Vowels, glides, off-glides and on-glides in English: A Loose CV analysis

Abstract

Glides are segments which only contain the element I or U, not occupying the central position of a nucleus. In English, glides cannot occur word-finally or preceding a consonant. In addition, I have established that they are prohibited between a stressed and an unstressed vowel if the stressed vowel is short. The latter restriction can be explained as part of the former if such intervocalic consonants are analysed as virtual geminates, for which I argue on the basis of the distribution of short and long vowels. I also examine off-glides, derived glides and on-glides in English, and analyse them in a CV approach. I show that off-glides of closing diphthongs cannot just be associated to a C or a V position, instead they occupy both. Glides derived from high vowels preceding an unstressed vowel, as in obvious [ˈɒbv{i/j}əs], result from spreading and not movement to the following empty C position inside the hiatus. Finally, I analyse the sequence [ju:] as a light diphthong overlapping a long vowel, to account for the distribution of the on-glide. The different types of glides thus can be distinguished by differences in association between melody and skeleton. No differences in segmental representation need to be posited.