Frontness (definition)

Frontness is a binary feature that describes sounds wherein the tongue body is pushed towards the hard palate. The feature is commonly used to describe vowels and contrasts with backness to create natural classes of vocalic segments. In English front vowels include /i/ (as in beet), /ɪ/ (as in bit), /e/ (as in bait), /ɛ/ (as in bed), and /æ/ (as in bad).

See Also

• Vowel (definition)
• Backness (definition)

External Links

The link below takes you away from the Gaelic Wiki to Wikipedia. Since wikipedia pages can be edited by anyone, they often contain inaccurate information. So be careful!

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Front_vowel

References

• Ladefoged, D. (2010) A Course in Phonetics. 6th Edition. Wadsworth Publishing.