The palatal glide /j/ in Persian phonology

The idea that glides occupy a phonological category of their own, especially as distinct from the related high vowels /i/ and /u/, has not been accepted by all researchers. Some prefer the term “semivowel” to that of “glide”, labeling them as vowel-like segments that only function like consonants (Ladefoged & Maddieson, 1996). Others deny any difference between glides and vowels, other than their relative positions in the syllable. For example, Selkirk (1984) has argued that there is no need for a feature distinction between the glides /j, w/ and the high vowels /i, u/, since they can be differentiated instead by syllable theory alone. The results suggested that both the formant frequencies and the intensity of the mid and higher formant frequencies are significantly different between the glide /j/ and the neighboring vowels. Indeed, the formant frequencies and the intensity of the mid and higher formant frequencies were the only two acoustic properties that systematically distinguished the glide /j/ from the neighboring vowels. The results further suggested that the magnitude of the narrowing of the oral cavity in transition from/i/ to /j/ was too small to excite changes in the first format frequency and bandwidth, but it sufficed to produce changes in phonation type, and thus intensity in the mid and higher formant frequencies. The results were interpreted to indicate that phonation type is the most important articulatory feature that differentiates between /j/ and the surrounding vowels