- Semivowel
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Manners of articulation Obstruent Plosive (occlusive) Affricate Fricative Sibilant Sonorant Nasal Flap/Tap Approximant Liquid Vowel Semivowel Lateral Trill Airstreams Pulmonic Ejective Implosive Click Alliteration Assonance Consonance See also: Place of articulation This page contains phonetic information in IPA, which may not display correctly in some browsers. [Help] In phonetics and phonology, a semivowel (or glide) is a sound, such as English /w/ or /j/ ("y"), that is phonetically similar to a vowel sound but functions as the syllable boundary rather than as the nucleus of a syllable.[1]
Contents
Classification
Semivowels form a subclass of approximants.[2][3] Although "semivowel" and "approximant" are sometimes treated as synonymous,[4] most authors agree that not all approximants are semivowels, although the exact details may vary from author to author. For example, Ladefoged & Maddieson (1996) don't consider the labiodental approximant [ʋ] to be a semivowel,[5] while Martínez-Celdrán (:2004) proposes that it should be considered one.[6]
In the International Phonetic Alphabet, the diacritic attached to non-syllabic vowels is [ ̯ ] (U+032F ̯ combining inverted breve below)[7]. Additionally, there is "the established classification" and separate symbols for four semivowels that correspond to the four close cardinal vowel sounds:[3]
Semivowel
(approximant consonant)Element of diphthong
(non-syllabic)Monophthong (syllabic) [j] (palatal approximant) [i̯] [i] (close front unrounded vowel) [ɥ] (labio-palatal approximant) [y̯] [y] (close front rounded vowel) [ɰ] (velar approximant) [ɯ̯] [ɯ] (close back unrounded vowel) [w] (labiovelar approximant) [u̯] [u] (close back rounded vowel) In addition, some authors[5][6] consider the rhotic approximants [ɹ], [ɻ] to be semivowels corresponding to R-colored vowels such as [ɚ]. As mentioned above, the labiodental approximant [ʋ] is considered a semivowel in some treatments, but not others. Central semivowels, such as Korean [ȷ̈], are uncommon.
Contrast with vowels
Semivowels, by definition, contrast with vowels by being non-syllabic. In addition, they are usually shorter than vowels.[2] In languages as diverse as Amharic, Yoruba, and Zuni, semivowels are produced with a narrower constriction in the vocal tract than their corresponding vowels.[5] Nevertheless, semivowels may be phonemically equivalent with vowels. For example, the English word fly can be considered either as an open syllable ending in a diphthong /flai̯/, or as a closed syllable ending in a consonant /flaj/.[8]
It is unusual for a language to contrast a semivowel and a diphthong containing an equivalent vowel,[citation needed] however, Romanian contrasts the diphthong /e̯a/ with /ja/, a perceptually similar approximant–vowel sequence. The diphthong is analyzed as a single segment while the approximant–vowel sequence is analysed as two separate segments. In addition to phonological justifications for the distinction (such as the diphthong alternating with /e/ in singular–plural pairs), there are phonetic differences between the pair:[9]
- /ja/ has a greater duration than /e̯a/
- The transition between the two elements is longer and faster for /ja/ than /e̯a/ with the former having a higher F2 onset (i.e. greater constriction of the articulators).
Although a phonological parallel exists between /o̯a/ and /wa/, the production and perception of phonetic contrasts between the two is much weaker, likely due to a lower lexical load for /wa/ (which is limited largely to loanwords from French) and a difficulty in maintaining contrasts between two back rounded glides in comparison to front ones.[10]
Contrast with fricatives/spirant approximants
According to the standard definitions, semivowels (such as [j]) contrast with fricatives (such as [ʝ]) in that fricatives produce turbulence, while semivowels do not. In discussing Spanish, Martínez-Celdrán suggests setting up a third category of "spirant approximant", contrasting both with semivowel approximants and with fricatives.[11] Though the spirant approximant is more constricted (having a lower F2 amplitude), longer, and unspecified for rounding (e.g. viuda [ˈbjuða] 'widow' vs ayuda [aˈʝʷuða] 'help'),[12] the distributional overlap is limited. The spirant approximant can only appear in the syllable onset (including word-initially, where the semivowel never appears). The two overlap in distribution after /l/ and /n/: enyesar [ẽ̞ɲɟʝe̞ˈsaɾ] ('to plaster') aniego [ãnje̞ɣo̞] ('flood')[13] and, although there is dialectal and ideolectal variation, speakers may also exhibit other near-minimal pairs like abyecto ('abject') vs abierto ('opened').[14] One potential minimal pair (depending on dialect) is ya visto [(ɟ)ʝaˈβisto̞] ('I have already seen') vs y ha visto [jaˈβisto̞] ('and he has seen').[15] Again, this is not present in all dialects. Other dialects differ in either merging the two or in enhancing the contrast by moving the former to another place of articulation (e.g. [ʒ]).
See also
References
- ^ Ladefoged & Maddieson (1996:322)
- ^ a b Crystal (2003:413)
- ^ a b Martínez-Celdrán (2004:9)
- ^ Meyer (2005:101)
- ^ a b c Ladefoged (Maddieson:323)
- ^ a b Martínez-Celdrán (2004:8)
- ^ The International Phonetic Alphabet in Unicode, UCL Division of Psychology & Language Sciences, http://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/wells/ipa-unicode.htm
- ^ Cohen (1971:51)
- ^ Chitoran (2002:212–214)
- ^ Chitoran (2002:221)
- ^ Martínez-Celdrán (2004:6)
- ^ Martínez-Celdrán (2004:208)
- ^ Trager (1942:222)
- ^ Saporta (1956:288)
- ^ Bowen & Stockwell (1955:236)
Bibliography
- Bowen, J. Donald; Stockwell, Robert P. (1955), "The Phonemic Interpretation of Semivowels in Spanish", Language (Linguistic Society of America) 31 (2): 236–240, doi:10.2307/411039, JSTOR 411039
- Chitoran, Ioana (2002), "A perception-production study of Romanian diphthongs and glide-vowel sequences", Journal of the International Phonetic Association 32 (2): 203–222, doi:10.1017/S0025100302001044
- Crystal, David (2003), A dictionary of linguistics & phonetics (fifth ed.), Wiley-Blackwell, ISBN 0631226648, http://books.google.com/books?id=bSxjt1irqh4C&dq
- Cohen, Antonie (1971), The phonemes of English: a phonemic study of the vowels and consonants of standard English (third ed.), Springer, ISBN 9024706394, http://books.google.com/books?id=0x-9bpGEPbAC
- Ladefoged, Peter; Maddieson, Ian (1996). The Sounds of the World's Languages. Oxford: Blackwell. ISBN 0-631-19814-8.
- Martínez-Celdrán, Eugenio (2004), "Problems in the Classification of Approximants", Journal of the International Phonetic Association 34 (2): 201–210, doi:10.1017/S0025100304001732, http://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:2fr2LMKFsqUJ:www.ub.edu/labfon/Approximants-2.pdf+%22%22Problems+in+the+Classification+of+Approximants%22&hl=en&gl=us&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEESibzuU6YMcCsi9-uBKTbBha93gQpQPyKpbuAyzfHgg0mAxVcsNxvKBzMVoFwiKsS4l0TotK5_lQiZeXmuUhytTftY26rTwjHM1xgoydjcda5cqvTFiEpbAXrEoRtE8egCYotioE&sig=AHIEtbQdk4V0uyuQ4a-fzj-Ra3KOlm2fhA
- Meyer, Paul Georg (2005), Synchronic English Linguistics: An Introduction (third ed.), Tübingen: Gunter Narr Verlag, ISBN 3823361910, http://books.google.com/books?id=I2hXL8WClNUC
- Saporta, Sol (1956), "A Note on Spanish Semivowels", Language (Linguistic Society of America) 32 (2): 287–290, doi:10.2307/411006, JSTOR 411006
- Trager, George (1942), "The Phonemic Treatment of Semivowels", Language (Linguistic Society of America) 18 (3): 220–223, doi:10.2307/409556, JSTOR 409556
Further reading
- Ohala, John; Lorentz, James, "The story of [w]: An exercise in the phonetic explanation for sound patterns", in Whistler, Kenneth; Chiarelloet; van Vahn, Robert Jr., Proceedings of the 3rd Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society, Berkeley: Berkeley Linguistic Society, pp. 577–599
Categories:- Vowels
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