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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.
One use of the word semivowel, sometimes called a glide, is a type of approximant, pronounced like a vowel but with the tongue closer to the roof of the mouth, so that there is slight turbulence. [ citation needed ] In English, /w/ is the semivowel equivalent of the vowel /u/ , and /j/ (spelled "y") is the semivowel equivalent of the vowel /i ...
American English pronunciation of "no highway cowboys" /noʊ ˈhaɪweɪ ˈkaʊbɔɪz/, showing five diphthongs: / oʊ, aɪ, eɪ, aʊ, ɔɪ / A diphthong (/ ˈ d ɪ f θ ɒ ŋ, ˈ d ɪ p-/ DIF-thong, DIP-; [1] from Ancient Greek δίφθογγος (díphthongos) 'two sounds', from δίς (dís) 'twice' and φθόγγος (phthóngos) 'sound'), also known as a gliding vowel or a vowel glide, is ...
Smoothing is a monophthongization of a closing diphthong (most commonly /eɪ, aɪ, ɔɪ, əʊ, aʊ/) before a vowel that can occur in Received Pronunciation and other accents of English. (Some have called this "levelling", but this is rarely used because it may be confused with dialect levelling.)
In the sonority hierarchy, liquids are considered the most sonorous sounds after vowels and glides, [4] with laterals considered to be less sonorous than rhotics. [5] This explains why they are more likely to be part of consonant clusters than other consonants (excluding glides), and to follow obstruents in initial consonant clusters and precede them in final consonant clusters.
Some approximants resemble vowels in acoustic and articulatory properties and the terms semivowel and glide are often used for these non-syllabic vowel-like segments. The correlation between semivowels and vowels is strong enough that cross-language differences between semivowels correspond with the differences between their related vowels.
There are two complementary definitions of vowel, one phonetic and the other phonological.. In the phonetic definition, a vowel is a sound, such as the English "ah" / ɑː / or "oh" / oʊ /, produced with an open vocal tract; it is median (the air escapes along the middle of the tongue), oral (at least some of the airflow must escape through the mouth), frictionless and continuant. [4]
The glides in the examples can be analyzed as the result of a glide formation process that turns an underlying high vowel into a glide when followed by another vowel: /nie/ → [nje]. This process is usually blocked after a complex onset of the form obstruent + liquid (a stop or a fricative followed by /l/ or /ʁ/ ).