Contrast With Fricatives/spirant Approximants
According to the standard definitions, semivowels (such as ) contrast with fricatives (such as ) in that fricatives produce turbulence, while semivowels do not. In discussing Spanish, Martínez-Celdrán suggests setting up a third category of "spirant approximant", contrasting both with semivowel approximants and with fricatives. Though the spirant approximant is more constricted (having a lower F2 amplitude), longer, and unspecified for rounding (e.g. viuda 'widow' vs ayuda 'help'), the distributional overlap is limited. The spirant approximant can only appear in the syllable onset (including word-initially, where the semivowel never appears). The two overlap in distribution after /l/ and /n/: enyesar ('to plaster') aniego ('flood') and, although there is dialectal and ideolectal variation, speakers may also exhibit other near-minimal pairs like abyecto ('abject') vs abierto ('opened'). One potential minimal pair (depending on dialect) is ya visto ('I have already seen') vs y ha visto ('and he has seen'). Again, this is not present in all dialects. Other dialects differ in either merging the two or in enhancing the contrast by moving the former to another place of articulation (e.g. ).
Read more about this topic: Semivowel
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