Ambiguous Segment
An ambiguous segment is a phone that may or may not function as the nucleus of a syllable.
An ambiguous segment may also be described as functioning as either a vowel or a consonant, depending on its position in a syllable.
Here is a table that gives a description of some kinds of ambiguous segments with examples of each:
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(Close vowels in certain environments)
Close vowels (for example, [i] and [w]) are not usually considered ambiguous in the following environments:
- Between two consonants
- Between a consonant and a word boundary
- When they are stressed
- When they bear tone
This page is an extract from the LinguaLinks Library. Version 5.0 published on CD-ROM by SIL International, 2003.