Instances of elision

We will look at some examples of instances of elision, when phonemes are not pronounced:

Loss of weak vowel after p,t,k

In some words the vowel in the first syllable may disappear; the aspiration of the initial plosive takes up the whole of the middle portion of the syllable, resulting in these pronunciations:

Weak vowel +n,l or r becomes syllabic consonants

Consonants become syllabic consonants.

Avoidance of complex consonant clusters

It has been said that no normal English speaker would ever pronounce all the consonants between the last two words of the following:

Through this is not impossible to pronounce, something like sɪksθrəʊn is more likely. In clusters of three plosives plus a fricative, the middle plosive may disappear, so that the following pronunciations result:

Loss of final v in “of” before consonant

Contractions

It is difficult to know whether contractions of grammatical words should be regarded as examples of elision or not. The fact that they are regularly represented with special spelling forms makes them seem rather different from the above examples. The best-known cases are:

NOTE: The Pronunciation changes not because of an articulatory change according to a phenomenon like the variation of speed, but a graphic mark (called Grapheme) that indicates the contraction and the consequent reduction.

Source: Peter Roach – English Phonetics and Phonology, a course book.