Moisés Ánton Bittner

Phonetics and Phonology, 2013

Intro.

The ways in which speech sounds influence each otherwhen they are neighbours is of great interest tocontemporary phoneticians and phonologists, but thesubject is also one which interested the Sanskritgrammarians of India (who introduced the term) over twothousand years ago.

The notion of sandhi is used mainly in the area betweenmorphology and phonology, and is not much used in thestudy of pronunciation. It is most commonly found indiscussion of tone languages and the contextual influenceson tones.

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Sandhi

Sandhi (Sanskrit: सधंि sandhi "joining") is a cover term for awide variety of phonological processes that occurat morpheme or word boundaries (thus belonging to what iscalled morphophonology).

Internal sandhi features the alteration of sounds withinwords at morpheme boundaries, as in sympathy (syn- + pathy).-> /n/+/p/ => /m/

External sandhi refers to changes found at word boundaries,such as in the pronunciation tem books for ten books in somedialects of English. The linking r of some dialects of English is akind of external sandhi. -> /n/+/b/ => /m/

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Assimilation Assimilation is a common phonological process by which one sound becomes

more like a nearby sound. This can occur either within a word or between words.

Assimilation can be synchronic—that is, an active process in a language at agiven point in time— or diachronic: That is, a historical sound change.

If a sound changes with reference to a following segment, it is traditionallycalled ‘regressive assimilation’; changes with reference to a preceding segmentare traditionally called ‘progressive’.

Regressive assimilation is also known as right-to-left, leading, or anticipatoryassimilation. Progressive assimilation is also known as left-to-right orperseveratory or preservative, lagging or lag assimilation.

Occasionally two sounds (invariably adjacent) may influence one another inreciprocal assimilation. When such a change results in a single segment withsome of the features of both components, it is known as coalescence or fusion.

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Exempli gratia1.- Regressive assimilation

a) tenth /tenT/ [tenT]

b) handbag /hnbag/ [hmbag]

c) bad boys /bad bOIz/ [bab bOIz]

2.- Progressive assimilation

- What’s the problem? /wQts D prQblm/ [ wQts z pQblm]

3.- Coalescent assimilation

- Do you smoke? /dU ju: smUk/ /dju smUk/ [dZu smUk]

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Coarticulation An articulation which involves in a simultaneous or

overlapping way more than one point in the vocal tract.

One segment influences another to produce an allophonicvariation, such as vowels acquiring the feature nasal beforenasal consonants when the velum opens prematurely.

e.g.

shoe /Su:/ (/S/ lip-rounding)

seen /si:n/ - soon /su:n/ (/n/ slightly further forward in seen)

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Linking r and Intrusive r Involve the appearance of the rhotic consonant (whichnormally corresponds to the letter ⟨r⟩) between twoconsecutive morphemes where it would not normally bepronounced.

These phenomena occur in many non-rhotic varieties ofEnglish, such as those in most of England and Wales, partof the United States, and all of the southern hemisphere(Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Falkland Islands).

These phenomena first appeared in English sometime afterthe year 1700.

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Non-rhotic varieties of English

Non-rhotic varieties of English only pronounce /r/ when it immediately precedesa vowel.

This is called r-vocalisation, r-loss, r-deletion, r-dropping, r-lessness, ornon-rhoticity.

In non-rhotic varieties of English, the sound /r/ does not occur in a word suchas tuner when it is spoken in isolation, before an intonation break, or before aword beginning with a consonant.

Even though the word is spelled with an ⟨r⟩ (which reflects that an /r/ waspronounced in the past), non-rhotic accents do not pronounce an /r/ when thereis no vowel sound to follow it.

Thus, in isolation, speakers of non-rhotic accents pronounce thewords tuner and tuna identically as [tju:n].

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Linking r

In many non-rhotic accents, words historically endingin /r/ (as evidenced by an ⟨r⟩ in the spelling) may bepronounced with [r] when they are closely followed byanother morpheme beginning with a vowel sound.

e.g. there / De / there is / DerIz / there are / DerA:/

It is said that this is done to link the words withoutsliding the two vowels together. (hiatus) /haIeIts/

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Intrusive r The phenomenon of intrusive r is an overgeneralising

reinterpretation of linking r into an r-insertion rule that affectsany word that ends in the non-high vowels such as //, /I/, /A:/,or /O:/.

When a word is closely followed by another word beginning in avowel sound, an [r] is inserted between them, even when nofinal /r/ was historically present.

e.g. tuna oil would be pronounced [tju:nr OIl].

The epenthetic [r] can be inserted to prevent hiatus (twoconsecutive vowel sounds).

http://www.lyricsfreak.com/b/beatles/a+day+in+the+life_10026556.htmlhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RVa5YxYxzk0

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Epenthesis When a speaker inserts a redundant sound in asequence of phonemes, that process is known asepenthesis; redundant in this context means that theadditional sound is unnecessary, in that it addsnothing to the information contained in the othersounds.

e.g. biscuit /bIskIt/ => [bIsuketo]

(English) (Japanese)

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Elision

Elision is the omission of one or more sounds (such as a vowel,a consonant, or a whole syllable) in a word or phrase, producinga result that is easier for the speaker to pronounce.

Not all elided words are contractions and not all contractions areelided words (for example, 'going to' -> gonna: an elision that isnot a contraction; 'can not' -> cannot: a contraction that is notan elision).

In Spanish, elision occurs less frequently but is common incertain dialects. Of particular interest is the word para, whichbecomes pa'. Multiple words can be elided together, asin pa'trabajar for para trabajar and pa'delante oreven pa'lante for para adelante.

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Word IPA before elision IPA after elision

comfortable /kVmftbl/ [ kVmf tbl ] (rhotic English)[ kVmftbl ] (non-rhotic English)

fifth /fIfT/ [ fIT ]

laboratory /lbO:rtri/ [ lbrtO:ri ] (SAE)[ lbQrtri ] (RP)

temperature /temprtS/[ temprtS ] (SAE)[ temprtS ] (RP)

vegetable /vedZtbl/ [ vedZtbl ] - [ vetStbl ]

family /fmIli/ [ fmli ]

him /hIm/ [ Im ]

going to /gU.IN tu:/ [ gQn ] - [ gn ]

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References http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandhi

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assimilation_(linguistics)

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/regressive+assimilation

http://www.uv.es/anglotic/phonology/suprasegmental_phonology/assimilation_exercises/

http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=3ZPQVuSgDAkC&pg=PT102&lpg=PT102&dq=coarticulation+%3D+coalescence&source=bl&ots=Z7IGtrUnQ5&sig=wI8A3xdcRwOoNa0YBTb7dG8nPm0&hl=en&sa=X&ei=Q8h1UaaQKIjz0gH1h4CoAQ&ved=0CEkQ6AEwBA

http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=jGSXwqTCwpkC&pg=PA98&lpg=PA98&dq=coarticulation+%3D+coalescence&source=bl&ots=alx1sSw-Dp&sig=m_8r-Q1WagYo74G76RUSshol_qw&hl=en&sa=X&ei=Q8h1UaaQKIjz0gH1h4CoAQ&ved=0CD8Q6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=coarticulation%20%3D%20coalescence&f=false

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