Re: THEORY: [i:]=[ij]? (was Re: Pronouncing "Boreanesia")

Eric Christopherson wrote:
>This is something that's been bugging me for a while: My phonetics textbook
>says that in English /i:/ and /u:/ are [iy] and [uw], respectively. It claims
>that these are diphthongs, and the second element is a glide. But how can
>you glide from one sound to the same sound? I thought a glide had to be
>something different from the other vowel (like [ai]), and it's my
>understanding that [y] and [w] are for practical purposes the equivalent to
>[i] and [u], respectively. What gives?
I'll tell you...

Its true that for all practical purposes, [j] and [w] are equivalent to
[i] and [u] respectively. But it is still possible to glide from say [i]
to [j]. Its a matter of a slight difference in aperture. Some dialects of
English, however, fail to do this. Semivowel are characterized by an
aperture that is not as specified as vowels (more on this below). So
semivowels can have the tendency in some dialects to be absorbed by the
vowel. Perhaps your dialect is like that. Below is something your textbook
probably also fails to tell you.

Unlike what the IPA teaches, I have been taught to distinguish between
approximants and semivowels. There is a functional difference where
approximants often have the status of obstruents in the phonological
system, while semivowels are a special class of sonorants. Thus,
approximants are characterized by a central aperture in the place of
articulation not more open than vowels with the narrowest aperture
[i y u M A Q], while semivowels are characterized by an aperture that
is not as specific.

Similarly, the difference between semivowels and vowels is that vowels
have a fixed aperture while semivowels do not. In cases where a semivowel
is next to a vowel with an identical place of articulation (like "yiddish",
"ying", "woo"), the semivowels can become a bit more closed. But sometimes,
semivowels have a tendency to be absorbed into the vowel with identical
place of articulation. In English, there are dialectal differences so some
would say [fi:d] and others [fijd] for "feed". In other languages, the free
variation in aperture of semivowels have been exploited in such a way that
they are altogether lost with vowels with similar places of articulation.
An English example would be from the so-called Southern dialects of the US
where /j/ has been absorbed in the underlying diphthong /aj/, since /a/ in
/aj/ is an open *front* vowel in this dialect. So they say something like
[fa:t] for "fight" /fajt/ or [pa:] for "pie" /paj/. Approximants will never
be absorbed by the vowel in the same way.

-kristian- 8)