Re: Difference between semivowel and consonant

14 Dec 2006 14:54:34 -0800: "ranjit_mathews@xxxxxxxxx"
<ranjit_mathews@xxxxxxxxx>: in sci.lang:

According to the IPA consonant chart, it's a palatal approximant. That
would seem to specify only how the tongue is oriented relative to the
roof of the mouth, with no more constraint on how the lips are shaped
than there is such a constraint on its fricative counterpart SAMPA
[j\].

Perhaps in the context of a consonant, what is called rounding in the
context of vowels, would rather be a bilabial coarticulation?
(But these aren't the same: English /w/ is rounded, and Spanish [B] is
not; both are bilabial).
So there is an implicit contraint to the position of the lips?

That is, if French Jean may be described with SAMPA [j\], then
German Jung would seem to be equally describable with SAMPA [j], since
the only change I've seen stipulated for making a fricative an
approximant is to increase space (or conversely, decrease constriction)
sufficiently to ease friction.

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.

Native speakers of which language would articulate [jo:jo:], borrowed
from English <yoyo>, with spread lips for the [j]s and rounded lips for
the [o:]s?

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.

Yet, I have seen more than one claim that English has 2 semivowels
usually spelt <y> and <w> whereas in addition to these, French has
another, used in [huit]. No mention of [r].


Nathan

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

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

--
Ruud Harmsen - http://rudhar.com
.

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