(n.) A sound intermediate between a vowel and a consonant, or partaking of the nature of both, as in the English w and y.
(n.) The sign or letter representing such a sound.
Example Sentences:
(1) High correlations were evident between accelerometric and EAI values when a stimulus sentence contained obstruents, semivowels, and vowels.
(2) The features can be divided into those which separate the semivowels from other sounds and those which distinguish among the semivowels.
(3) Acoustic correlates of these features were investigated in this study of the semivowels.
(4) Analysis of individual subject data found that children who identified self-produced semivowels most successfully were the same children whose semivowels exhibited the most second formant frequency and transition rate differences in the previous production experiment.
(5) These languages also differ in their patterns of coarticulation between semivowels and adjacent vowels.
(6) Cross-language differences were found between what are described as the same semivowels, i.e.
(7) The children, parents, and raters were much more successful in identifying correctly produced semivowels than misarticulated ones.
(8) Acoustic properties related to the linguistic features which characterize the semivowels in American English were quantified and analyzed statistically.
(9) Children with correct semivowels produced distinctive formant frequency patterns for semivowels that were similar to those previously reported in the literature for adults and children.
(10) Confusion patterns also varied across listening conditions, especially for the nasal and semivowel stimuli.
(11) Six- to seven-month-old infants were tested on their ability to discriminate among three speech sounds which differed on the basis of formant-transition duration, a major cue to distinctions among stop, semivowel and diphthong classes.
(12) No correlation existed between DME and accelerometric values when the stimulus sentences contained primarily nasal semivowels and vowels.
(13) Using synthesized speech and normal-hearing subjects, it was found that this mode of presentation reduced the recognition scores with stop consonants by about 6%, semivowels by about 4%, and fricatives by about 5%, compared with binaural presentation.
(14) Nonetheless, the semivowels differ in systematic ways from the vowels in directions that make them more 'consonantal'.