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

On Wed, 1 Nov 2000 16:05:34 +0100, Kristian Jensen <kljensen@...>
wrote:

>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)
Excellent explanation, kristian! One thing isn't clear, though. Isn't the
/j/ in /jIdIS/ an approximant rather than a semivowel? (BTW, I've been
planning to ask about Southern US open vowels, such as the phonetic
difference between /aj/ and /ar/ and their ASCII IPA notation.)

Jeff