ languages but are perceptual reference sounds. They attempt to circumscribe the articulatory-perceptual vowel space by associating specific perceptual impressions with points that are on the extreme edges of the vowel space. For a detailed account of the cardinal vowel system and some of the issues, please refer to Ladefoged (2001), Knight (2012), Cruttenden (2014), or Nicholson (2017).
Once a person has learnt the Cardinal Vowel system, they can describe any ‘real’ vowel occuring in speech by stating how it differs from one of the Cardinal Vowels; e.g. a vowel is more front or more back than a specific CV, more open or more close, as well as more or less rounded. Ball and Müller (2005) explain it as being similar to how direction is described in terms of the compass. This makes it a flexible and useful system that can be used in a wide variety of contexts, including for example the description of clinical speech (Howard & Heselwood, 2013), pronunciation training in second language acquisition (e.g. Celdrán & Elvira-García, 2019; Nicholson, 2017), as well as the description of accents, child speech development, and cross-linguistic studies.
Learning Cardinal Vowels
Cardinal Vowel are often perceived to be a difficult part of the phonetics curriculum to learn (Knight et al., 2014). This can in some cases, alongside time constraints, lead to the learning of the cardinal vowel system being required but not actually applied to the description of real-life vowels. The effect of this is that students may not see the point of investing a lot of time in learning the CVs. More details on how the application of the system will be the subject of Part 2 of this blog. Here a short overview of the perceived and actual difficulties of learning the CV system will be briefly outlined, followed by some advice on how it is best learnt.
Whitworth (2008, 2011) reported that based on the self-reported perceived difficulty level, British English-speaking SLT students found close-mid and back open-mid vowels more difficult to transcribe than their close and open counterparts. They also tend to find secondary CVs more difficult to transcribe the primary CVs (unless they are close-mid or back open-mid where this distinction is not maintained). In terms of production, secondary vowels are judged to be most difficult followed by close-mid/open-mid vowels. In a follow-up study, she found that a survey of 110 students from three cohorts shows that there is a tentative correlation between how many sounds are judged to be difficult for oral exam performance, i.e. production, but no apparent correlation between transcription exam performance and number of sounds judged to be difficult (Whitworth, 2011).
Wikström and Setter (2011) report that the six SLT student participants in their study were overestimating their ability to produce open and close cardinal vowels and underestimating their ability to produce close-mid and open-mid cardinal vowels accurately. Although this is only a small sample, the results seems in line with the perceived difficulty levels and the exam performance found by Whitworth (2011). It also echoes the anecdotal experience of many tutors which show that at least English-speaking students usually have issues with insufficient lip rounding and qualities that are insufficiently peripheral. Further examination of the exact effect and how it can be counteracted is needed.
Teaching Cardinal Vowels
The Cardinal Vowel system must be learnt by direct instruction through a teacher who is familiar with the system, ideally in a small group setting. Aim of the instruction is to help learners establish a perceptual memory of each CV quality and map this to an articulatory position which allows them to produce an accurate perceptual reproduction of each of the CVs. This is usually done by repeated listening to live or recorded production of the vowels and imitation by the student. Frequent practice is necessary, but this can be for short periods. For best results, it is essential for a trained phonetician to be available to provide feedback on the students’ productions which permit them to correct any discrepancies in their productions. It is also important that students have a good understanding of the underlying theory including the ambiguities and criticisms of the CV system. Good teaching engages all the senses so that students learn to use perception, proprioception, vision alongside instructor feedback and theory. This requires students to produce the vowels aloud, engage in vocal play and be confident to ‘exaggerate’ pronunciations to avoid non-peripheral vowel qualities for open and close ‘more familiar’ CVs.
Technological developments have made it possible to enable more self-study. Animations, ultrasound and MRI videos of cardinal vowel productions are available online for example by the Seeing Speech project (www.seeingspeech.ac.uk) (Lawson et al., 2018). Exercise and revisions materials can be produced using a range of VLE and apps, e.g., Quizlet. Students can be encouraged to record themselves and compare their productions to a recorded example sound or use acoustic phonetics software to check their accuracy.
Summary
In summary, whilst useful for a range of applications, the task of learning Cardinal Vowels is often perceived as difficult and pointless. Students perceive a heightened level of difficulty regarding the mid vowel heights and the secondary cardinal vowels. They appear to underestimate the difficulty of close and open vowels but nevertheless, students often trip up in their actual productions of these vowel qualities. This needs to be counteracted in teaching that involves all senses and permits students to receive feedback on their productions in a small group setting. Technological advances can be utilised to make this possible despite time and resource constraints.
Call to Action
Do you teach phonetics? Please share your methods/strategies of teaching Cardinal Vowels in the comments below. It would be great to hear what your context is. Perhaps you do not teach Cardinal vowels as part of your curriculum. Please share why and whether you would prefer to include them or not.
References
Ball, M. J., & Müller, N. (2005). Phonetics for Communication Disorders. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Celdrán, E. M., & Elvira-García, W. (2019). Description of Spanish Vowels and Guidelines to Teach Them. In R. Rao (Ed.), Key Issues in the Teaching of Spanish Pronunciation (pp. 17-39). Routledge.
Cruttenden, A. (2014). Gimson’s pronunciation of English. Routledge.
Howard, S., & Heselwood, B. (2013). The contribution of phonetics to the study of vowel development and disorders. Handbook of Vowels and Vowel Disorders, 2, 61.
Knight, R.-A. (2012). Phonetics: A coursebook. Cambridge University Press.
Knight, R.-A., Setter, J., & Cornelius, P. (2014). Articulatory phonetics. In N. Whitworth & R.-A. Knight (Eds.), Methods in Teaching Clinical Phonetics and Linguistics. J&R Press Ltd.
Ladefoged, P. (2001). A Course in Phonetics. Harcourt College Publishers.
Lawson, E., Stuart-Smith, J., Scobbie, J. M., & Nakai, S. (2018). Seeing Speech: an articulatory web resource for the study of Phonetics. Retrieved 28 July from https://www.seeingspeech.ac.uk/
Nicholson, L. (2017). Teaching Vowels Physically. Voice and Speech Review, 11(2), 121-131.
Whitworth, N. (2008). Hard Sounds & Easy Sounds: SLT Students’ Perceptions of IPA Sounds Fifth Colloquium of the British Association of Clinical Linguists (BACL), University of Reading.
Whitworth, N. (2011, 11 April 2011). SLT students’ perception of IPA sounds: An update on vowels [Conference poster]. Third Colloquium of the British Association of Clinical Linguists (BACL), Leeds Metropolitan University.
Wikström, J., & Setter, J. (2011). Speech and language therapy (SLT) students’ production and perception of cardinal vowels: a longitudinal case study of six speech and language therapy students. Leeds Working Papers in Linguistics and Phonetics, 16, 51-82.