Re: Difference between semivowel and consonant

In article <1166117173.004610.247770@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
"ranjit_mathews@xxxxxxxxx" <ranjit_mathews@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Nathan Sanders wrote:

I don't think I quite understand your post. In the IPA, [y] is a
vowel (front, high, round, the sound generally spelled in French with
<u>

Sorry; by [y], I meant IPA's (laterally and vertically) inverted h
grapheme semivowel, not IPA's [y] vowel. Looking it up, I find that it
is [j<rnd>] in ASCII IPA but I'll continue calling the semivowel [y]
for brevity.

Ah, ok.

What difference are you trying to convey between [y] and [j]?

[j], being a palatal/ alveolopalatal consonant (approximant) must have
the tongue assume a certain position relative to the palate or
"pre-palate" (the roof of the mouth to the front of the alveolar
ridge). [y], being an asyllabic vowel, has additional constraints. In
addition to the tongue assuming the same position as for [j], the lips
must be rounded. Ignoring the possibility that an approximant might
have a more constricted gap for airflow than a semivowel:

But [j] does impose additional constraints. It is unrounded/spread.
If you round your lips, it becomes a different sound (IPA turned [h],
your [y]).

Of course, this is speaking phonetically. Phonologically, the
phonemes of a language may be unspecified for certain features that
get filled in by context (through coarticulation/assimilation) or with
a default feature when the context provides no feature. This seems to
be the case with roundness for English /j/ (in contrast to /w/).

In the case of the <you> sound, it seems that both [ju:] and [yu:] can
convey the same sound.

Because in English, these sounds are not contrastive. Similarly, the
retroflex and alveolar taps are not contrastive in English. The one
we use depends on context (party vs. potty, for example).

Consider <weewee> vs. <yoyo>. In the first case, the lips keep changing
shape - rounded, spread, rounded spread. In the second case, lips
typically remain rounded for the duration of the word.

This suggests that English /w/ is specified as [+round] while /j/ is
unspecified for [round], picking up its specification from the
following vowel (or perhaps both are specified, but there is a rule
that changes /j/ to [+round] when adjacent to a round vowel).

Assimilation can affect any class of sound. Cross-linguistically,
there are many examples both of vowels and of consonants undergoing
assimilation. That /j/ assimilates lip rounding, but /w/ does not, is
not an indication that they are different classes of sounds. Consider
English /m/ and /n/, both of which are nasal stops, but /m/ does not
usually assimilate to a following consonant, while /n/ often does:

warmth: [wArmT] or [wArmpT], never *[wArn[T]
cf. tenth: almost always [tEn[T]

lambda: [læmd@], never *[lænd@]
cf. Canberra: usually [kænbEr@], but can be [kæmbEr@]

roomkeeper: [mk], never *[Nk]
cf. innkeeper: either [nk] or [Nk]

(Something can be said here about the higher relative markedness of
labial articulations versus coronal articulations; marked sounds are
often more resistant to assimilation than unmarked sounds are.)

The above analysis presumes that semivowel means asyllabic vowel. If
semivowel means other things too, then what prevents approximant r from
being a semivowel?

Nothing does, and in fact, many linguists treat English /r/ as the
consonantal counterpart to a mid central vowel.

Nathan

--
Nathan Sanders
Linguistics Program
Williams College
http://wso.williams.edu/~nsanders/

--
Posted via a free Usenet account from http://www.teranews.com

.

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