CLOSE CENTRAL UNROUNDED VOWEL

The 'close central unrounded vowel' is a type of vowel sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is 1. The IPA symbol is the letter ''i'' with a horizontal bar. Both the symbol and the sound are commonly referred to as "barred-i".

Contents

Features

Occurrence

Bibliography

Features

★ Its vowel height is close, which means the tongue is positioned as close as possible to the roof of the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant.

★ Its vowel backness is central, which means the tongue is positioned halfway between a front vowel and a back vowel.

★ Its vowel roundedness is unrounded, which means that the lips are spread.

Occurrence

is a rare phoneme in most Indo-European languages.
However, it is very common as a separate phoneme in the indigenous languages of the Americas and is often in phonemic contrast with other close vowels such as and both in modern living languages as well as reconstructed proto-languages (e.g. proto-Uto-Aztecan). Campbell et al. (1986) identify the presence of this vowel phoneme as an areal feature of a Mesoamerican Sprachbund (although this is not a defining feature of the entire area).

Language		Word	IPA	Meaning	Notes
Amharic				'root'	Often transcribed as
Angor		''h'ü'fı		'hot'
English (some dialects)		''ros'e's''		'roses'	Reduced vowel, other dialects have in this place. See English phonology.
Guaraní		'''y'v'y'''		'earth'
Kaingang		''f'y'''		'seed'
Mapudungan		''truk'ü'r''		'fog'	See Mapudungun phonology
Polish		''w'y'''		'you' (plural)	See Polish phonology
Romanian		'''î'nspre''		'toward'	See Romanian phonology
Russian		т'ы'		'you' (singular)	Only occurs after unpalatalized consonants. See Russian phonology
Sahaptin				'cold'
Sirionó				'dry wood'
Tupi		'''y'b'y'''		'earth'
Võro		''s'y'sar''		'sister'
Welsh	Northern dialects	''Cymr'u'		'Wales'

Bibliography

★ Campbell, Lyle; Kaufman, Terrence; & Smith-Stark, Thomas C. (1986). Meso-America as a linguistic area. ''Language'', ''62'' (3), 530-570.

★ Firestone, Homer L. (1965). ''Description and classification of Sirionó: A Tupí-Guaraní language.'' Janua linguarum, Series Practica (No. 16). London: Mouton & Co.

★ Gómez, Paula. (1999). ''Huichol de San Andrés Cohamiata, Jalisco''. Archivo de lenguas indígenas de México. México: El Colegio de México, Centro de Estudios.

★ Koehn, Edward; & Koehn, Sally. (1986). Apalai. In D. C. Derbyshire & G. K. Pullum (Eds.), ''Handbook of Amazonian linguistics'' (Vol. 1, pp. 33-127). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

★ Payne, Doris L.; & Payne, Thomas E. (1990). Yagua. In D. C. Derbyshire & G. K. Pullum (Eds.), ''Handbook of Amazonian linguistics'' (Vol. 2, pp. 252-474). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.