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Though
all the vowels are voiced, voicing is not a relevant feature with
the vowels in Sema. Lip rounding is also not a relevant feature,
rather it is a redundant feature with all back vowels, i.e., while
the back vowels are rounded, the front and the central vowels are
ungrounded. However, at the phonetic level, Sema has back unrounded
vowels at close and half-open positions. All vowels in Sema are
oral ones, i.e., in the production of these vowels, the velic closure
is present. In addition to the simple vowels mentioned above, Sema
has a few falling dipthongs (complex nuclei), i.e., the second element
of these complex nuclei are Monosyllabic vowels. Incidentally, in
Sema, only close nonsyllabic vowels occur in this position. Depending
upon whether a back rounded form or a front unrounded form occurs
as the second element of a complex nucleus, the second nuclei in
Sema can be sub-grouped into two, viz., (i) those having a close
back rounded non-syllabic vowel as the second element and (ii) those
having a close front unbounded non-syllabic vowel as the second
element. Of the complex nuclei in Sema, only the ones having /a/as
the first element (nucleus) occur in all positions. The complex
nuclei having other vowels, viz.,/e, o, u,/as the nucleus occur
only in war-final positions. These complex nuclei are, however,
phonemic zed as a sequence of the concerned vowel, plus the corresponding
approximant, for instance (a*) as/aw/ and [a*] as/ay/ etc. The front
and back close vowels do not have any perceptible positional variants.
The half-close vowels, viz., /e, o/ have a slightly more open ones
as their positional variants, /o/ occurring after a fricative has
a slightly more open variety as a positional variant. The six simple
vowels mentioned above are capable of showing three-way opposition
in tone. These are, falling, raising and level
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