Concept

Semivowel

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. Examples of semivowels in English are the consonants y and w, in yes and west, respectively. Written j_w in IPA, y and w are near to the vowels ee and oo in seen and moon, written i:_u: in IPA. The term glide may alternatively refer to any type of transitional sound, not necessarily a semivowel. Semivowels form a subclass of approximants. Although "semivowel" and "approximant" are sometimes treated as synonymous, most authors use the term "semivowel" for a more restricted set; there is no universally agreed-upon definition, and the exact details may vary from author to author. For example, do not consider the labiodental approximant [ʋ] to be a semivowel, while proposes that it should be considered one. In the International Phonetic Alphabet, the diacritic attached to non-syllabic vowel letters is an inverted breve placed below the symbol representing the vowel: . When there is no room for the tack under a symbol, it may be written above, using . Before 1989, non-syllabicity was represented by , which now stands for extra-shortness. Additionally, there are dedicated symbols for four semivowels that correspond to the four close cardinal vowel sounds: The pharyngeal approximant [ʕ̞] is also equivalent to the semivowel articulation of the open back unrounded vowel [ɑ]. In addition, some authors 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. An unrounded central semivowel, [j̈] (or [j˗]), equivalent to [ɨ], is uncommon, though rounded [ẅ] (or [w̟]), equivalent to [ʉ], is found in Swedish and Norwegian. Semivowels, by definition, contrast with vowels by being non-syllabic. In addition, they are usually shorter than vowels.

About this result
This page is automatically generated and may contain information that is not correct, complete, up-to-date, or relevant to your search query. The same applies to every other page on this website. Please make sure to verify the information with EPFL's official sources.

Graph Chatbot

Chat with Graph Search

Ask any question about EPFL courses, lectures, exercises, research, news, etc. or try the example questions below.

DISCLAIMER: The Graph Chatbot is not programmed to provide explicit or categorical answers to your questions. Rather, it transforms your questions into API requests that are distributed across the various IT services officially administered by EPFL. Its purpose is solely to collect and recommend relevant references to content that you can explore to help you answer your questions.