Talk:Voiced labial–palatal approximant

Removal of the swedish occurrence example

I have never heard of the labial-palatal approximant as a phoneme in the Swedish language. (Also I am a native Swedish speaker.) On the talk page of the Swedish phonology article though, I read that one person mentions that the close front rounded vowel followed by the labial-palatal approximant "is a not uncommon realization of /y:/". However, it is my opinion that the fact that this pronunciation is limited to only some of the Swedish dialects, and that it has no significance on the phonemic level, makes the Swedish occurrence example a poor one. Compare with the French example, where the labial-palatal approximant is both present in the standard dialect, and considered a distinct phoneme.

I do realize that even though the consonant is a dialectal realization and also not a phoneme it may be an useful example—provided that more information can be found in the Swedish phonology article (which, for example, is the case for the article about the voiced retroflex plosive). To summarize, I removed the example due to two things: It's not a Swedish phoneme (and not as distinctive as, for example, the Swedish retroflex realisations of the dental consonants) and its occurrence is not mentioned in the Swedish phonology article. Please reply if you disagree about the removal. Raekmannen (talk) 01:19, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

In addition, a number of linguists transcribe long high vowels for certain languages as /ij/, /uw/, etc. /yɥ/ looks very much like that transcription style. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 04:03, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

mandarin??+/oe/-page hasprobs

cp. http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E6%9C%88%E5%85%89 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 219.70.1.248 (talk) 12:10, 20 July 2011 (UTC)

Question

Why does the IPA distinguish between this and a labialized /j/ (jʷ)? Are they not, essentially, the same sound? Interchangeable|talk to me 01:04, 6 September 2011 (UTC)

Sure, in the same way that [ʍ] and [xʷ] are the same. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[ãːɱ ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɪ̃ə̃nlɪ]} 19:41, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

This distinction is only morphophonemic. /kʲ/ = /c/, but still /nʲ/ is lighter than /ɲ/. It depends the phoneme. But you're right, in this case it's the same! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 109.28.241.116 (talk) 19:07, 6 September 2014 (UTC)

It's more to do with /ɥ/ being a semivowel. The IPA systematically provides different symbols for labialized vs. unlabialized vowels (/i/ vs /y/, /ɤ/ vs. /o/ etc.), while consonants are left to make do with the notation /Cʷ/. Also note that most phonological theories analyze "semivowels" as segments that are neither consonantal nor vocalic.

So, certainly we could get by with the notation /jʷ/ — but if we did that, why stop there and not also replace /w/ with /ɰʷ/, /y/ with /iʷ/ or /o/ with /ɤʷ/? --Trɔpʏliʊm • blah 16:14, 7 September 2014 (UTC)

Wrong classification approach?

I feel that classifying the semivowels like consonants is the wrong approach. They're more like vowels that were made into consonants and thus would be more easily and accurately classified by their parent vowel. I'd rather call this a close front rounded semivowel, as it would fit the pronounciation more closely. A [j] with rounded lips would sound similar, but [ɥ] touches it halfway between [j] and [w], if/when at all.

Another example would be the semivowel of [ɔ]. It is possible to have something like <aoa>, where o acts like a [w], but is different in that it's based on [ɔ] rather than [u]. That difference can be heard, but the consonantal description of both are the same, so both get classified as [w], which seems wrong. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 46.127.2.196 (talk • contribs) 21:26, January 17, 2015

If [ɥ] is, as you say, "a vowel made into a consonant", then [ɥ] is a consonant. A "vowel made into a consonant" is a consonant, not a vowel. If a cat became a dog, it would be a dog, not a cat.

However, there are two distinctive features (see the article for an explanation) that distinguish [ɥ] from [y]. I think the primary one is [-syllabic] (meaning "not syllabic"); [ɥ] cannot form a syllable nucleus, and this is the main way it is different from [y], which can form a syllable nucleus. [ɥ] may also have the feature [+consonantal] in some analyses. (I haven't read enough phonology books to know.) [y] in a syllable nucleus, on the other hand, would definitely have the features [+syllabic] and [-consonantal] (meaning "syllabic and not a consonant").

If you choose to say that "not syllabic" is different from "consonant", then you can say a semivowel is not a consonant. However, typically "not syllabic" and "consonant" are synonyms. — Eru·tuon 01:43, 18 January 2015 (UTC)

Ok, my wording might have been unlucky, I admit that. But the point was that treating them as derived from vowels as opposed to independant full consonants would net us more and meaningful distinctions. And I'd bet that there isn't a single language anywhere that has [ɥ] but not [y]. I might go so far as to bet that there is no language with any semivowel without the corresponding vowel.

Besides, it would disambiguate diphthongs like /oe/, which could either be o+semi-e (~= oj) or semi-o+e (~= we). Standard German has the former of those two for the digraph <eu> (<Eule> is thus supposed to be pronounced /oele/ (+diphthong-sign)). Where I live, everyone says /ojle/ unless they want to sound hyper-correct and pretentious, but without that clue and just IPA, it wouldn't be possible to decide which /oe/ diphthong it is supposed to be. 46.127.2.196 (talk) 05:19, 19 January 2015 (UTC)

My apologies for picking apart your wording, since your point could be valid even though the wording was unfortunate.

Your suggestion that the semivowel never occurs without the vowel is an interesting one. However, I briefly went fishing on Wikipedia and found Abkhaz, which has the semivowel /ɥ/ (or more specifically, the Bzyp and Sadz dialects do) but not the vowel /y/. Its only vowels are an open /a/ and close /ə/. (I think it's a language with the least vowel phonemes, unless there's a language with only one, which is unlikely. And I happened to remember that a Caucasian language might provide a counterexample when I read your suggestion.)

Abkhaz /ə/ can sometimes be realized as [y], but only near labiopalatals. Thus, it is a counterexample to your point: a vowel that gets turned to [y] by a labiopalatal, not a high front rounded vowel that gets turned to a labiopalatal. Abkhaz is also a counterexample to your suggestion about all semivowels; it has /j/ and /w/ as well, but no vowels /i/ or /u/ — although the two vowel phonemes have many allophonic realizations depending on neighboring consonants, which may include [i] and [u]. (This is not the same as having /i/ and /u/ as phonemes.)

The way to distinguish different types of diphthongs in IPA is to use the non-syllabic diacritic (an inverted breve below). In your example, the German diphthong would be written ⟨oe̯⟩ (though the usual transcription is ⟨ɔʏ̯⟩, as given in German phonology § Diphthongs). The other option for the diphthong would be transcribed ⟨o̯e⟩. (This diphthong likely occurred at some point in Old French, incidentally.) Here a vowel with the non-syllabic diacritic is basically equivalent to a semivowel, although using the diacritic allows more precise specification of the vowels, which is useful in German and English, where diphthongs more precisely end in the near-open vowels [ɪ ʏ ʊ] rather than the close vowels [i y u] or the semivowels /j ɥ w/. At least, I know personally this is more accurate in English, and my limited knowledge of German suggests it's the case there too.

Thus, if necessary, the type of diphthong can be specified with a diacritic. This may be irritating (especially since it's hard to insert these things without numeric character references, which I had to use!), but it's unambiguous, and there's no need to confuse vowels and semivowels in order to disambiguate diphthongs. — Eru·tuon 07:06, 19 January 2015 (UTC)

Interesting about Abkhaz, though I was including allophones in my "bet". As you'll note, I had suggested that there's probably no language with [ɥ] without [y], but didn't explicitly discount the possibility of /ɥ/ existing without /y/.

Anyway, seeing your answer about the non-syllabic diacritic, I come to the conclusion that, at least in my French, [ɥ] is actually [y̯] (possibly [ʏ̯] sometimes, though I can't think of an example word), and that there are probably some languages described as having [j], [w] and/or [ɥ] when technically they'd actually have [i̯], [u̯] and/or [y̯] respectively (or their lax counterparts).

(PS: Really? ⟨ɔʏ̯⟩? Not ⟨ɔɪ̯⟩ at least? Why would we be teached to say /ɔe/ when it's supposedly closer to /ɔy/ (and /ɔø/)? I mean I'm sure lots of people say it like that in Germany, but I'd figure that would be a regional thing rather than an official one... Then again, not like there are any people speaking actual so-called Stage German in their daily life. But I'll listen closely next time I hear someone from a non-alemannic part of Germany.) 46.127.2.196 (talk) 08:48, 19 January 2015 (UTC)

As I understand it, the German transcription indicates that the last component of the diphthong retains the rounding of the first. This may vary by regional pronunciation, however; maybe it's not true in your pronunciation of German. When you say the diphthong, do you unround your lips as you pronounce the second part of the diphthong?

If your point includes allophones, then it's much harder to disprove, because of the far greater variety of allophones than phonemes, and I won't comment further on it. However, your point directly before that point was that [ɥ] probably always derives from [y], which is not the case in Abkhaz.

Also, I am not sure in what sense it can be said that [j ɥ ɰ w] always derive from the corresponding vowels [i y ɯ u]. What is this supposed to mean? That the semivowels [j ɥ ɰ w] always derive from the full vowels [i y ɯ u] in an earlier period of the language, or that the phonemic representation of them is [i y ɯ u]? The first case is false, the second is problematic. In the first case, words in many languages are known to have had semivowels for hundreds or thousands of years, with no vowel allophones, and the other way around; in the second case, many words in modern languages only have the semivowel, with no variant form with a full vowel. It is certainly true that full vowels and semivowels frequently alternate, but this does not mean that one is always an allophone of the other, and it would complicate things to assert this. Modern Greek has words where the full vowels do not change to semivowels or fricatives (I recently learned), but in other words with identical phonological environments, the full vowels do change. These cases are best explained (though their analysis has not been done, as far as I know), by saying that some words have phonemic full vowel and others a phonemic semivowel or fricative. What do you think? — Eru·tuon 18:53, 19 January 2015 (UTC)

[ɥ] and [y̯] are the exact same phone, ditto [j] and [i̯] etc. It is, however, the case that a phoneme such as /j/ may commonly admit also other realizations such as [ʒ˕], [ʝ], [ɥ], which is why having separate symbols come handy.

By the way, I don't know about languages that would have [ɥ] without [y], but one can without too much trouble find some that have [w] without [u] — e.g. Blackfoot, Nahuatl. --Trɔpʏliʊm • blah 14:53, 20 January 2015 (UTC)

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