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Concept
Vertical vowel system
Résumé
A vertical vowel system is the system of vowels in a language that requires only vowel height to phonemically distinguish vowels. Theoretically, rounding, frontness and backness could also be used in one-dimensional vowel systems; however, vertical refers specifically to the usage of vowel height as the sole distinguishing feature.
Vertical vowel systems have only been uncovered in the underlying representation of various languages' phonology. Phonetically, all known natural languages employ both front and back vowels; however, in a vertical vowel system, the occurrence of front vs. back vowels is predictable, governed by one or more phonological processes.
Two different diachronic mechanisms may give rise to a vertical vowel system. In some cases, the front-back distinction may simply be lost when vowels are merged. This has occurred in Wichita, in which an old vowel /u/ (preserved in the related language Pawnee) has merged with /i/. However, the Wichita vowel system is not phonetically vertical, as /a/ is realised as open back, /e/ as open-mid front, and /i/ as close to close-mid front; hence, the feature [± back] is relevant to the phonetics of the language, even though it is not a salient phonological distinction. Similarly, the vowel [o] is heard in Wichita utterances, although this vowel is usually the phonetic result of a contraction of sequences of [short vowel + w + short vowel], a phenomenon also noted in other languages with vertical vowel systems.
More striking is a phenomenon whereby one or more phonological features of vowels are lost and reassigned to the consonants at the syllable periphery, leaving all vowels underspecified for frontness, rounding, or both. This has occurred in Arrernte, in which vowel rounding has been lost and consonantal labialisation gained as a result. All members of the Northwest Caucasian family have reassigned both rounding and frontness to the syllable periphery, the former surfacing as consonantal labialisation, and the latter as palatalisation. This has also occurred in Marshallese.
Source officielle
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