Vowels before /ɹ̣/

Earlier we mentioned that vowels are affected by the surrounding consonants, and this effect is much more noticeable with certain consonants, especially with liquids. In this section, we will examine the vowels before /ɹ̣/. In most forms of American English some form of r-sound after a vowel is permitted. When the following /ɹ̣/ is in the same syllable (as in ear, cure, work, party), the vowel takes on some retroflex quality, which is commonly known as ‘r-coloring’. When this happens, several otherwise well-established vowel contrasts of English are neutralized (i.e. lost) with many speakers of American English. For example, the contrast between the two high front vowels /i/ and /ɪ/ seems to disappear in words such as ear, fear, beard, pier, etc. The r-colored production resembles neither /i/ nor /ɪ/; it is somewhere in between (traditionally transcribed as [iɹ̣]). A similar situation can be observed between the two high back vowels /u/ and /ʊ/ in words such as tour, mature, endure, and poor. The r-colored vowel is not identical to either /u/ or /ʊ/. This phenomenon of neutralizations of contrasts continues with full force in the front and back mid vowel series. For many speakers of American English, the r-colored vowel in Mary, merry, and marry is the same, thus revealing a neutralization of the contrasts between /e/, /ε/, and /æ/. As for the back vowels, words such as pork, bore, horn, and fork do not seem to reveal any distinction between /o/ and /ɔ/, as the /ɹ̣/ has the effect of raising the /ɔ/ toward /o/ (cf. morning vs. mourning). Similarly, with respect to the high back vowels, the contrast between /u/ and /ʊ/ may be neutralized in words such as poor and cure. Some speakers even go further and neutralize the four back vowels /o, ɔ, u, ʊ/ before /ɹ̣/ in coversational speech (e.g. pour, pore, poor).

Besides neutralizing the above-mentioned distinctions, r-coloring is present in the following two diphthongs: /aɪɹ̣/ (e.g. fire, entire, inspire) and /aʊɹ̣/ (e.g. sour, devour). Finally, the central vowel schwa has two r-colored manifestations: [ɝ] in stressed syllables and [ɚ] in unstressed syllables (e.g. herder [hɝdɚ]).

We summarize the r-colored vowels with the tautosyllabic /ɹ̣/ in figure 1.

Before we end this section, we should mention that an additional neutralization is present in some varieties of General American, and especially in eastern New England, New York City, and Southern American, whereby /ɔɹ̣/ may shift to /ɑɹ̣/, when the vowel and the following /ɹ̣/ are not tautosyllabic. In words such as foreign, moral, forest, and horrible, the vowel shown with the orthographic o may be pronounced as /ɑ/, thus giving us [fɑɹ̣ən], [mɑɹ̣əl], [fɑɹ̣əst], and [hɑɹ̣əbl̩]. Note that this shift is not possible if the vowel is in the same syllable as the following /ɹ̣/, as exemplified in score, shore, organized, and storm. The following example, observed in its multiple occurrences with several speakers, makes the point succinctly. The word forehead may be heard as [fɔɹ̣hεd] or [fɑɹ̣əd]; in the first rendition, [ɹ̣] is the coda of the first syllable (tautosyllabic with the preceding vowel), and thus is not lowered to [ɑ] (not [fɑɹ̣hεd]). However, the second rendition, which has the lower vowel, [ɑ], necessarily puts the [ɹ̣] in the onset position of the second syllable.