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Inphonology,tenseness ortensing is, most generally, thepronunciation of a sound with greater muscular effort or constriction than is typical.[1] More specifically, tenseness is the pronunciation of avowel with lesscentralization (i.e. either morefronting or morebacking), longerduration, and narrower mouth width (with the tongue being perhaps moreraised) compared with another vowel.[2] The opposite quality to tenseness is known aslaxness orlaxing: the pronunciation of a vowel with relatively more centralization, shorter duration, and more widening (perhaps even lowering).
Contrasts between two vowels on the basis of tenseness, and evenphonemic contrasts, are common in many languages, includingEnglish. For example, in most English dialects,beet andbit are contrasted by the vowel sound being tense in the first word but not the second; i.e.,/iː/ (as inbeet) is the tense counterpart to the lax/ɪ/ (as inbit); the same is true of/uː/ (as inkook) versus/ʊ/ (as incook). Unlike mostdistinctive features, the feature [tense] can be interpreted only relatively, often with a perception of greater tension or pressure in the mouth, which, in a language such as English, contrasts between two corresponding vowel types: atense vowel and alax vowel. An example inVietnamese is the lettersă andâ representing lax vowels, and the lettersa andơ representing the corresponding tense vowels. Some languages likeSpanish are often considered as having only tense vowels, but since the quality of tenseness is not a phonemic feature in this language, it cannot be applied to describe its vowels in any meaningful way. The term has also occasionally been used to describe contrasts inconsonants.
In general, tense vowels are more close (and correspondingly have lower firstformants) than their lax counterparts. Tense vowels are sometimes claimed to be articulated with a moreadvanced tongue root than lax vowels, but this varies, and in some languages, it is the lax vowels that are more advanced, or a single language may be inconsistent between front and back or high and mid vowels.[3] The traditional definition, that tense vowels are produced with more "muscular tension" than lax vowels, has not been confirmed by phonetic experiments. Another hypothesis is that lax vowels are more centralized than tense vowels. There are also linguists[4] who believe that there is no phonetic correlation to the tense–lax opposition.
In manyGermanic languages, such asRP English, andStandard German tense vowels are longer in duration than lax vowels, but inScots,Scottish English,General American English, andIcelandic, there is no such correlation. The standard variety ofYiddish lacks a vowel length distinction entirely.[5]
Germanic languages prefer tense vowels in open syllables (so-calledfree vowels) and lax vowels in closed syllables (so-calledchecked vowels).
Occasionally, tenseness has been used to distinguish pairs of contrasting consonants in languages.Korean, for example, has athree-way contrast among stops and affricates; the three series are often transcribed as[pttɕk] -[pʰtʰtɕʰkʰ] -[p͈t͈t͈ɕk͈]. The contrast between the[p] series and the[p͈] series is sometimes said to be a function of tenseness: the former are lax and the latter tense. In this case the definition of "tense" would have to include greaterglottal tension.
InEwe,/f/ and/v/ are articulated with a strong articulation,[f͈] and[v͈], to better distinguish them from weaker/ɸ/ and/β/.
In some dialects ofIrish andScottish Gaelic, there is a contrast between[l,lʲ,n,nʲ] and[ɫˑ,ʎˑ,nˠˑ,ɲˑ]. Again, the former set have sometimes been described as lax and the latter set as tense. It is not clear what phonetic characteristics other than greater duration would then be associated with tenseness.
Some researchers[6] have argued that the contrast inGerman, traditionally described asvoice ([ptk] vs.[bdɡ]), is in fact better analyzed as tenseness since the latter set is voiceless in Southern German. German linguists call the distinctionfortis and lenis rather than tense and lax. Tenseness is especially used to explainstop consonants of theAlemannic German dialects because they have two series of them that are identically voiceless and unaspirated. However, it is debated whether the distinction is really a result of different muscular tension and not ofgemination.
