Checked and free vowels
From Freepedia
In English phonetics and phonology, checked vowels are those that usually must be followed by a consonant in a stressed syllable, while free vowels are those that may stand in a stressed open syllable with no following consonant.
In General American, the checked vowels are:
- /ɪ/ as in bit
- /ɛ/ as in bet
- /æ/ as in bat
- /ʊ/ as in put
- /ʌ/ as in but
The free vowels are:
- /i/ as in bee
- /e/ (also transcribed /eɪ/) as in bay
- /u/ as in boo
- /o/ (also transcribed /oʊ/) as in bow (a tool for shooting arrows; a tool for playing a stringed instrument)
- /ɔ/ as in paw
- /ɑ/ as in bra
- /ɝ/ as in burr
- /aɪ/ as in buy
- /aʊ/ as in bow (to bend at the waist; a part of a ship)
- /ɔɪ/ as in boy
The schwa /ə/ and rhotacized schwa /ɚ/ not usually are considered either free or checked, since they cannot stand in stressed syllables at all.
The terms checked vowel and free vowel correspond closely to the terms lax vowel and tense vowel respectively, but many linguists prefer to use the terms checked and free as there is no clearcut phonetic definition of vowel tenseness, and since by most attempted definitions of tenseness /ɔ/ and /ɑ/ are considered lax, even though they behave in American English as free vowels.
Only a few interjections like nah /næ/, yeah /jæ/~/jɛ/, uh /ʌ/, duh /dʌ/ have a checked vowel at the end.
