Abstract
The vowels that occur in the different vowel harmony sets in Akan have been investigated by cineradiography. Four subjects repeated three or four times sentences containing the two sets of four vowels. Analyses of the vocal tract shapes shows that one set of vowels has both an advanced tongue root, and a lowered larynx. The analyses also show that the advancement of the tongue root is independent of the raising of the tongue body. The feature Expanded is proposed to account for the difference between the two sets of vowels. It is shown that this feature is not appropriate for distinguishing between so-called tense and lax vowels in English, but it may be applied to emphatic-nonemphatic differences in Arabic.
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