The purpose of present paper is to analyze vowel shortening in English by a noncyclic approach. Vowel shortening in English has been a good proofing evidence for a cyclic approach to English phonology with word stress analysis. We start by reviewing in section 2 three recent proposals regarding vowel shortening in English that makes reference to the prosodic categories syllable and/or foot. Then we present in section 3 three arguments given by Kiparsky in favor of the cyclicity of vowel shortening processes in English. Finally, we point out a number of problems with a cyclic analysis of vowel shortening. It is argued that these problems can be solved in a noncyclic analysis of vowel shortening.