{"id":585,"date":"2026-06-15T15:05:04","date_gmt":"2026-06-15T19:05:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/atomsofsound.org\/?p=585"},"modified":"2026-06-15T15:05:04","modified_gmt":"2026-06-15T19:05:04","slug":"stress-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/atomsofsound.org\/?p=585","title":{"rendered":"round"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

[round]<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
\n
\n

Counterpart<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

[-round]<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

\n

Feature System<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

SPE <\/em>Features<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

Definition<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Chomsky & Halle (1968) define [rounded] sounds as vowels being \u201cproduced with a narrowing of the lip orifice,\u201d (Chomsky & Halle 1968:309). These sounds are often, but not obligatorily, associated with the feature [back<\/a>]. The correlated designation for consonants is labialization<\/em> (Chomsky & Halle 1968:309). See [labial<\/strong>].<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Purpose<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The feature [rounded] is used in SPE<\/em> to distinguish front unrounded and rounded vowels; e.g., Turkish \/i\/ from \/\u00fc\/ (IPA \/y\/). In Hyman\u2019s analysis of dialect B of Igbo, \/b\u00e8\/ \u2018cut\u2019 is reduplicated in dialect A with \/i\/: [\u00f2b\u00ec<\/strong>b\u00e8], but between labial consonants as [\u00f2b\u00f9<\/strong>b\u00e8] \u2018cutting\u2019 (1975:53).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

History<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Although [round] now possesses an articulatory basis, its idea was introduced in Preliminaries<\/em> in 1952 via the opposition [flat<\/strong>]\/[plain<\/strong>]. Jakobson, Fant, and Halle described this opposition acoustically, saying the \u201cflattening manifests itself by a downward shift of a set of formants or even all of the formants in the spectrum,\u201d (Jakobson et al., 1952:31). Although articulation and production are not what Jakobson and his colleagues use to define [flat]\/[plain], they note that [flat] phonemes are generally produced by a \u201creduction of the lip orifice (rounding) with a concomitant increase in the length of the lip constriction,\u201d (Jakobson et al., 1952:31). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The feature [round] was introduced as an articulatory feature by Chomsky & Halle in SPE<\/em> as a cavity feature, alongside [coronal<\/a>], [anterior<\/a>], [high<\/a>], [low<\/strong>], [back<\/a>], [distributed<\/strong>], [covered<\/a>], glottal constrictions<\/strong>, [nasal<\/a>], and [lateral<\/strong>]. Roundness has been used regularly since its introduction and is a productive descriptor for vowels.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Later on, the feature [labial<\/strong>] became used as a way of capturing the interaction between labialized consonants and rounded vowels. Hyman discusses the feature specification [+labial] as being a \u201c\u2018cover feature\u2019 for labial and labialized consonants as well as rounded vowels\u201d (Hyman 1975:53-54). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

References<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Chomsky, Noam, and Morris Halle. 1968. The sound pattern of English<\/em>. New York: Harper and Row.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hyman, Larry. 1975. Phonology: Theory and analysis<\/em>. Fort Worth, TX: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jakobson, Roman; Gunnar Fant; and Morris Halle. 1952. Preliminaries to speech analysis: The distinctive features and their correlates.<\/em> (MIT Acoustic Laboratory Technical Report 13). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Further Reading<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Clements, G.N.; and Elizabeth Hume. 1995. The internal organization of speech sounds. The handbook of phonological theory<\/em>, ed. by John Goldsmith, 245-306. Malden, MA: Blackwell. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Keating, Patricia. 1987. A survey of phonological features. UCLA Working Papers in Phonetics<\/em> 66.124-150. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Odden, David. 1991. Vowel geometry. Phonology<\/em> 8.261-289.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Author<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Ainsley Graf<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[round] Counterpart [-round] Feature System SPE Features Definition Chomsky & Halle (1968) define [rounded] sounds as vowels being \u201cproduced with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"disabled","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"disabled","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-585","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/atomsofsound.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/585","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/atomsofsound.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/atomsofsound.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atomsofsound.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atomsofsound.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=585"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/atomsofsound.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/585\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":586,"href":"https:\/\/atomsofsound.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/585\/revisions\/586"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/atomsofsound.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=585"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atomsofsound.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=585"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atomsofsound.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=585"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}