Lowered (phonetics)

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In phonetics, a lowered sound is articulated with the tongue or lip lowered (the mouth more open) than some reference point. In the International Phonetic Alphabet this is indicated with the downtack diacritic [ ̞].

[edit] Lowered vowels

In the case of a vowel, lowering means that the vowel is more open. For example, [e̞] represents a vowel somewhere between cardinal [e] and [ɛ], or may even be [ɛ]. Austrian German has a rounded version of the near-open front unrounded vowel [æ], which can be transcribed as [œ̞].

[edit] Lowered consonants

With consonants, lowering changes the manner of articulation. For example, lowered fricatives are approximants. The ambiguous symbols for rear approximants/fricatives can be specified as approximants with the lowering diacritic, as in [ʁ̞, ʕ̞, ʢ̞]. In Spanish, the "weak" allophones of the voiced stops are often transcribed as fricatives even though they are approximants, at least partially because there is a dedicated symbol for only one of the latter (the velar approximant). The fricative symbols are more accurately used with the lowering diacritic, [β̞, ð̞, ɣ̞].

From most open (least stricture) to most close (most stricture), there are several independent relationships among speech sounds. Open vowel > mid vowel > close vowel > approximant > fricative > plosive is one; flap > stop is another; and trill > (trilled) fricative yet another. Nasals and laterals have their own series. It would be convenient if all consonants could be so ordered in the IPA chart, so that the lowering diacritic could be seen moving a symbol toward the bottom of the consonant chart, as it does for the vowels, but consonants are too diverse for a simple chart to capture all their relationships.