Word Of The Day
Sep. 14th, 2020 07:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jazzy_daveToday's word is more technical -
Elision
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. The word elision is frequently used in linguistic description of living languages, and deletion is often used in historical linguistics for a historical sound change.
While often described as occurring in "slurred" speech, elisions are a normal speech phenomenon and come naturally to native speakers of the language in which they occur. Contractions such as can not → can't involve elision, and "dropping" of word-internal unstressed vowels (known specifically as syncope) is frequent: Mississippi → Missippi, history → histry, mathematics → mathmatics.
The opposite of elision is epenthesis, whereby sounds are inserted into a word, as in American English ath[ə]lete, real[ə]tor. The latter illustrates that this and other phenomena do not necessarily occur to ease pronunciation; even speakers who produce real[ə]tor regularly show no difficulty in pronouncing the /lt/ cluster of Walter, helter skelter, filter, etc.
The omission of a word from a phrase or sentence is not elision but ellipsis, or elliptical construction.
Elision
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. The word elision is frequently used in linguistic description of living languages, and deletion is often used in historical linguistics for a historical sound change.
While often described as occurring in "slurred" speech, elisions are a normal speech phenomenon and come naturally to native speakers of the language in which they occur. Contractions such as can not → can't involve elision, and "dropping" of word-internal unstressed vowels (known specifically as syncope) is frequent: Mississippi → Missippi, history → histry, mathematics → mathmatics.
The opposite of elision is epenthesis, whereby sounds are inserted into a word, as in American English ath[ə]lete, real[ə]tor. The latter illustrates that this and other phenomena do not necessarily occur to ease pronunciation; even speakers who produce real[ə]tor regularly show no difficulty in pronouncing the /lt/ cluster of Walter, helter skelter, filter, etc.
The omission of a word from a phrase or sentence is not elision but ellipsis, or elliptical construction.
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