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In phonetics and phonology, a semivowel, glide or semiconsonant is a sound that is phonetically similar to a vowel sound but functions as the syllable boundary, rather than as the nucleus of a syllable. [1] Examples of semivowels in English are y and w in yes and west, respectively.
[ʝ̞] and [j] are two different segments, but they have to be labelled as voiced palatal approximant consonants. I think that the former is a real consonant, whereas the latter is a semi-consonant, as it has traditionally been called in Spanish, or a semi-vowel, if preferred. The IPA, though, classifies it as a consonant."
In broad transcription, the symbol for the palatal approximant, j , may be used for the sake of simplicity. The voiced palatal fricative is a very rare sound, occurring in only 7 of the 317 languages surveyed by the original UCLA Phonological Segment Inventory Database [ citation needed ] .
However, the compression of the lips can be shown with the letter β̞ as j͡β̞ (simultaneous [j] and labial compression) or jᵝ ([j] modified with labial compression). The spread-lip diacritic ͍ may also be used with a labialized approximant letter ɥ͍ as an ad hoc symbol, though technically 'spread' means unrounded.
It is not often clear, however, whether such sequences involve a semivowel (a consonant) or a diphthong (a vowel), and in many cases, it may not be a meaningful distinction. Although many languages have central vowels [ɨ, ʉ] , which lie between back/velar [ɯ, u] and front/palatal [i, y] , there are few cases of a corresponding approximant ...
The most common type of palatal consonant is the extremely common approximant [j], which ranks among the ten most common sounds in the world's languages. [1] The nasal [ɲ] is also common, occurring in around 35 percent of the world's languages, [2] in most of which its equivalent obstruent is not the stop [c], but the affricate [].
Before a vowel, approximant /j, w/, or voiceless fricative [ɸ, s, ɕ, ç, h], it is a nasalized vowel or moraic semivowel that can be broadly transcribed as [ɰ̃] (its specific quality depends on the surrounding sounds). [62]
Ball & Rahilly too criticise in a footnote the confusion between these symbols: 'The difference between an approximant version of the voiced velar fricative [ɣ], and the velar semi-vowel [ɰ] is that the latter requires spread lips, and must have a slightly more open articulatory channel so that it becomes if prolonged' (p. 189, fn. 1).