Talk:Semivowel

Confused

I'm confused by one of the examples... how exactly is 'w' a vowel acting as a consonant? Patrick Corcoran 16:12, 21 Apr 2004 (UTC)

We English-speakers aren't used to thinking of W as a vowel, but if you listen to how it's pronounced (or pay close attention to the position of your lips and tongue as you do so), you'll find that it's identical to the "oo" in "boot". So it's a vowel sound, even if it's not what we normally consider a vowel letter. In the example that confused you, the English word "well" would sound the same if it were spelled "uell" or "ooell".

Things must be considered in the opposite manner: the fact that spellings "uell" or "ooell" might be also pronounced as /w/ doesn’t mean that /w/ is a vowel as in boot. The graphical form has nothing to do with phonetics, so let it aside and you’ll find that /w/ is a consonant, and /u(:)/ a vowel. Flofl.

What I find confusing in this article is this sentence: "They are typically briefer, less stable and often closer than the corresponding vowels." I don't understand what the word "closer" means in this context. --Pat Berry 13:23, 26 Apr 2004 (UTC)

In phonetics, vowels are described with various terms: front, back; rounded, unrounded; open, close. I've always been a bit confused by them myself, but I believe "closer" in this sense means that the mouth is more closed. — Hippietrail 12:50, 17 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I'm confused by what the sentence means by "less stable", but I guess that's why this article is a stub.

Phoneticians don’t. Consonants are unstable sounds as they are slightly influenced by preceding and following sounds: they perform a sort of transition between the other sounds (generally vowels, for example the /b/ in boot is already more rounded than the one in bee, but also other consonants) whereas vowels are more stable. The term semivowel refers to a grapheme-related concept and should not be used in phonetics, and hopefully neither in phonemics. Flofl. 08:47, 3 September 2005 (UTC)

"Even though both the [w] and the [ʊ̯] are similar to the vowel [u], the transcription [waʊ̯] indicates that the initial segment is considered to be a consonant by the transcriber, while the final segment is considered to form a diphthong with the preceding vowel." -- Shouldn't there be a note of some sort about phonemic vs. phonetic considerations? Also, this sentence seems a little disingenuous, since there are other differences between [w] and [ʊ̯], besides one being considered a consonant by the transcriber and one not. The illustration would be clearer if we used the transcription [wau̯], since the relation between [w] and [u̯] is closer. (Or does no one actually ever pronounce [wau̯]?) 24.159.255.29 00:21, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

Correspondence?

Does anybody happen to know which vowels correspond to which semi-vowels? I know that /i/ corresponds to /j/, but I always thought that /w/ corresponded to /u/. This article seems to imply that it corresponds to /ʊ/. That doesn't sound right at all to me. /uɛl/ sounds much more like 'well' than /ʊɛl/ (/ʊ/ being the same vowel as the American pronunciation for 'book'). I think that /ɥ/ corresponds to /y/ but I'm not too sure. I'm completely lost with the rest of them. The vowels are the only part that I have trouble understanding when it comes to phonetics. The rest is completely straight-forward and easy to understand just by reading the description for articulation. The vowels, however, are irritatingly vague and seem to contradict each other in their description and sound samples.--67.177.36.200 02:11, 13 August 2005 (UTC)

Okay, after a while of personal Expirementation with the consonants and vowels (the few vowels I can actually pronounce) I've come up with this: /ɰ/ corresponds to /ɨ/ (Russian 'ы'), I think. /ʋ/ corresponds to /œ/ (I don't even know if I can pronounce this correctly, but I think it might be correct since it's the closest in it's proximity to /ʋ/ without sounding like a rounded 'i'). And after some consideration I'm definitely convinced that /w/ does correspond to /u/. I'm pretty sure that these expert linguists must have some damn good reasons to use 'ʊ' as part of the diphthong cluster in the English 'O', but my non-English-centered brain is telling me that they have some kind of intellectual disabilities. Somebody tell me why wrong, please! Until then, 'wow' is /wæu/ for me!

And another thing, in ever American dialect I've ever heard, the vowel in 'wow' and 'how' is exactly the same as 'at'. I don't think I've ever heard an American even pronounce the same /a/ that is used in Spanish, Russian, Italian, French, German, Greek, et cetera. This is why I used 'æ' in that example. Somebody please help me clear up these contradictions! By the way, I speak Russian and English, so I have an extra view to linguistics that many monolingual people might not have.--67.177.36.200 02:43, 13 August 2005 (UTC)

I would say that in California it's NOT pronounced like that. More like /wau/ and not at all like 'at'! -Iopq 04:13, 13 November 2005 (UTC)

The correspondances are now in the article. [ʋ] is not a semivowel and doesn't correspond to any vowel.

As for why we get [ʊ] in [waʊ], well, a vowel is defined by its formants (bands of sound energy at certain frequencies). Usually vowels are mapped on charts according to the 1st vs. the 2nd formants. The chart in the vowel article is an idealized schematic of this. (No real language is so perfectly symmetrical.) A "pure" vowel is a dot on such a chart. However, a diphthong moves - it starts off at one place and shifts. The English diphthong ow starts off (at least in many dialects) near IPA [a], and ends up near [ʊ]. It never quite makes it all the way up to [u]. You can even automate this: take a recording, and have a computer analyse it and trace it out on the chart.

(Actually, ow ends up further back than [ʊ], which is maybe why that vowel doesn't sound right to you. But it doesn't get as high as [u], so that's not right either. To be more precise, you'd need to use diacritics, which most people just don't bother with.)

As for the [a] part, it isn't quite the [æ] of at, but neither is it the [ɑ] of ah. It's inbetween, which is written [a] in the IPA.

And no, you wouldn't write well as [ʊɛl], because the first sound is a consonant. The first and last sounds of wow are different. If you take a recording of wow and play it backwards, it won't sound quite right. kwami 08:04, 13 November 2005 (UTC)

Diphthong transcription

In this article it says "Using the transcription [aʊ̯] for the diphthong rather than [æu̯] as one might expect is a minor phonetic point. See diphthong for details.", but I can't find anything really explaining this in the diphthong article. Could someone write an explanation in that article. I would myself, but I don't actually know why diphthongs are transcribed that way. Thanks. --Redtitan 01:57, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

I think that little disclaimer is arbitrary and potentially a little confusing. There have to exist loads of possible ways to pronounce (and transcribe) /au/, and it's silly to single out the specific pronunciations [aʊ̯] and [æu̯]. Also note that the two cited phonetic forms do not even have the same semivowel in them! 24.159.255.29 00:13, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

I agree. I'm removing that remark from the article. FilipeS 20:10, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

Merge Non-syllabic vowel into this article?

Should Non-syllabic vowel be merged into this article? They seem to be equivalent concepts. FilipeS 17:55, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

I don't know how I edited both articles in the past without merging them. I can't think why we'd want to keep them separate. kwami (talk) 07:10, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

Merged. See what you think. Some of this, such as transcription, might actually be better under diphthong. kwami (talk) 08:04, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

Glides, out of favor?

The introduction says '...also known as glides, though that term has fallen out of favor'. I'm too amateur to have a say on the matter, but I still do encounter 'glide' quite often (in recent literature). Though, my focus is on semitic languages.-- hɑkeem_¡ʇu^ɐɹɯǝǝʞɐɥ 07:18, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

You're right. I think that's too POV to stand as a general statement, though there are certainly phonologists who disprefer the term. kwami (talk) 07:52, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

Serious WP:OR concerns about this article

Here are the assertions which I have not seen in the literature and, as far as I can see, are not supported by the sources (I can't access all the sources cited, so I could be wrong):

• The article claims that there is a contrast between semivowels and approximants. This seems to contradict, among others, Ladefoged/Maddieson (1996), where the class of semivowels is claimed to be a subset of the class of approximants. For what it's worth, it also contradicts the Wikipedia article on approximant consonants where approximants include semivowels.
• The article claims that approximants are closer than semivowels. This is reminiscent of a similar but distinct claim that I have seen attributed to some African languages, where it is stated that semivowels tend to be closer than their syllabic congeners. However it is not a corollary of that claim, which in any case only pertains to a handful of languages that were studied.
• The claim that the existence of the nonclose Nepali etc. semivowels lends some support to the asserted semivowel/approximant distinction. I don't see this, and it seems to be OR/SYN.
• The discussion of the Spanish example makes no sense to me. I can only access the front page of the article via the link provided, but I do wonder how much of the discussion is actually OR. The "minimal pair" cited seems prima facie to be an approximant/fricative distinction rather than an approximant/semivowel distinction.

Cheers. Grover cleveland (talk) 00:06, 7 August 2010 (UTC)

Hmmm. So I finally managed to find a bootleg copy of the Martinez-Celdran paper online. Page 9 shows that the author proposes that semivowels are a subset of approximants. So I still don't see where the proposed opposition between approximants and semivowels comes from. Grover cleveland (talk) 23:12, 19 August 2010 (UTC)

OK: I've tried to rewrite the article a little to better reflect the classifications of the majority of the literature. I've removed the claimed semivowel/approximant opposition because I simply can't find any RS's that support that distinction. Grover cleveland (talk) 00:45, 20 August 2010 (UTC)

Nicely done. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 02:00, 20 August 2010 (UTC)

We still have the case that [j] is closer than [i̯], so they're not synonymous. The first is consonantal, the second vocalic. AFAIK, only the first would be an approximant, since they're consonants, whereas both might be called semivowels. — kwami (talk) 02:20, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

If that's the case, then how should we understand this edit where you seem to be saying that semivowels are consonants? I'm not sure if the literature consistently backs up the parsing that you're making between the two. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 14:29, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

I am saying that. Per Ladefoged, they are a subclass of approximants and are consonants. That differs from diphthongs, which are not consonants. Since Ladefoged invented the term 'approximant' which we use in our classifications, I think he's an appropriate ref to follow. Of course, we can always add a discussion about differences of usage in the lit. — kwami (talk) 20:31, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

I think there's a bit of confusion here. There are four meanings at play here:

• A: sonorants that cause little turbulence from articulators approaching each other
• B: any of A that correlate with a vowel but are not part of the syllable nucleus
• C: any of A that are part of the syllable nucleus
• D: B and C generally.

I first read what you wrote above as using semivowel for both B and D, since you've said that semivowels are a subclass of approximants and approximants are a subclass of semivowels...but I'm not so sure what you mean anymore.

Anyway, the distinction between B and C is largely an exercise in phonology, rather than phonetics, as syllable components don't manifest very clearly when it comes to these sounds. So to say that a semivowel is always B leaves us without a term to use for C (or D, unless we use glide). — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 22:13, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

If I said "approximants are a subclass of semivowels", I misspoke. I meant the opposite. Phonetically, we have segments which have more stricture than vowels, but not as much as fricatives. These are approximants. Ladefoged, at least, defines semivowels as approximants that correspond to vowels. He treats them separately from diphthongs, which he says are simply vowels with a moving target, but otherwise identical to other vowels. That is, [ai̯] (or perhaps [a͡i]) is a vowel, [aj] a VC sequence. Phonemic analysis is, of course, another matter, as L discusses. It's also problematic to distinguish them for many languages: articulation may be variable, and descriptions may be inadequate even if it isn't. I wouldn't expect basic sources to bother even if the distinction is justifiable for a particular language, but theoretically we do have a distinction. I'm not sure about your A-D, as you don't seem to be making the articulatory distinction that L does. What I see is this:

• a Approximants similar to vowels, like [j], [w]
• b Non-syllabic vocalic segments / diphthongal on- or off-glides, like [i̯], [u̯]
• c Syllabic monophthongs like [i], [u]

Now, (a) are semivowels, and (c) are vowels. The question is (b), which may not be distinguished from (a) or (c). I don't know of any term for (b). L is very brief. In SOWL under 'diphthongs' he says, "The kinds of vowels that occur as targets in diphthongs are no different from those that occur as single vowels [so] there is little extra to be said about diphthongs. No new features are needed." That section, the last in §9.2 Additional Vowel Features, is immediately followed by §9.3 Vowel-like consonants, where he says "there is a clear articulatory difference between vowels and semivowels [...] in that they [semivowels] are produced with narrower constrictions of the vocal tract."

As for the distinction between your (B) and (C) being only phonological, there is a measurable phonetic difference across diphthongs in many languages, where the peak of sonority occurs in a particular segment, such as the [a] in [ai̯], that would enable one to at least sometimes distinguish on- & off-glides, with stricture distinguishing these from semivowels in L's sense of the word. So at least theoretically I don't see a problem with three categories, even if there are practical problems or they may simply not be relevant to a particular language. — kwami (talk) 02:04, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

This is where I think other sources differ from L. The examples from Spanish, Romanian, and Nepali indicate that there can be *b that are not more constricted since they're associated with mid or open vowels. The "peak of sonority" you mention isn't really relevant here since we're talking about distinguishing *b from *a, not from *c.

This is largely about terminology, and your suggestion of delving into the literature's usage is a good one. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]} 06:21, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

Yes, I think a lot of the lit uses 'semivowel' for any nonsyllabic vocoid, whether or not it's actually consonantal. Whether that's just playing loose with the terminology or is a different concept of 'semivowel' I don't know. I figured that if we're going to be precise, we should follow the man who invented the term 'approximant' before we started wandering around the various contradictory uses that may be adapted to specific languages. I wonder if anyone uses 'glide' for (b): it would fit from on/off-glide. — kwami (talk) 07:13, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

Does offglide belong here?

Currently offglide redirects here. That doesn't seem right; consider e.g. the example (from Palatalization (phonetics)): "[I]n Russian, when /t/ undergoes palatalization, a palatalized sibilant offglide appears, as in тема [ˈtˢʲemə]", where it refers to [ˢ], which has nothing to do with semivowels, and which is of course not covered here. In which article are such offglides discussed? — Sebastian 08:35, 12 April 2015 (UTC)

A better example of an offglide would come from Russian as well (also mentioned at Russian phonology) where /lʲ/ can have a j-like offglide. I'm not sure why the affrication of Russian soft /tʲ/ is considered an offglide (that does indeed sound wrong), though I do recall the cited source at Russian phonology for the offglide with /lʲ/ does imply that they are both part of the same process. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt]} 17:04, 12 April 2015 (UTC)

Thanks, I see that Affricate consonant#Notation lists the superscript [ˢ] as just a spelling variation. I will change the wording in Palatalization (phonetics); please have a look if that expresses it better. — Sebastian 03:32, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

Now I see the source of the confusion. I've changed the example, since the point that text is trying to illustrate isn't even exemplified by Russian soft t. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt]} 04:09, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

Uvular semivowel?

The back unrounded vowels are, in order from most close to most open: [ɯ ɤ ʌ ɑ]. So if non-syllabic [ɯ̯] is equivalent to [ɰ] (a velar approximant), and non-syllabic ɑ̯ is equivalent to [ʕ̞] (a pharyngeal approximant), then are non-syllabic versions of either [ɤ̯] or [ʌ̯] equivalent to [ʁ̞] (a uvular approximant, where uvular is post-velar and pre-pharyngeal)? This is something I've wondered for a while. - Gilgamesh (talk) 04:38, 24 February 2020 (UTC)

Catford equates [ʌ̯] to [ʁ̞].[1] Nardog (talk) 14:39, 24 February 2020 (UTC)

labiodental approximant as semivowel

The article mentions that some disagree on whether a given approximant is a semivowel, and mentions several times Martínez Celdrán (2004) considering the labiodental approximant a semivowel (where other authors would disagree), yet Martínez Celdrán's article does not classify the labiodental approximant as a semivowel, but as a spirant approximant consonant, very clearly separating it from the 4 commonly agreed upon semivowels. I haven't been able to find any other author considering the labiodental approximant a semivowel to replace that source, either. Should the entire reference to the labiodental approximant as a semivowel removed? NguyenMDV (talk) 01:45, 14 September 2021 (UTC)

Misrepresented phonetics

As a resident in Romania, I dispute the assertion that î/â is the same as y in Polish, or that ă equates to ə. Rather, these vowels are the same as found in the Turkish ı and the Estonian õ. Reference to many YouTube lessons. I have also found a book that shows paletogramz for Romanian vowels. Take it from a polyglot, the values given here are simply wrong. Athanasius V (talk) 13:35, 22 October 2021 (UTC)

Reliable sources, please. –Austronesier (talk) 19:26, 22 October 2021 (UTC)

The Romanian ⟨î⟩ is a close central unrounded vowel, whereas the Polish ⟨y⟩ is lower, more like a close-mid central unrounded vowel. So yes, there is a difference. According to the vowel chart in Romanian phonology, the Romanian ⟨ă⟩ is the open-mid central unrounded vowel. Estonian ⟨õ⟩ has a huge allophonic variation as it varies in the [ɤ ~ ɘ ~ ɯ] triangle. So it can be similar to the Romanian ⟨ă⟩, though it's higher.

Bear in mind that personal experience and YouTube videos aren't reliable sources that we can use to alter the content of Wikipedia articles. Sol505000 (talk) 23:12, 22 October 2021 (UTC)