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Are semivowels phonemically equivalent with vowels?
What is a semivowel in phonology?
What is the difference between a glide and a semivowel?
Are semi-vowels syllabic nuclei?
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.
The behavior with semi-vowels has to do with their level of sonority. Typically, a vowel is the peak of sonority in a syllable. Semi-vowels are vowels which are not the peak of sonority because they precede and/or are followed by a more sonorous (open) vowel.
- You listed: [j] which is a palatal approximant, seen in words like you [ju:] (English); [w] which is a labio-velar approximant, seen in words lik...
- This ties into how one marks up diphthongs and polyphthongs.
- Wikipedia: Semivowel has a useful list, which adds some more details to Alennano's answer. In addition to j, ɥ, ɰ, w, it says that some authors lis...
Apr 16, 2017 · However, when it comes to how [w] and [y] function in syllables, they are not much like vowels. Vowels can be what are called syllable nuclei: the 'loud, long' part of a syllable. Consonants, on the other hand, function syllable borders. [w] and [y] are syllable borders in words like 'yes' and 'was.'
Nov 28, 2020 · The difference between vowels and glides and semivowels lies in the structure of the syllable. Vowels occur at the peak of the syllable--the most sonorous part of the syllable. Glides immediately precede a vowel; they are less sonorous than the vowel they precede.
- No. In the vast majority of contexts, glide and semivowel are synonymous. See e.g. Ladefoged & Johnson (2015: 191), Rogers (2000: 184), Ball & Rahi...
- The term "glide" is used to include [h,ʔ], but the laryngeal glides would not be called semivowels. If you consult the IPA chart, you will see that...
Jul 1, 2019 · Those sounds have no friction and no complete closure, so wouldn't they be vowels? Another definition is that vowels form syllable nuclei, while consonants don't. (More often this is called "syllabic" versus "non-syllabic" for clarity.)
1 day ago · A semivowel is a vowel so brief it doesn’t add an extra syllable to a word and in effect functions as a consonant. In radio, the i in io is so short the sound ends up ‘yo’. Each semivowel is half the length of the full vowel (i, u) and teams up with another vowel to get the approximate sounds of English letters y and w:
A speech sound articulated like a vowel but functioning like a consonant because it is non-syllabic. In English, there are two semivowels, both of which are approximants, namely the initial phonemes in the words wet and yet.
