Semivowel

Classification

Semivowels form a subclass of approximants. Although "semivowel" and "approximant" are sometimes treated as synonymous, most authors use the term "semivowel" for a more restricted set; there is no universally agreed-upon definition, and the exact details may vary from author to author. For example, Ladefoged & Maddieson (1996) do not consider the labiodental approximant to be a semivowel (see spirant approximant). Semivowels may be distinguished from the rest of approximants via a feature of prolongability; while all other approximants are prolongable, semivowels are momentary, as prolonging them results instead in the formation of their vocalic equivalents ( → ).

Another ambiguity of terminology exists between the terms "semivowel" and "semiconsonant", which are also often treated as synonymous in English linguistic tradition, though the latter may be regarded as somewhat antiquated. However, in other linguistic traditions (such as Italian and Spanish), a distinction is made between the two terms. In these traditions, semivowels refer to non-syllabic vowel offglides (such as ) often found as partial components of syllable nuclei (such as in diphthongs), while semiconsonants refer to consonant onglides (such as ) often found in syllable onsets. An example demonstrating this difference can be observed in the interjections yay and wow .

Transcription and coordinate vowels

In the International Phonetic Alphabet, the diacritic attached to non-syllabic vowel letters is an inverted breve placed below the symbol representing the vowel: U+032F ◌̯ COMBINING INVERTED BREVE BELOW. When there is no room for the inverted breve under a symbol, it may be written above, using U+0311 ◌̑ COMBINING INVERTED BREVE. Before 1989, non-syllabicity was represented by U+0306 ◌̆ COMBINING BREVE, which now stands for extra-shortness.

Additionally, there are dedicated symbols for four semivowels that correspond to the four close cardinal vowel sounds:

Some authors argue for the recognition of additional semivowels:

• The rhotic approximants ⟨⟩ and ⟨⟩, considered to be semivowels corresponding to r-colored vowels such as ⟨⟩ or ⟨⟩.
• The pharyngeal approximant ⟨⟩, considered to be the semivowel corresponding to the open back vowel ⟨⟩, which is noted to have distinct pharyngeal features in its articulation.
• The post-palatal approximants, or central semivowels, which may be written as ⟨ ⟩ (diacritics for advancing and retracting), ⟨⟩ (diacritics for centralization), or the para-IPA symbols ⟨⟩, considered to be corresponding to the unrounded ⟨⟩, compressed ⟨⟩, and protruded ⟨⟩ close central vowels, respectively.