Back vowel
{{Short description|Type of vowel sound}}
{{IPA vowels|class=floatright}}
{{IPA notice}}
A back vowel is any in a class of vowel sound used in spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a back vowel is that the highest point of the tongue is positioned relatively back in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant. Back vowels are sometimes also called dark vowels because they are perceived as sounding darker than the front vowels.{{cite book|last=Tsur|first=Reuven|title=The Poetic Mode of Speech Perception|publisher=Duke University Press|date=February 1992|page=20 |isbn=978-0-8223-1170-6 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=1yh4p69MaI4C&q=dark+vowels&pg=PA20}}
Near-back vowels are essentially a type of back vowels; no language is known to contrast back and near-back vowels based on backness alone.
The category "back vowel" comprises both raised vowels and retracted vowels.
Articulation
In their articulation, back vowels do not form a single category, but may be either raised vowels such as {{IPA|[u]}} or retracted vowels such as {{IPA|[ɑ]}}.Scott Moisik, Ewa Czaykowska-Higgins, & John H. Esling (2012) [https://www.mcgill.ca/mcgwpl/files/mcgwpl/moisik2012.pdf "The Epilaryngeal Articulator: A New Conceptual Tool for Understanding Lingual-Laryngeal Contrasts"]
Partial list
The back vowels that have dedicated symbols in the International Phonetic Alphabet are:
- close back unrounded vowel {{IPA|[ɯ]}}
- close back protruded vowel {{IPA|[u]}}
- near-close back protruded vowel {{IPA|[ʊ]}}
- close-mid back unrounded vowel {{IPA|[ɤ]}}
- close-mid back protruded vowel {{IPA|[o]}}
- open-mid back unrounded vowel {{IPA|[ʌ]}}
- open-mid back rounded vowel {{IPA|[ɔ]}}
- open back unrounded vowel {{IPA|[ɑ]}}
- open back rounded vowel {{IPA|[ɒ]}}
There also are back vowels that do not have dedicated symbols in the IPA:
- close back compressed vowel {{IPA|[ɯᵝ]}} or {{IPA|[uᵝ]}}
- near-close back unrounded vowel {{IPA|[ɯ̽]}} or {{IPA|[ʊ̜]}}
- near-close back compressed vowel {{IPA|[ɯ̽ᵝ]}} or {{IPA|[ʊᵝ]}}
- close-mid back compressed vowel {{IPA|[ɤᵝ]}} or {{IPA|[oᵝ]}}
- mid back unrounded vowel {{IPA|[ɤ̞]}} or {{IPA|[ʌ̝]}}
- mid back rounded vowel {{IPA|[o̞]}} or {{IPA|[ɔ̝]}}
As here, other back vowels can be transcribed with diacritics of relative articulation applied to letters for neighboring vowels, such as {{angbr IPA|u̞}}, {{angbr IPA|o̝}} or {{angbr IPA|ʊ̠}} for a near-close back rounded vowel.
Occurrence
According to PHOIBLE, the most common phonemic back vowel is /{{IPA link|u}}/, occurring in approximately 88% of languages, while the most uncommon phonemic back vowel is /{{IPA link|ɒ}}/, occurring in only 2% of recorded inventories.
| class="wikitable"
|+ Back vowel occurrences{{Cite book|url=https://phoible.org/|title=PHOIBLE 2.0|location=Jena|editor=Steven Moran and Daniel McCloy|year=2019|publisher=Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History}} ! Vowel !! % | |
| /{{IPA link|u}}/ | 88 |
| /{{IPA link|o}}/ | 60 |
| /{{IPA link|ɔ}}/ | 35 |
| /{{IPA link|ʊ}}/ | 14 |
| /{{IPA link|ɑ}}/ | 7 |
| /{{IPA link|ɯ}}/ | 6 |
| /{{IPA link|ʌ}}/ | 4 |
| /{{IPA link|ɤ}}/ | 3 |
| /{{IPA link|ɒ}}/ | 2 |