Re: Newbie...intro to my conlang

David Peterson wrote:
>   Beau wrote, and gwalla@despammed.com responded:
>
> << > Finally, my question...Can anyone explain an approximant?  I know the
>  > standard terminology of fricative, affricate, stop, plosive...etc.
> and I've
>  > never run across that until recently.
>
> Approximants are semivowels, like /w/ and /j/.>>
>
> Approximants are a broader class, actually.  Semivowels and glides are
> /w/ and /j/, and these are also approximants.  However, approximants
> also include laterals (/l/, and so forth) and trills, flaps and other
> rhotics (/r/ and so forth).  The reason the different terms came up, as
> I see it, is that you'll a bunch of different languages that have, let's
> say:
>
> j w l r
>
> Some will have processes that affect only /j/ and /w/ (glides); some
> will have processes that only affect /r/ (rhotics); some will have
> processes that affect only /l/ (laterals); some will have processes that
> affect only /l/ and /r/ (liquids); and some will have processes that
> affect them all--hence, the need for "approximants".  It's especially
> necessary where you have a single language that has different processes
> that affect different subgroups.  How you define the approximants of
> your language depends on how they work.  So, if you have the four above,
> and processes that affect /l/ and /r/, and different ones that affect
> /j/ and /w/, then you should probably classify them as liquids and
> glides.  If you have processes that affect all, though, that's when
> you'd use approximants.
I thought the larger class was called "sonorants". Or does that term
also include the vocoids?

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