In
phonetics
Phonetics is a branch of linguistics that studies how humans produce and perceive sounds, or in the case of sign languages, the equivalent aspects of sign. Linguists who specialize in studying the physical properties of speech are phoneticians. ...
and
historical 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
# ...
, fusion, or coalescence, is a
sound change
A sound change, in historical linguistics, is a change in the pronunciation of a language. A sound change can involve the replacement of one speech sound (or, more generally, one phonetic feature value) by a different one (called phonetic chang ...
where two or more
segments with
distinctive feature
In linguistics, a distinctive feature is the most basic unit of phonological structure that distinguishes one sound from another within a language. For example, the feature oicedistinguishes the two bilabial plosives: and There are many diffe ...
s merge into a single segment. This can occur both on
consonants
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 ...
and in
vowels
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 word like ''educate'' is one that may exhibit fusion, e.g. or . A merger between two segments can also occur between
word boundaries, an example being the phrase ''got ya'' being pronounced like ''gotcha'' . Most cases of fusion lead to
allophonic
In phonology, an allophone (; from the Greek , , 'other' and , , 'voice, sound') is a set of multiple possible spoken soundsor '' phones''or signs used to pronounce a single phoneme in a particular language. For example, in English, (as in '' ...
variation, though some sequences of segments may lead to wholly distinct
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 ...
s.
A common form of fusion is found in the development of
nasal vowel
A nasal vowel is a vowel that is produced with a lowering of the soft palate (or velum) so that the air flow escapes through the nose and the mouth simultaneously, as in the French vowel or Amoy []. By contrast, oral vowels are produced wit ...
s, which frequently become phonemic when final nasal consonants are lost from a language. This occurred in French and Portuguese. Compare the French words ''un vin blanc'' "a white wine" with their English
cognate
In historical linguistics, cognates or lexical cognates are sets of words in different languages that have been inherited in direct descent from an etymology, etymological ancestor in a proto-language, common parent language. Because language c ...
s, ''one, wine, blank,'' which retain the n's.
Often the resulting sound has the
place of articulation
In articulatory phonetics, the place of articulation (also point of articulation) of a consonant is a location along the vocal tract where its production occurs. It is a point where a constriction is made between an active and a passive articula ...
of one of the source sounds and the
manner of articulation
In articulatory phonetics, the manner of articulation is the configuration and interaction of the articulators (speech organs such as the tongue, lips, and palate) when making a speech sound. One parameter of manner is ''stricture,'' that is, h ...
of the other, as in
Malay
Malay may refer to:
Languages
* Malay language or Bahasa Melayu, a major Austronesian language spoken in Indonesia, Malaysia, Brunei and Singapore
** History of the Malay language, the Malay language from the 4th to the 14th century
** Indonesi ...
.
Vowel coalescence is extremely common. The resulting vowel is often long, and either between the two original vowels in vowel space, as in → → and → → in French (compare English ''day'' and ''law'' ), in Hindi (with ), and in some varieties of Arabic; or combines features of the vowels, as in → → and → → .
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 ...
may be considered an extreme form of fusion.
Examples
Indo-European languages
English
Historically, the
alveolar Alveolus (; pl. alveoli, adj. alveolar) is a general anatomical term for a concave cavity or pit.
Uses in anatomy and zoology
* Pulmonary alveolus, an air sac in the lungs
** Alveolar cell or pneumocyte
** Alveolar duct
** Alveolar macrophage
* ...
plosive
In phonetics, a plosive, also known as an occlusive or simply a stop, is a pulmonic consonant in which the vocal tract is blocked so that all airflow ceases.
The occlusion may be made with the tongue tip or blade (, ), tongue body (, ), lips ...
s and
fricative
A fricative is a consonant produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two articulators close together. These may be the lower lip against the upper teeth, in the case of ; the back of the tongue against the soft palate in t ...
s have fused with , in a process referred to as
yod coalescence
The phonological history of the English language includes various changes in the phonology of consonant clusters.
H-cluster reductions
The H-cluster reductions are various consonant reductions that have occurred in the history of English, inv ...
. Words like ''nature'' and ''omission'' have had such consonant clusters, being pronounced like and . Words ending in the Latin-derived suffixes ''-tion'' and ''-sion'', such as ''fiction'' and ''mission'', are examples that exhibit yod coalescence.
This sound change was not, however, distributed evenly. Words like ''module'' may be realised as either or . Words that did not experience universal yod coalescence, are always realised as two segments in accents like
Received Pronunciation
Received Pronunciation (RP) is the Accent (sociolinguistics), accent traditionally regarded as the Standard language, standard and most Prestige (sociolinguistics), prestigious form of spoken British English. For over a century, there has been ...
. Most other dialects do pronounce them as one segment, however, like
American English
American English, sometimes called United States English or U.S. English, is the set of variety (linguistics), varieties of the English language native to the United States. English is the Languages of the United States, most widely spoken lan ...
.
Words with primary stress on a syllable with such a cluster did not experience coalescence either. Examples include ''tune'' and ''assume'' . Some dialects exhibit coalescence in these cases, where some coalesce only and , while others also coalesce and . In
General American
General American English or General American (abbreviated GA or GenAm) is the umbrella accent of American English spoken by a majority of Americans. In the United States it is often perceived as lacking any distinctly regional, ethnic, or so ...
,
elide
In linguistics, an elision or deletion is the omission of one or more sounds (such as a vowel, a consonant, or a whole syllable) in a word or phrase. However, these terms are also used to refer more narrowly to cases where two words are run toget ...
s entirely when following alveolar consonants, in a process called
yod dropping
The phonological history of the English language includes various changes in the phonology of consonant clusters.
H-cluster reductions
The H-cluster reductions are various consonant reductions that have occurred in the history of English, inv ...
. The previous examples end up as and . Words that have already coalesced are not affected by this.
Australian English
Australian English (AusE, AusEng, AuE, AuEng, en-AU) is the set of varieties of the English language native to Australia. It is the country's common language and ''de facto'' national language; while Australia has no official language, Engli ...
exhibits yod coalescence to an extreme degree, even when the cluster is in a stressed syllable, though there is some sociolectal variation. In an accent with full yod coalescence, ''tune'' and ''assume'' are pronounced like and . This can result in homophony between previously distinct words, as between ''dune'' and ''June'', which are both pronounced .
Romance languages
Most
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 have coalesced sequences of consonants followed by . Sequences of plosives followed by most often became
affricate
An affricate is a consonant that begins as a stop and releases as a fricative, generally with the same place of articulation (most often coronal). It is often difficult to decide if a stop and fricative form a single phoneme or a consonant pair. ...
s, often being intermediary stages to other manners of articulation. Sonorants in such a sequence (except
bilabial consonant
In phonetics, a bilabial consonant is a labial consonant articulated with both lips.
Frequency
Bilabial consonants are very common across languages. Only around 0.7% of the world's languages lack bilabial consonants altogether, including Tlingi ...
s) mostly became
palatalized.
Greek
During the development of
Ancient Greek
Ancient Greek includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Dark Ages (), the Archaic peri ...
from
Proto-Greek
The Proto-Greek language (also known as Proto-Hellenic) is the Indo-European language which was the last common ancestor of all varieties of Greek, including Mycenaean Greek, the subsequent ancient Greek dialects (i.e., Attic, Ionic, Ae ...
, the labiovelar , , and became , , and . Although the labiovelars were already a single consonant, they had two places of articulation, a velar articulation and labial secondary articulation (). However, the development of labiovelars varies from dialect to dialect, and some may have become dental instead. An example is the word ' "cow" from Proto-Greek '.
A vowel coalescence from Ancient Greek to
Koine Greek
Koine Greek (; Koine el, ἡ κοινὴ διάλεκτος, hē koinè diálektos, the common dialect; ), also known as Hellenistic Greek, common Attic, the Alexandrian dialect, Biblical Greek or New Testament Greek, was the common supra-reg ...
fused many diphthongs, especially those including . E.g. > ; > ; and > and > .
Celtic languages
Several consonant clusters in
Proto-Celtic
Proto-Celtic, or Common Celtic, is the ancestral proto-language of all known Celtic languages, and a descendant of Proto-Indo-European. It is not attested in writing but has been partly Linguistic reconstruction, reconstructed through the compar ...
underwent fusion, most prominently /*ɡ/ to the following consonant in
coda
Coda or CODA may refer to:
Arts, entertainment, and media Films
* Movie coda, a post-credits scene
* ''Coda'' (1987 film), an Australian horror film about a serial killer, made for television
*''Coda'', a 2017 American experimental film from Na ...
position. Examples include to and to in
Old Irish
Old Irish, also called Old Gaelic ( sga, Goídelc, Ogham script: ᚌᚑᚔᚇᚓᚂᚉ; ga, Sean-Ghaeilge; gd, Seann-Ghàidhlig; gv, Shenn Yernish or ), is the oldest form of the Goidelic/Gaelic language for which there are extensive writt ...
.
North Germanic languages
In
Norwegian
Norwegian, Norwayan, or Norsk may refer to:
*Something of, from, or related to Norway, a country in northwestern Europe
* Norwegians, both a nation and an ethnic group native to Norway
* Demographics of Norway
*The Norwegian language, including ...
and
Swedish
Swedish or ' may refer to:
Anything from or related to Sweden, a country in Northern Europe. Or, specifically:
* Swedish language, a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Sweden and Finland
** Swedish alphabet, the official alphabet used by ...
, this process occurs whenever the phoneme is followed by an alveolar consonant. The articulation of the resulting fusion becomes
retroflex
A retroflex ( /ˈɹɛtʃɹoːflɛks/), apico-domal ( /əpɪkoːˈdɔmɪnəl/), or cacuminal () consonant is a coronal consonant where the tongue has a flat, concave, or even curled shape, and is articulated between the alveolar ridge and the ha ...
. Examples include the Norwegian and Swedish . This even occurs across word boundaries, as in the sentence "''går det bra?''" becoming .
This process will continue for as long as there are more alveolar consonants, though when this amount exceeds four, people usually try to break it up or shorten it, usually by replacing with , or eliding . An extreme example of this would be the word ''ordensstraff'' , having six retroflex consonants in a row.
In colloquial Norwegian, the sequence /rt/ may even coalesce over non-alveolar phonemes, changing their place of articulation to retroflex, even if /r/ normally wouldn't trigger it. Examples include , , and . This process does not occur across word boundaries, e.g. ''sterk tann'' is pronounced and not
In dialects where is articulated
uvularly, this process invariably takes place on
idiolect
Idiolect is an individual's unique use of language, including speech. This unique usage encompasses vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation. This differs from a dialect, a common set of linguistic characteristics shared among a group of people.
Th ...
al level. For example, may be realised as or . This may appear in regions where /r/ has recently become uvular.
Austronesian languages
Malay
In
Malay
Malay may refer to:
Languages
* Malay language or Bahasa Melayu, a major Austronesian language spoken in Indonesia, Malaysia, Brunei and Singapore
** History of the Malay language, the Malay language from the 4th to the 14th century
** Indonesi ...
, the final consonant of the prefix (where N stands for a "placeless nasal", i.e. a
nasal with no specified
place of articulation
In articulatory phonetics, the place of articulation (also point of articulation) of a consonant is a location along the vocal tract where its production occurs. It is a point where a constriction is made between an active and a passive articula ...
) coalesces with a
voiceless
In linguistics, voicelessness is the property of sounds being pronounced without the larynx vibrating. Phonologically, it is a type of phonation, which contrasts with other states of the larynx, but some object that the word phonation implies v ...
stop
Stop may refer to:
Places
* Stop, Kentucky, an unincorporated community in the United States
* Stop (Rogatica), a village in Rogatica, Republika Srpska, Bosnia and Herzegovina
Facilities
* Bus stop
* Truck stop, a type of rest stop for truck d ...
at the beginning of the root to which the prefix is attached. The resulting sound is a nasal that has the place of articulation of the root-initial consonant. For example:
* becomes 'cut' ( and are both pronounced with the lips)
* becomes 'write' ( and are both pronounced with the tip of the tongue)
* becomes 'guess' ( and are both pronounced at the back of the tongue)
Japanese
Vowel coalescence occurs in
Owari Japanese
Japanese may refer to:
* Something from or related to Japan, an island country in East Asia
* Japanese language, spoken mainly in Japan
* Japanese people, the ethnic group that identifies with Japan through ancestry or culture
** Japanese diaspor ...
. The Diphthongs and change to , and change to and changes to . E.g. > , > , > . Younger speakers may vary between Standard Japanese diphthongs and dialectal monophthongs.
[Youngberg, Connor. (2013) ]
Vocalic Coalescence in Owari Japanese
'' SOAS Working Papers in Linguistics, vol. 16.
See also
*
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 ...
, sound changes that occur at morpheme or word boundaries
*
Unpacking, the opposite of fusion
*
Yod-coalescence
The phonological history of the English language includes various changes in the phonology of consonant clusters.
H-cluster reductions
The H-cluster reductions are various consonant reductions that have occurred in the history of English, inv ...
References
{{Reflist
Sources
*Crowley, Terry. (1997) ''An Introduction to Historical Linguistics.'' 3rd edition. Oxford University Press.
Assimilation (linguistics)