Linking Phenomena

1. Moisés Ánton Bittner
Phonetics and Phonology, 2013

2. Intro.
 The ways in which speech sounds influence each other
when they are neighbours is of great interest to
contemporary phoneticians and phonologists, but the
subject is also one which interested the Sanskrit
grammarians of India (who introduced the term) over two
thousand years ago.
 The notion of sandhi is used mainly in the area between
morphology and phonology, and is not much used in the
study of pronunciation. It is most commonly found in
discussion of tone languages and the contextual influences
on tones.
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3. Sandhi
 Sandhi (Sanskrit: संधि sandhi "joining") is a cover term for a
wide variety of phonological processes that occur
at morpheme or word boundaries (thus belonging to what is
called morphophonology).
 Internal sandhi features the alteration of sounds within
words 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 some
dialects of English. The linking r of some dialects of English is a
kind of external sandhi. -> /n/+/b/ => /m/
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4. 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 a
given point in time— or diachronic: That is, a historical sound change.
 If a sound changes with reference to a following segment, it is traditionally
called ‘regressive assimilation’; changes with reference to a preceding segment
are traditionally called ‘progressive’.
 Regressive assimilation is also known as right-to-left, leading, or anticipatory
assimilation. Progressive assimilation is also known as left-to-right or
perseveratory or preservative, lagging or lag assimilation.
 Occasionally two sounds (invariably adjacent) may influence one another in
reciprocal assimilation. When such a change results in a single segment with
some of the features of both components, it is known as coalescence or fusion.
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5. Exempli gratia
1.- Regressive assimilation
a) tenth /tenT/  [tenT]
b) handbag /hnbag/  [hmbag]
c) bad boys /bad bOIz/  [bab bOIz]
2.- Progressive assimilation
- What’s the problem? /wQts D prQblm/  [ wQts z pQblm]
3.- Coalescent assimilation
- Do you smoke? /dU ju: smUk/  /dju smUk/  [dZu smUk]
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6. 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 allophonic
variation, such as vowels acquiring the feature nasal before
nasal 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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7. Linking r and Intrusive r
 Involve the appearance of the rhotic consonant (which
normally corresponds to the letter ⟨r⟩) between two
consecutive morphemes where it would not normally be
pronounced.
 These phenomena occur in many non-rhotic varieties of
English, such as those in most of England and Wales, part
of the United States, and all of the southern hemisphere
(Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Falkland Islands).
 These phenomena first appeared in English sometime after
the year 1700.
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8. Non-rhotic varieties of English
 Non-rhotic varieties of English only pronounce /r/ when it immediately precedes
a vowel.
 This is called r-vocalisation, r-loss, r-deletion, r-dropping, r-lessness, or
non-rhoticity.
 In non-rhotic varieties of English, the sound /r/ does not occur in a word such
as tuner when it is spoken in isolation, before an intonation break, or before a
word beginning with a consonant.
 Even though the word is spelled with an ⟨r⟩ (which reflects that an /r/ was
pronounced in the past), non-rhotic accents do not pronounce an /r/ when there
is no vowel sound to follow it.
 Thus, in isolation, speakers of non-rhotic accents pronounce the
words tuner and tuna identically as [tju:n].
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10. Linking r
 In many non-rhotic accents, words historically ending
in /r/ (as evidenced by an ⟨r⟩ in the spelling) may be
pronounced with [r] when they are closely followed by
another morpheme beginning with a vowel sound.
 e.g. there / De / there is / DerIz / there are / DerA:/
 It is said that this is done to link the words without
sliding the two vowels together. (hiatus) /haIeIts/
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11. Intrusive r
 The phenomenon of intrusive r is an overgeneralising
reinterpretation of linking r into an r-insertion rule that affects
any 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 a
vowel sound, an [r] is inserted between them, even when no
final /r/ was historically present.
e.g. tuna oil would be pronounced [tju:nr OIl].
 The epenthetic [r] can be inserted to prevent hiatus (two
consecutive vowel sounds).
http://www.lyricsfreak.com/b/beatles/a+day+in+the+life_10026556.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RVa5YxYxzk0
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12. Epenthesis
 When a speaker inserts a redundant sound in a
sequence of phonemes, that process is known as
epenthesis; redundant in this context means that the
additional sound is unnecessary, in that it adds
nothing to the information contained in the other
sounds.
e.g. biscuit /bIskIt/ => [bIsuketo]
(English) (Japanese)
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14. 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, producing
a result that is easier for the speaker to pronounce.
 Not all elided words are contractions and not all contractions are
elided words (for example, 'going to' -> gonna: an elision that is
not a contraction; 'can not' -> cannot: a contraction that is not
an elision).
 In Spanish, elision occurs less frequently but is common in
certain dialects. Of particular interest is the word para, which
becomes pa'. Multiple words can be elided together, as
in pa'trabajar for para trabajar and pa'delante or
even pa'lante for para adelante.
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15. Word IPA before elision IPA after elision
comfortable /kVmftbl/
[ kVmftbl ] (rhotic English)
[ kVmftbl ] (non-rhotic English)
fifth /fIfT/ [ fIT ]
laboratory /lbO:rtri/
[ lbrtO:ri ] (SAE)
[ lbQrtri ] (RP)
temperature /temprtS/
[ temprtS ] (SAE)
[ temprtS ] (RP)
vegetable /vedZtbl/ [ vedZtbl ] - [ vetStbl ]
family /fmIli/ [ fmli ]
him /hIm/ [ Im ]
going to /gU.IN tu:/ [ gQn ] - [ gn ]
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16. 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_exercise
s/
 http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=3ZPQVuSgDAkC&pg=PT102&lpg=PT102&dq=coarti
culation+%3D+coalescence&source=bl&ots=Z7IGtrUnQ5&sig=wI8A3xdcRwOoNa0YBTb
7dG8nPm0&hl=en&sa=X&ei=Q8h1UaaQKIjz0gH1h4CoAQ&ved=0CEkQ6AEwBA
 http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=jGSXwqTCwpkC&pg=PA98&lpg=PA98&dq=coartic
ulation+%3D+coalescence&source=bl&ots=alx1sSw-Dp&sig=m_8r-
Q1WagYo74G76RUSshol_qw&hl=en&sa=X&ei=Q8h1UaaQKIjz0gH1h4CoAQ&ved=0CD8
Q6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=coarticulation%20%3D%20coalescence&f=false
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