Elision

Lessons and examples

Words and phrases:

I gave her the book /aɪ 'ɡeɪvɚ ðə 'bʊk/

What happened? / wə 'æpən/

I gave her the book /aɪ 'ɡeɪvɚ ðə 'bʊk/

Family /ˈfæmli/
Chocolate /ˈtʃɒklət/

I would like to travel a lot /aɪd 'laiktə 'trævəl ɘlot/
There are few trees in the wood. /ðərɚ fju 'tri:z ɪnðə 'wʊd/

I don't know what to say /ai doʊn(t) noʊ wət tə seɪ/
I must have asked it before /aɪ məst ɘv 'æskt ɪt bɪfɔ:r/

Links and Videos:

* Connected Speech

This E-Lecture discusses and exemplifies the consequences of the rhythmic organization of spoken English as a stress-timed language: Assimilation, Elision, Weakening and Liaison. As usual Handke illustrates his arguments by numerous examples from PDE

* Elision (presentation)

Elision, Historical elision, Present colloquial elision,Word internal vowel elision..

* Elision: Sounds disappear

Definition and example.

* Patterns of simplification

Assimilation - Elision - Compression

*Elision (shakespeareswords)

Elision in grammatical words, in word-endings, in lexical words..

* Teaching english

British council (BBC)

Does "Elision" exist in Chilean Spanish?

We can find instances of elision in Chilean Spanish:

* The elision of the sound /s/ al the final of the syllable in colloquial speaking. The aspiration occurs only in front of a consonant as in this cases:

Las casas ---> lah casa.
Los amigos ---> loh amigo.

* Elision also occurs with the sound /d/, at the end of the word. It happens in common Chilean spanish, and the intervocalic is elided only in colloquial speaking:

la universidad > la universidá > la universiá.

And finally, elision is produced with these intervocalic sounds: /b/ - /v/.

Example: la universidad > la uniersiá.

We clarify that this only occurs in colloquial speaking.

Find out more information --> Fonética criolla (in spanish)

Elision in english

This lesson helps us to understand a little bit more about elision.

This video is from:

http://www.speakmoreclearly.com/britishaccent

Enjoy it!

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.

Definitions

“(..) Under certain circumstances sounds disappear; one might express this in more technical language by saying that in certain a phoneme may be realized as zero, or have zero realization or be deleted.(..) elision is typical of rapid casual speech(..)”

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

"Some of the sounds that are heard if words are pronounced slowly and clearly appear not to be pronounced when the same words are produced in a rapid, colloquial style, or when the words occur in a different context; these “missing sounds” are said to have been elided."

Peter Roach - A Little Encyclopaedia Of Phonetics

“A type of economy of articulation that consist of omitting either a vowel or a consonant. The omission of sounds is known as elision”

Hector Ortiz Lira – A course in English phonetics for Spanish speakers

Elision by Peter Roach

This is how Peter Roach, Professor of Phonetics, describes elision:

"The nature of elision may be stated quite simply: under certain circumstances sounds disappear; one might express this in more technical language by saying that in certain circumstances a phoneme may be realised as zero, or have zero realisation or be deleted. As with assimilation, elision is typical of rapid, casual speech; the process of change in phoneme realisations produced by changing the speed and casualness of speech is sometimes called gradation. Producing elisions is something which foreing learners do not need to learn to do, but it is important for them be aware that when native speakers of English talk to each other, quite a number of phonemes that the foreigner might expect to hear are not actually pronounced.(..)"

Peter Roach – English Phonetics and Phonology, a course book. Ch. 14.