Kuipers (1960) proposed that Kabardian is contrastively vowel‐less, a hypothesis that has occasioned much controversy ever since, problematical as it is for suggested principles governing phonological systems. This proposal is reconsidered within the context of the suggestions concerning phonological notation put forward within Dependency Phonology. In terms of a framework which recognises that certain segments may be contrastively unspecified and that much else of phonological structure is non‐contrastive, it is concluded that Kuipers' hypothesis has some plausibility; and a formulation of the generalisations governing the distribution and character of vowel variants in Kabardian is offered, on the basis of the contrastive absence of vow