Visual Components of
The Cued Speech System
Hand Placements
Vowel Features of American
English |
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 When we speak naturally, we don't
produce individual sounds but whole strings of sounds, which
form words (Language
Files, p. 80). |
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The Cued Speech system includes four (4) Hand Placements
as part of the visual presentation of the vowel
(V) features (phonemes)
of American English.
- A phoneme that looks the same
on the mouth, has a different Hand Placement.
- A phoneme that looks different
on the mouth, has the same Hand Placement.
- A vowel without a consonant (_V) is cued with Handshape 5.
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The letters underlined in the words below indicate the
phonemic information visually conveyed by each of the
four hand placements. The Mouth Shape visually discriminates
between different phonemes with the same Hand Placement. |
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Although Dr. Cornett, the inventor of Cued Speech
(1966), defined three (3) mouth shapes distinguishing
different vowel "sounds" of
spoken English (see Visual Components
of the Cued Speech System). He did not include mouth shapes
for consonant features in
his system. Fleetwood and Metzger (1998) have identified seven
(7) consonant "mouth shapes" as well as other
non-manual signals inherent to cued American English. |
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