(9) American English is relatively similar to British English; however, it has its own distinctive features in comparison to RP: a higher larynx position, narrower pharynx (tongue root being more retracted), retroflex gesture with the tongue tip, a slightly more open jaw, spread lips, and a lowered velum causing a high degree of coarticulatory nasalization.
The picture was enriched with attention cueing when the speech organs had one of following features: (1) different shapes of lips when producing bilabials, bilabial fricatives, labiodental-fricatives, or stops; (2) nasalization; (3) voiced sounds; and (4) the tongue in dental, alveolar, postalveolar, palatal, velar, or uvular positions.
As Kingston writes, "languages have the oral, nasal, and reduced vowels they do because vowels must be dispersed perceptually in the vowel space, certain vowel qualities are more salient than others, and a long vowel duration makes it possible for a listener to hear nasalization while a short duration prevents the speaker from reaching a low target." Phonetic factors will form a part of any eventual complete explanation of the specific contents of the phoneme segment inventories of human languages (Kingston, 407).
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