briefly before moving to the next target. Such a vowel is described as tense. If the vowel is too short, the organs have to leave the target as soon as they reach it, and in extreme cases (e.g. in six /sIks/) may not reach the target at all. Such a vowel is described as lax (Knowles, 1992, pp. 1097-8).
Some authorities use terms such as tense and lax to describe the degree of tension in the tongue muscles, particularly those muscles responsible for the bunching up of the tongue lengthways. Other authorities use the term tense to specify a greater degree of muscular activity, resulting in greater deformation of the tongue from its neutral position. Tense vowels are longer than the corresponding lax vowels. The vowels in heed and hayed are tense, whereas those in hid and head are lax (Encyclopµdia Britannica, Vol. 14, p. 278).
Chomsky and Halle's notion of tense and lax vowels
The tense-lax contrast is viewed as particularly important in distinctive feature theories of phonology, where tense is one of the main features set up to handle variations in manner of articulation. Tense sounds have been defined both articu
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