[covered]

Counterpart

[noncovered]

Feature System

Definition

The feature [covered] refers to vowels produced with narrowed and tensed pharyngeal walls and a raised larynx, which are both marked and often result in a dull vocal quality. This feature is primarily present in West African languages that exhibit vowel harmony with some exceptions.

Purpose

This feature helps to distinguish vowels produced with marked narrowing and tension in the pharynx and raising of the larynx during articulation, while [noncovered] sounds are produced with no such narrowing, tensing, or raising.

Swedish front vowels [y] and [ʉ] differ only in coveredness as both are close front unrounded vowels (Chomsky & Halle 1968: 315, citing Fant 1959), e.g. syl /syːl/ ‘awl’ vs. fyl /fʉ̟l/ ‘ugly’ (Engstrand 1999). (Fant 1983 uses the feature [extra flat] for [ʉ]).

History

Chomsky & Halle (1968: 314-315) use the term covered because they “venture to suggest” that the phonetic differences scattered through the literature correspond to that of open vs. covered singing (Hertegård, Gauffin, & Sundberg (1990)).

This opposition was historically categorized as “brightness” (Sapir 1931), “heightening” (Welmers 1946), and, perhaps more accurately, “tenseness” (Ladefoged 1964:3 8). Ladefoged’s x-ray imaging shows that minimal pairs in which only one vowel exhibits traits that we now consider to be [+covered], not only is the pharynx tensened, as originally suggested, but the pharynx also rises.

Since SPE, scholars used [covered] to indicate pharyngealized vocoids and contoids whilst contrasting pharyngeal fricatives from other segments. Jakobson & Waugh (1979) claimed that this distinction is not necessary. While some languages do have phones that are either [+covered] or [-covered], evidence that there exists a minimal pair or that this distinction cannot be demonstrated through other distinctive features is sparse. Modern accounts do not generally include this feature, which has been split into others. Covered generally corresponds to [-ATR] (Advanced Tongue Root) (Casali 2008), or [+RTR] (van der Hulst & van de Weijer 1995). The phonetic description of narrowed and tensed laryngeal walls led to the feature [constricted pharynx] (Lindau 1978).

References

Brakel, Arthur. 1988. Phonological markedness and distinctive features. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Open Indiana edition.

Casali, Roderic F. ATR in ATR harmony in African languages. Language and Linguistics Compass 2:3. 496-549. doi/10.1111/j.1749-818X.2008.00064

Chomsky, Noam; and Morris Halle. 1968. The sound pattern of English. New York: Harper and Row.

Engstrand, Olle. 1999. Swedish. Handbook of the International Phonetic Association, 140-142. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Fant, G. 1959. The acoustics of speech. Proceedings of the Third International Congress on Acoustics, Stuttgart, 1959, L. Cremer (ed.), 188-201. Amsterdam: Elsevier.

Hertegård, Stellan, Jan Gauffin, & Johan Sundberg. 1990. Open and covered singing as studied by means of fiberoptics, inverse filtering, and spectral analysis. Journal of Voice 4:3. 220-230. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0892-1997(05)80017-7

Van der Hulst, Harry and Jeroen Van de Weijer. 1995. Vowel harmony. The handbook of phonological theory, ed. by John A. Goldsmith, 495–534. Oxford, UK: Basil Blackwell.

Jakobson, Roman; and Linda R. Waugh. 1979. The sound shape of language. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Ladefoged, Peter. 1964. A phonetic study of West African languages. (West African Language Monographs, 1). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Lindau, Mona. 1978. Vowel features. Language 54.541-563.

Sapir, Edward. 1931. Notes on the Gweabo language of Liberia. Language 7:1. 30-41. https://doi.org/10.2307/409665

Welmers, W.E. 1946. A descriptive grammar of Fanti. Language Dissertation 39, Supplement to Language 22:3. doi/10.2307/522262

Author

Allon Boettcher