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Vowels have 2 main characteristics: length and quality. Quality is the distinctive feature of a vowel.
It components: 1. Stability of articulation (monophthongs, diphthongs, triphthongs, diphthongized vowels); 2. The position of the tongue (horizontal and vertical movement of the tongue, lip rounding).
Other components are: lip position, tenseness, checkness.
They are considered non-distinctive as they have no phonological value. Vowel length also a non-distinctive feature. It is dependent on the phonetic context, in the particular on the following consonant. It is the so-called "positional length". Vowels are the longest in the open syllable, slightly shorter before a sonorant or a voiced consonant and they are the shortest before the voiceless consonant: be [i:] - the longest; beed [i:d] - a bit shorter; beat [i:t] - much shorter.