In linguistics, an elision or deletion is the omission of one or more sounds (such as a
vowel
A vowel is a syllabic speech sound pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract. Vowels are one of the two principal classes of speech sounds, the other being the consonant. Vowels vary in quality, in loudness and also in quantity (leng ...
, a
consonant
In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract. Examples are and pronounced with the lips; and pronounced with the front of the tongue; and pronounced wit ...
, or a whole
syllable
A syllable is a unit of organization for a sequence of speech sounds typically made up of a syllable nucleus (most often a vowel) with optional initial and final margins (typically, consonants). Syllables are often considered the phonological "bu ...
) in a word or phrase. However, these terms are also used to refer more narrowly to cases where two words are run together by the omission of a final sound.
An example is the elision of word-final /t/ in English if it is preceded and followed by a consonant: "first light" is often pronounced /fɜ:s laɪt/.
Many other terms are used to refer to particular cases where sounds are omitted.
Citation forms and contextual forms
A word may be spoken individually in what is called the
citation form
In morphology and lexicography, a lemma (plural ''lemmas'' or ''lemmata'') is the canonical form, dictionary form, or citation form of a set of word forms. In English, for example, ''break'', ''breaks'', ''broke'', ''broken'' and ''breaking'' a ...
. This corresponds to the pronunciation given in a dictionary. However, when words are spoken in context, it often happens that some sounds that belong to the citation form are omitted. Elision is not an all-or-nothing process: elision is more likely to occur in some styles of speaking and less likely in others.
Many writers have described the styles of speech in which elision is most commonly found, using terms such as "casual speech", "spontaneous speech",
"allegro speech" or "rapid speech".
In addition, what may appear to be the disappearance of a sound may in fact be a change in the articulation of a sound that makes it less audible. For example, it has been said that in some dialects of Spanish the word-final ''-ado'', as in ''cansado'' (tired) is pronounced /ado/ in citation form but the /d/ is omitted in normal speech, giving "cansao". More careful description will show that the Spanish phoneme /d/ is usually pronounced as a
voiced dental fricative
The voiced dental fricative is a consonant sound used in some spoken languages. It is familiar to English-speakers as the ''th'' sound in ''father''. Its symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet is eth, or and was taken from the Old Engli ...
when it occurs between vowels. In casual speech it is frequently weakened to a
voiced dental approximant
The voiced dental fricative is a consonant sound used in some spoken languages. It is familiar to English-speakers as the ''th'' sound in ''father''. Its symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet is eth, or and was taken from the Old Engl ...
̞ The most extreme possibility is complete elision resulting in a diphthong with no observable consonantal tongue gesture. In this view, elision is the final stage in lenition or consonant weakening, the last phase of a cline or continuum describable as d > ð > ð̞ > ∅. Whether the elision is of vowel or consonant, if it is consistent through time, the form with elision may come to be accepted as the norm: ''tabula'' > ''tabla'' as in Spanish, ''mutare'' > ''muer'' ("change, molt") in French, ''luna'' > ''lua'' ("moon") in Portuguese.
It is usual to explain elision and related connected-speech phenomena in terms of the
principle of least effort
The principle of least effort is a broad theory that covers diverse fields from evolutionary biology to webpage design. It postulates that animals, people, and even well-designed machines will naturally choose the path of least resistance or "effo ...
or "economy of effort". This concept has been stated as "If a word or expression remains perfectly intelligible without a certain sound, people tend to omit that sound."
Historical elisions
There are various ways in which the present form of a language may reflect elisions that have taken place in the past. This topic is an area of
Diachronic linguistics
Historical linguistics, also termed diachronic linguistics, is the scientific study of language change over time. Principal concerns of historical linguistics include:
# to describe and account for observed changes in particular languages
# ...
. Such elisions may originally have been ''optional'' but have over time become ''obligatory'' (or mandatory). An example of historical elision in French that began at the phrasal level and became
lexicalized
In linguistics, lexicalization is the process of adding words, set phrases, or word patterns to a language's lexicon.
Whether '' word formation'' and ''lexicalization'' refer to the same process is controversial within the field of linguistics. M ...
is preposition > in "today", now felt by native speakers to be one word, but deriving from , literally "at the day of today" and meaning "nowadays", although is no longer recognized as meaningful in French. In English, the word "cupboard" would originally have contained /p/ between /ʌ/ and /b/, but the /p/ is believed to have disappeared from the pronunciation of the word about the fifteenth century.
Contractions
In many languages there is a process similar but not identical to elision, called
contraction, where common words that occur frequently together form a shortened pronunciation. This may be a historical case (for example, French "''ce est''" has become "''c'est''" /sɛ/ and it would now be incorrect to say "''ce est''" /sə ɛ/) or one that is still optional (in English, a speaker may say "that is" /ðæt ɪz/ or "that's" /ðæts/). Contractions of both sorts are natural forms of the language used by native speakers and are often
colloquial
Colloquialism (), also called colloquial language, everyday language or general parlance, is the linguistic style used for casual (informal) communication. It is the most common functional style of speech, the idiom normally employed in conver ...
but not considered substandard.
English contractions are usually vowel-less
weak form words.
In some cases the contracted form is not a simple matter of elision: for example, "that's" as a contraction is made not only by the elision of the /ɪ/ of "is" but also by the change of final consonant from /z/ to /s/; "won't" for "will not" requires not only the elision of the /ɒ/ of "not" but also the vowel change /ɪ/ --> /oʊ/ and in English
RP "can't" and "shan't" change vowel from /æ/ of "can" and "shall" to /ɑː/ in /kɑːnt/, /ʃɑːnt/. In some languages employing the
Latin alphabet
The Latin alphabet or Roman alphabet is the collection of letters originally used by the ancient Romans to write the Latin language. Largely unaltered with the exception of extensions (such as diacritics), it used to write English and the o ...
, such as English, the omitted letters in a contraction are replaced by an
apostrophe
The apostrophe ( or ) is a punctuation mark, and sometimes a diacritical mark, in languages that use the Latin alphabet and some other alphabets. In English, the apostrophe is used for two basic purposes:
* The marking of the omission of one o ...
(e.g., ''isn't'' for ''is not''). Written Greek marks elisions in the same way.
Elision in poetry
Elision is frequently found in verse. It is sometimes explicitly marked in the spelling, and in other cases has to be inferred from knowledge of the metre. Elisions occurred regularly in Latin, but were not written, except in inscriptions and comedy. Elision of a vowel before a word starting in a vowel is frequent in poetry, where the metre sometimes requires it. For example, the opening line of
Catullus 3
Catullus 3 is a poem by Roman poet Gaius Valerius Catullus (''c''. 84 – ''c''. 54 BCE) that laments the death of a pet sparrow (''passer'') for which an unnamed girl (''puella''), possibly Catullus' lover Lesbia, had an affection. Written in ...
is Lugete, O Veneres Cupidinesque, but would be read as Lugeto Veneres Cupidinesque (audio). There are many examples of
poetic contraction
Poetic contractions are contractions of words found in poetry but not commonly used in everyday modern English. Also known as elision or syncope, these contractions are usually used to lower the number of syllables in a particular word in order ...
in English verse of past centuries marked by spelling and punctuation. Frequently found examples are over > o'er and ever > e'er. Multiple examples can be seen in lines such as the following from
Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard
''Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard'' is a poem by Thomas Gray, completed in 1750 and first published in 1751. The poem's origins are unknown, but it was partly inspired by Gray's thoughts following the death of the poet Richard West in 1742 ...
by Thomas Gray, published in 1751:
*Th' applause of list'ning senates to command
*He gain'd from heav'n ('twas all he wish'd) a friend
Deletion
The term ''deletion'' is used in some modern work instead of ''elision''.
When contemporary or historic deletion is treated in terms of
Generative phonology
Generative grammar, or generativism , is a linguistic theory that regards linguistics as the study of a hypothesised innate grammatical structure. It is a biological or biologistic modification of earlier structuralist theories of linguistics ...
it is usual to explain the process as one of substituting zero for a phoneme, in the form of a
phonological rule
A phonological rule is a formal way of expressing a systematic phonological or morphophonological process or diachronic sound change in language. Phonological rules are commonly used in generative phonology as a notation to capture sound-related o ...
. The form of such rules is typically
X --> ∅ (i.e. the segment x becomes zero)
An example of a deletion rule (for /r/-deletion in English RP) is provided by Giegerich. If we start with the premise that the underlying form of the word "hear" has a final /r/ and has the phonological form /hɪər/, we need to be able to explain how /r/ is deleted at the end of "hear" but is not deleted in the derived word "hearing". The difference is between word-final /r/ in "hear", where the /r/ would form part of the rhyme of a syllable, and word-medial /r/ which would form the onset of the second syllable of "hearing". The following rule deletes /r/ in "hear", giving /hɪə/, but does not apply in the case of "hearing", giving /hɪərɪŋ/.
rhyme
/r/ --> ∅/ _____
Writing
Even though the effort that it takes to pronounce a word does not have any direct influence on writing, a word or phrase may be spelled in a way that reflects elisions. This happens in poetry, as explained above, and in drama in order to reflect the presence of elisions or non-standard speech forms. The term
eye dialect is sometimes used to refer to this practice.
Examples
English
Examples of elision in English:
Most elisions in English are not mandatory, but they are used in common practice and even sometimes in more formal speech. This applies to nearly all the examples in the above table. However, these types of elisions are rarely shown in modern writing and never shown in formal writing. In formal writing, the words are written the same whether or not the speaker would elide them, but in many plays and classic American literature, words are often written with an elision to demonstrate accent:
Other examples, such as ''him'' and ''going to'' shown in the table above, are generally used only in fast or informal speech. They are still generally written as is unless the writer intends to show the dialect or speech patterns of the speaker.
The third type of elision is in common contractions, such as ''can't'', ''isn't'', or ''I'm''. The apostrophes represent the sounds that are removed and are not spoken but help the reader to understand that it is a contraction and not a word of its own. These contractions used to be written out when transcribed (i.e. ''cannot'', ''is not'', ''I am'') even if they were pronounced as a contraction, but now they are always written as a contraction so long as they are spoken that way. However, they are by no means mandatory and a speaker or writer may choose to keep the words distinct rather than contract them either as a stylistic choice, when using formal register, to make meaning clearer to children or non-native English speakers, or to emphasize a word within the contraction (e.g. ''I ''am'' going!'')
In
non-rhotic
Rhoticity in English is the pronunciation of the historical rhotic consonant by English speakers. The presence or absence of rhoticity is one of the most prominent distinctions by which varieties of English can be classified. In rhotic variet ...
accents of English, is dropped unless it's followed by a vowel, making ''cheetah'' and ''cheater'' completely homophonous. In non-rhotic accents spoken outside of North America, many instances of correspond to in North American English as and are used instead of .
Finnish
The consonant in the
partitive case
The partitive case (abbreviated , , or more ambiguously ) is a grammatical case which denotes "partialness", "without result", or "without specific identity". It is also used in contexts where a subgroup is selected from a larger group, or with nu ...
ending elides when it is surrounded by two short vowels except when the first of the two vowels involved is
paragoge
Paragoge (; from grc-gre, παραγωγή ''additional'': παρα- prefix ''para-'' 'extra', ἀγωγή ''agogē'' 'bringing in') is the addition of a sound to the end of a word. Often caused by nativization, it is a type of epenthesis, most ...
(added to the stem). Otherwise, it stays. For example, → , → , but → (not a short vowel), → (consonant stem), → (paragogic on a consonant stem).
French
Elision of unstressed vowels (usually ) is common in the French language and, in some cases, must be indicated orthographically with an
apostrophe
The apostrophe ( or ) is a punctuation mark, and sometimes a diacritical mark, in languages that use the Latin alphabet and some other alphabets. In English, the apostrophe is used for two basic purposes:
* The marking of the omission of one o ...
.
Elision of vowel and consonant sounds was also an important phenomenon in the phonological evolution of French. For example, ''s'' following a
vowel
A vowel is a syllabic speech sound pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract. Vowels are one of the two principal classes of speech sounds, the other being the consonant. Vowels vary in quality, in loudness and also in quantity (leng ...
and preceding another consonant regularly elided, with
compensatory lengthening
Compensatory lengthening in phonology and historical linguistics is the lengthening of a vowel sound that happens upon the loss of a following consonant, usually in the syllable coda, or of a vowel in an adjacent syllable. Lengthening triggered ...
of the vowel.
*Latin → Old French → Modern French
*Latin → Old French → Modern French
*Latin → Old French → Modern French
German
Nouns and adjectives that end with unstressed "el" or "er" have the "e" elided when they are declined or a suffix follows. ex. becomes , , etc., and + becomes .
The final of a noun is also elided when another noun or suffix is concatenated onto it: + becomes .
In both of the above cases, the represents a
schwa
In linguistics, specifically phonetics and phonology, schwa (, rarely or ; sometimes spelled shwa) is a vowel sound denoted by the IPA symbol , placed in the central position of the vowel chart. In English and some other languages, it rep ...
.
Icelandic
Elision () is common in
Icelandic. There are a variety of rules for its occurrence,
but the most notable is the loss of trailing consonants in common particles as well as the merger of similar vowel sounds. For example, the ubiquitous (verb) structure ("I am verb-ing") becomes transformed to (verb); the full particles is spoken only when a person is sounding the sentence out word by word. Another noteworthy and extremely common example along this line includes the phrase ("really?") which is pronounced as . A common example of internal consonant loss in Icelandic is ("here you go", "please"), pronounced (the hidden sound is unrelated to the elision and occurs when a or precedes ). Another special case of elision is the loss of from the start of ("this", "that"), which is sometimes pronounced ( (what is this?) -> ). The pronunciation of the full word tends to lay emphasis on it ("What is ''this''?") while the elision of the word leads to its deemphasis ("''What'' is this?"). The loss of the in is similar to how can be lost in "that" and "this" when asking a question and speaking swiftly in English.
Irish
Elision is found in the Ulster dialect of Irish, particularly in final position. , for example, while pronounced in the Conamara dialect, is pronounced in Ulster. is also elided when it begins intervocalic consonant clusters. is pronounced ; is pronounced .
Japanese
Elision is extremely common in the pronunciation of the
Japanese language
is spoken natively by about 128 million people, primarily by Japanese people and primarily in Japan, the only country where it is the national language. Japanese belongs to the Japonic or Japanese- Ryukyuan language family. There have been ma ...
. In general, a high vowel ( or ) that appears in a low-pitched syllable between two voiceless consonants is devoiced and often deleted outright. However, unlike French or English, Japanese does not often show elision in writing. The process is purely phonetic and varies considerably depending on the dialect or level of formality. A few examples (slightly exaggerated; apostrophes added to indicate elision):
:松下さんはいますか? ''Matsushita-san wa imasu ka?'' ("Is Mr. Matsushita in?")
:Pronounced: ''matsush'tasanwa imas'ka''
:
:失礼します ''Shitsurei shimasu'' ("Excuse me")
:Pronounced: ''sh'tsureishimas' ''
:
Gender roles also influence elision in Japanese. It is considered masculine to elide, especially the final ''u'' of the polite verb forms (''-masu'', ''desu''), but women are traditionally encouraged to do the opposite. However, excessive elision is generally associated with lower
prestige
Prestige refers to a good reputation or high esteem; in earlier usage, ''prestige'' meant "showiness". (19th c.)
Prestige may also refer to:
Arts, entertainment and media Films
* ''Prestige'' (film), a 1932 American film directed by Tay Garnet ...
, and inadequate elision is seen as overly fussy or old-fashioned. Some
nonstandard dialects, such as
Satsuma-ben, are known for their extensive elision.
It is common for successive o sounds to be reduced to a single o sound, as is frequently encountered when the particle を (wo/o) is followed by the beautifying or honorific お (o).
Latin
Latin poetry featured frequent elision, with syllables being dropped to fit the meter or for
euphony
Phonaesthetics (also spelled phonesthetics in North America) is the study of beauty and pleasantness associated with the sounds of certain words or parts of words. The term was first used in this sense, perhaps by during the mid-20th century and ...
. Words ending in vowels would elide with the following word if it started with a vowel or h; words ending with -m would also be elided in the same way (this is called ecthlipsis).
In writing, unlike in Greek, this would not be shown, with the normal spelling of the word represented. For instance, line 5 of
Virgil
Publius Vergilius Maro (; traditional dates 15 October 7021 September 19 BC), usually called Virgil or Vergil ( ) in English, was an ancient Roman poet of the Augustan period. He composed three of the most famous poems in Latin literature: t ...
's ''
Aeneid
The ''Aeneid'' ( ; la, Aenē̆is or ) is a Latin Epic poetry, epic poem, written by Virgil between 29 and 19 BC, that tells the legendary story of Aeneas, a Troy, Trojan who fled the Trojan_War#Sack_of_Troy, fall of Troy and travelled to ...
'' is written as "", even though it would be pronounced as "".
Other examples of elision in Latin literature include:
*Virgil's ''Aeneid'' Book I, Line 3: " " is pronounced " ", where " " comprises three long syllables, or one and a half
spondee
A spondee (Latin: ) is a metrical foot consisting of two long syllables, as determined by syllable weight in classical meters, or two stressed syllables in modern meters. The word comes from the Greek , , 'libation'.
Spondees in Ancient Greek ...
s.
*Virgil's ''Aeneid'' Book I, Line 11: " " is pronounced " ", where " " comprises three long syllables and two short syllables.
*
Ovid
Pūblius Ovidius Nāsō (; 20 March 43 BC – 17/18 AD), known in English as Ovid ( ), was a Roman poet who lived during the reign of Augustus. He was a contemporary of the older Virgil and Horace, with whom he is often ranked as one of the th ...
's ''
Metamorphoses
The ''Metamorphoses'' ( la, Metamorphōsēs, from grc, μεταμορφώσεις: "Transformations") is a Latin narrative poem from 8 CE by the Roman poet Ovid. It is considered his ''magnum opus''. The poem chronicles the history of the wo ...
'' Book III, Line 557: " " is pronounced " ", where " " comprises two short syllables and a long syllable.
*Ovid's ''
Amores
Amores may refer to:
* ''Amores'' (Ovid), the first book by the poet Ovid, published in 5 volumes in 16 BCE
* ''Amores'' (Lucian), a play by Lucian; also known as ''Erotes''
* Erotes (mythology), known as Amores by the Romans
* ''Amores'', a bo ...
'' Book III, Poem VI, Line 101: " " is pronounced " ".
Malayalam
Dropping sounds in connected speech by native speakers is very common in this language from
Kerala
Kerala ( ; ) is a state on the Malabar Coast of India. It was formed on 1 November 1956, following the passage of the States Reorganisation Act, by combining Malayalam-speaking regions of the erstwhile regions of Cochin, Malabar, South ...
, southern
India
India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...
. For example, ''entha'' becomes ''ntha'' and ''ippol'' becomes ''ippo''.
Spanish
The change of
Latin
Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...
into the
Romance language
The Romance languages, sometimes referred to as Latin languages or Neo-Latin languages, are the various modern languages that evolved from Vulgar Latin. They are the only extant subgroup of the Italic languages in the Indo-European languages, I ...
s included a significant amount of elision, especially
syncope (loss of medial vowels).
Spanish
Spanish might refer to:
* Items from or related to Spain:
**Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain
**Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many Latin American countries
**Spanish cuisine
Other places
* Spanish, Ontario, Cana ...
has these examples:
* from Latin
* from Latin (through )
* from Latin (with
dissimilation
In phonology, particularly within historical linguistics, dissimilation is a phenomenon whereby similar consonants or vowels in a word become less similar. In English, dissimilation is particularly common with liquid consonants such as /r/ and ...
of ''-nm-'' to ''-lm-'')
* from Latin (with
lenition
In linguistics, lenition is a sound change that alters consonants, making them more sonority hierarchy, sonorous. The word ''lenition'' itself means "softening" or "weakening" (from Latin 'weak'). Lenition can happen both synchronic analysis, s ...
of ''f-'' to ''h-'' to ∅, dissimilation of ''-mn-'' to ''-mr-'' and then
epenthesis
In phonology, epenthesis (; Greek ) means the addition of one or more sounds to a word, especially in the beginning syllable ('' prothesis'') or in the ending syllable (''paragoge'') or in-between two syllabic sounds in a word. The word ''epenth ...
of ''-mr-'' to ''-mbr-'')
In addition, speakers often employ
crasis
Crasis (; from the Greek , "mixing", "blending"); cf. , "I mix" ''wine with water''; '' kratēr'' "mixing-bowl" is related. is a type of contraction in which two vowels or diphthongs merge into one new vowel or diphthong, making one word out of ...
or elision between two words to avoid a
hiatus
Hiatus may refer to:
*Hiatus (anatomy), a natural fissure in a structure
*Hiatus (stratigraphy), a discontinuity in the age of strata in stratigraphy
*''Hiatus'', a genus of picture-winged flies with sole member species ''Hiatus fulvipes''
*Globa ...
caused by vowels: the choice of which to use depends upon whether or not the vowels are identical.
A frequent informal use is
the elision of in the past participle suffix , pronouncing as . The elision of in is considered even more informal, but both elisions common in
Andalusian Spanish
The Andalusian dialects of Spanish ( es, andaluz, , ) are spoken in Andalusia, Ceuta, Melilla, and Gibraltar. They include perhaps the most distinct of the southern variants of peninsular Spanish, differing in many respects from northern varietie ...
. Thus, the Andalusian for ("lament") has entered Standard Spanish as a term for a special feature of
Flamenco
Flamenco (), in its strictest sense, is an art form based on the various folkloric music traditions of southern Spain, developed within the gitano subculture of the region of Andalusia, and also having historical presence in Extremadura and ...
singing. Similar distinctions are made with the words and as contracted versions of the literal translations for dancer and singer exclusively used for Flamenco, compared to the and of standard Spanish. The perceived vulgarity of the silent may lead to
hypercorrection
In sociolinguistics, hypercorrection is non-standard use of language that results from the over-application of a perceived rule of language-usage prescription. A speaker or writer who produces a hypercorrection generally believes through a mi ...
s like
* for (
cod
Cod is the common name for the demersal fish genus '' Gadus'', belonging to the family Gadidae. Cod is also used as part of the common name for a number of other fish species, and one species that belongs to genus ''Gadus'' is commonly not call ...
) or * for .
Ultracorrección
' in the ''Diccionario panhispánico de dudas The ''Diccionario panhispánico de dudas'' (Pan-Hispanic Dictionary of Doubts) or ''DPD'' is an elaborate work undertaken by the Real Academia Española (RAE – Royal Spanish Academy) and the Association of Spanish Language Academies with the goal ...
'', 1st edition, October 2005, Real Academia Española
The Royal Spanish Academy ( es, Real Academia Española, generally abbreviated as RAE) is Spain's official royal institution with a mission to ensure the stability of the Spanish language. It is based in Madrid, Spain, and is affiliated with ...
.
Tamil
Tamil
Tamil may refer to:
* Tamils, an ethnic group native to India and some other parts of Asia
**Sri Lankan Tamils, Tamil people native to Sri Lanka also called ilankai tamils
**Tamil Malaysians, Tamil people native to Malaysia
* Tamil language, nativ ...
has a set of rules for elision. They are categorised into classes based on the
phoneme
In phonology and linguistics, a phoneme () is a unit of sound that can distinguish one word from another in a particular language.
For example, in most dialects of English, with the notable exception of the West Midlands and the north-west o ...
where elision occurs:
Urdu
In Pakistan, elision has become very common in speech. Commonly used words have single consonants or syllables removed in casual speech and it is becoming more acceptable in formal settings due to an increasing understandability and use. Although not seen when writing in the Urdu script (Nastaleeq), it is often seen in Roman Urdu (Latin alphabet) as the latter is more similar to vernacular Urdu. Most elisions occur by removing a vowel or the consonant /h/ or a combination of the two. Some widely-used examples are:
''(The difference between the elision May and the original word Main is the lack of nasalization at the end in the former.)''
In sentences, they may appear as:
''Kya tum paṛ ray o?'' ("Are you studying?") instead of "''Kya tum paṛh rahay ho?"''
Variations are also common where some individuals may prefer to pronounce a complete word such as "''paṛh"'' while shortening the rest, depending on the preference of the person, their dialect, or their accent.
Welsh
Elision is a major feature of
Welsh
Welsh may refer to:
Related to Wales
* Welsh, referring or related to Wales
* Welsh language, a Brittonic Celtic language spoken in Wales
* Welsh people
People
* Welsh (surname)
* Sometimes used as a synonym for the ancient Britons (Celtic peop ...
, found commonly in verb forms, such as in the following examples:
* - 'Do you like the coffee?' (The definitite article is always after a vowel even when the next word begins with a consonant, e.g. - 'the cat is scratching', but - 'the black cat'.
* - 'Where is the town?'
* - 'I am reading'
Elision of word-final is almost always found in
spoken Welsh to the point where the words are spelt with optional final in words like and has been eradicated from the inflected prepositions: , not * - 'on me', etc. These always retain their final in the
literary register, however.
Welsh also displays elision of initial syllables in singular/plural or collective/singulative pairs where the plural or singulative becomes longer than two syllables. This, however, is now restricted to specific nouns and is not productive. E.g. - 'sock / socks' where the initial has been lost in the plural; - 'birds / a bird' where the initial has been lost in the singulative.
Related areas
*
Aphaeresis
*
Apocope
In phonology, apocope () is the loss (elision) of a word-final vowel. In a broader sense, it can refer to the loss of any final sound (including consonants) from a word.
Etymology
''Apocope'' comes from the Greek () from () "cutting off", from ...
*
Clipping (morphology)
In linguistics, clipping, also called truncation or shortening, is word formation by removing some Segment (linguistics), segments of an existing word to create a synonym. Clipping differs from abbreviation, which is based on a shortening of the ...
*
Cluster reduction
In phonology and historical linguistics, cluster reduction is the simplification of consonant clusters in certain environments or over time. Cluster reduction can happen in different languages, dialects of those languages, in world Englishes, and ...
*
Contraction
Contraction may refer to:
Linguistics
* Contraction (grammar), a shortened word
* Poetic contraction, omission of letters for poetic reasons
* Elision, omission of sounds
** Syncope (phonology), omission of sounds in a word
* Synalepha, merged ...
*
Crasis
Crasis (; from the Greek , "mixing", "blending"); cf. , "I mix" ''wine with water''; '' kratēr'' "mixing-bowl" is related. is a type of contraction in which two vowels or diphthongs merge into one new vowel or diphthong, making one word out of ...
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Disemvoweling
Disemvoweling, disemvowelling (see doubled ''L''), or disemvowelment of a piece of alphabetic text is rewriting it with all the vowel letters elided. Disemvoweling is a common feature of SMS language as disemvoweling requires little cognitive ef ...
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Elision in the French language
In French, elision is the suppression of a final unstressed vowel (usually ) immediately before another word beginning with a vowel or a muted h. The term also refers to the orthographic convention by which the deletion of a vowel is reflected in w ...
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Lacuna
Lacuna (plural lacunas or lacunae) may refer to:
Related to the meaning "gap"
* Lacuna (manuscripts), a gap in a manuscript, inscription, text, painting, or musical work
**Great Lacuna, a lacuna of eight leaves where there was heroic Old Norse po ...
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Poetic contraction
Poetic contractions are contractions of words found in poetry but not commonly used in everyday modern English. Also known as elision or syncope, these contractions are usually used to lower the number of syllables in a particular word in order ...
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Prodelision
Prodelision is a form of elision where, in a string of two words, the latter word loses its initial vowel(s).
Example:
"Namqu(e) etsi nullum memorabile nomen
femine(a) in poena (e)st, habet haec victoria laudem,
exstinxisse nefas." (Aeneid 2.583- ...
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Sandhi
Sandhi ( sa, सन्धि ' , "joining") is a cover term for a wide variety of sound changes that occur at morpheme or word boundaries. Examples include fusion of sounds across word boundaries and the alteration of one sound depending on near ...
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Synaeresis
In linguistics, synaeresis (; also spelled syneresis) is a phonological process of sound change in which two adjacent vowels within a word are ''combined'' into a single syllable.
The opposite process, in which two adjacent vowels are pronounce ...
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Synalepha
A synalepha or synaloepha is the merging of two syllables into one, especially when it causes two words to be pronounced as one.
The original meaning in Ancient Greek is more general than modern usage and includes coalescence of vowels within a w ...
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Syncope
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Synizesis
Synizesis () is a sound change (metaplasm) in which two originally syllabic vowels (hiatus) are pronounced instead as a single syllable. In poetry, the vowel contraction would often be necessitated by the metrical requirements of the poetic form. ...
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Vowel reduction
In phonetics, vowel reduction is any of various changes in the acoustic ''quality'' of vowels as a result of changes in stress, sonority, duration, loudness, articulation, or position in the word (e.g. for the Creek language
The Muscogee lang ...
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Weak form words
References
General references
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External links
French examples(contains pop-up ad)
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Figures of speech
Phonology
Poetic devices
Prosody (linguistics)