In
phonology, epenthesis (;
Greek ) means the addition of one or more sounds to a word, especially in the beginning syllable (''
prothesis'') or in the ending syllable (''
paragoge'') or in-between two syllabic sounds in a word. The word ''epenthesis'' comes from "in addition to" and ''en-'' "in" and ''thesis'' "putting". Epenthesis may be divided into two types: excrescence for the addition of a
consonant, and for the addition of a
vowel, svarabhakti (in
Hindi,
Bengali
Bengali or Bengalee, or Bengalese may refer to:
*something of, from, or related to Bengal, a large region in South Asia
* Bengalis, an ethnic and linguistic group of the region
* Bengali language, the language they speak
** Bengali alphabet, the w ...
and other North Indian languages, stemming from
Sanskrit) or alternatively anaptyxis (). The opposite process, where one or more sounds are removed, is referred to as
elision.
Uses
Epenthesis arises for a variety of reasons. The
phonotactics of a given language may discourage vowels in
hiatus
Hiatus may refer to:
* Hiatus (anatomy), a natural fissure in a structure
* Hiatus (stratigraphy), a discontinuity in the age of strata in stratigraphy
*''Hiatus'', a genus of picture-winged flies with sole member species '' Hiatus fulvipes''
* G ...
or
consonant cluster
In linguistics, a consonant cluster, consonant sequence or consonant compound, is a group of consonants which have no intervening vowel. In English, for example, the groups and are consonant clusters in the word ''splits''. In the education fi ...
s, and a consonant or vowel may be added to make pronunciation easier. Epenthesis may be represented in writing, or it may be a feature only of the spoken language.
Separating vowels
A consonant may be added to separate vowels in hiatus, as is the case with
linking and intrusive R
Linking R and intrusive R are sandhi or ''linking'' phenomena involving the appearance of the rhotic consonant (which normally corresponds to the letter ) between two consecutive morphemes where it would not normally be pronounced. These phenomen ...
in English.
*''drawing'' → ''draw-r-ing''
Bridging consonant clusters
A consonant may be placed between consonants in a consonant cluster where the
place of articulation
In articulatory phonetics, the place of articulation (also point of articulation) of a consonant is a location along the vocal tract where its production occurs. It is a point where a constriction is made between an active and a passive articula ...
is different (such as if one consonant is
labial
The term ''labial'' originates from '' Labium'' (Latin for "lip"), and is the adjective that describes anything of or related to lips, such as lip-like structures. Thus, it may refer to:
* the lips
** In linguistics, a labial consonant
** In zoolog ...
and the other is
alveolar).
* ''something'' → ''somepthing''
*''
hamster
Hamsters are rodents (order Rodentia) belonging to the subfamily Cricetinae, which contains 19 species classified in seven genera.Fox, Sue. 2006. ''Hamsters''. T.F.H. Publications Inc. They have become established as popular small pets. The ...
'' → ''hampster''
* ''*a-mrotos'' → ''ambrotos'' (see
below
Below may refer to:
*Earth
* Ground (disambiguation)
*Soil
*Floor
* Bottom (disambiguation)
*Less than
*Temperatures below freezing
*Hell or underworld
People with the surname
*Ernst von Below (1863–1955), German World War I general
*Fred Below ...
)
Breaking consonant clusters
A vowel may be placed between consonants to separate them.
*''
Hamtramck
Hamtramck ( ) is a city in Wayne County, Michigan, Wayne County in the U.S. state of Michigan. As of the United States 2020 Census, 2020 census, the city population was 28,433. Hamtramck is surrounded by the city of Detroit except for a small po ...
'' → ''Hamtramick''
Other contexts
While epenthesis most often occurs between two vowels or two consonants, it can also occur between a vowel and a consonant or at the ends of words. For example, the Japanese prefix transforms regularly to when it is followed by a consonant, as in . The English suffix , often found in the form , as in (from + ), is an example of terminal excrescence.
Excrescence
Excrescence is the epenthesis of a consonant.
Historical sound change
*
Latin > French ("to tremble")
*
Old English > English ''thunder''
* French , > English ''messenger'', ''passenger''
* French , > Portuguese ,
*(Reconstructed)
Proto-Germanic > Old English , Old Saxon ("to sow")
*(Reconstructed)
Proto-Greek >
Ancient Greek ("immortal"; cf. ''
ambrosia
In the ancient Greek myths, ''ambrosia'' (, grc, ἀμβροσία 'immortality'), the food or drink of the Greek gods, is often depicted as conferring longevity or immortality upon whoever consumed it. It was brought to the gods in Olympus by ...
'')
*Latin > ''homne'' > ''homre'' >
Spanish
Spanish might refer to:
* Items from or related to Spain:
**Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain
**Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many Latin American countries
**Spanish cuisine
Other places
* Spanish, Ontario, Can ...
("man")
Synchronic rule
In
French, is inserted in inverted interrogative phrases between a verb ending in a vowel and a pronoun beginning with a vowel: ('he has') > ('has he?'). There is no epenthesis from a historical perspective since the is derived from Latin ('he has'), and so the is the original third-person verb inflection. However, it is correct to call it epenthesis when viewed
synchronically since the modern basic form of the verb is and so the
psycholinguistic process is therefore the addition of to the base form.
A similar example is the
English indefinite article ''a'', which becomes ''an'' before a vowel. It originated from
Old English ("one, a, an"), which retained an ''n'' in all positions, so a
diachronic
Synchrony and diachrony are two complementary viewpoints in linguistic analysis. A ''synchronic'' approach (from grc, συν- "together" and "time") considers a language at a moment in time without taking its history into account. Synchronic l ...
analysis would see the original ''n'' disappearing except if a following vowel required its retention: ''an'' > ''a''. However, a synchronic analysis, in keeping with the perception of most native speakers, would (equally correctly) see it as epenthesis: ''a'' > ''an''.
In
Dutch, whenever the suffix (which has several meanings) is attached to a word already ending in ''-r'', an additional is inserted in between. For example, the comparative form of the adjective ("sweet") is , but the comparative of ("sour") is and not the expected **. Similarly, the agent noun of ("to sell") is ("salesperson"), but the agent noun of ("to perform") is ("performer").
Variable rule
In English, a
stop consonant
In phonetics, a plosive, also known as an occlusive or simply a stop, is a pulmonic consonant in which the vocal tract is blocked so that all airflow ceases.
The occlusion may be made with the tongue tip or blade (, ), tongue body (, ), lip ...
is often added as a transitional sound between the parts of a nasal + fricative sequence:
*English ''hamster'' often pronounced with an added ''p'' sound,
GA: or
RP:
*English ''warmth'' often pronounced with an added ''p'' sound, GA: or RP:
*English ''fence'' often pronounced
Poetic device
*Latin "remnants, survivors" (accusative plural) > poetic
The three short syllables in do not fit into
dactylic hexameter because of the
dactyl's limit of two short syllables so the first syllable is lengthened by adding another ''l''. However, the pronunciation was often not written with double ''ll'', and may have been the normal way of pronouncing a word starting in ''rel-'' rather than a poetic modification.
In Japanese
A limited number of words in
Japanese
Japanese may refer to:
* Something from or related to Japan, an island country in East Asia
* Japanese language, spoken mainly in Japan
* Japanese people, the ethnic group that identifies with Japan through ancestry or culture
** Japanese diaspor ...
use epenthetic consonants to separate vowels. An example is the word , a compound of ''haru'' and ''ame'' in which an is added to separate the final of ''haru'' and the initial of ''ame''. That is a ''synchronic'' analysis. As for a diachronic (historical) analysis, since epenthetic consonants are not used regularly in modern Japanese, the epenthetic could be from
Old Japanese. It is also possible that Old Japanese /ame
2/ was once pronounced */same
2/; the would then be not epenthetic but simply an archaic pronunciation. Another example is .
A complex example of epenthesis is , from + . It exhibits epenthesis on both morphemes: → is common (occurring before a consonant), and → occurs only in the example; it can be analyzed as → (intervocalic) → ; akin to from + .
One
hypothesis argues that Japanese developed "as a default, epenthetic consonant in the intervocalic position".
Anaptyxis
Epenthesis of a vowel is known as anaptyxis (, from Greek "unfolding"). Some accounts distinguish between "intrusive" optional vowels, vowel-like releases of consonants as phonetic detail, and true epenthetic vowels that are required by the phonotactics of the language and are
acoustically identical with
phonemic
In phonology and linguistics, a phoneme () is a unit of sound that can distinguish one word from another in a particular language.
For example, in most dialects of English, with the notable exception of the West Midlands and the north-west ...
vowels.
Historical sound change
End of word
Many languages insert a so-called ''prop vowel'' at the end of a word, often as a result of the common sound change where vowels at the end of a word are deleted. For example, in the
Gallo-Romance languages
The Gallo-Romance branch of the Romance languages includes in the narrowest sense the Langues d'oïl and Franco-Provençal. However, other definitions are far broader, variously encompassing the Occitano-Romance, Gallo-Italic, and Rhaeto-Rom ...
, a prop
schwa /ə/ was added when final non-open vowels were dropped leaving /Cr/ clusters at the end, e.g. Latin ''nigrum'' '(shiny) black' > * >
Old French ''negre'' 'black' (thus avoiding the impermissible , cf. ''carrum'' > ''char'' 'cart').
Middle of word
Similarly as above, a vowel may be inserted in the middle of a word to resolve an impermissible word-final consonant cluster. An example of this can be found in
Lebanese Arabic, where /ˈʔalɪb/ 'heart' corresponds to
Modern Standard Arabic /qalb/ and
Egyptian Arabic /ʔælb/. In the development of
Old English,
Proto-Germanic 'field, acre' would have ended up with an impermissible final cluster (*''æcr''), so it was resolved by inserting an /e/ before the
rhotic consonant: (cf. the use of a
syllabic consonant in
Gothic
Gothic or Gothics may refer to:
People and languages
*Goths or Gothic people, the ethnonym of a group of East Germanic tribes
**Gothic language, an extinct East Germanic language spoken by the Goths
**Crimean Gothic, the Gothic language spoken b ...
).
Vowel insertion in the middle of a word can be observed in the history of the
Slavic languages, which had a preference for
open syllable
A syllable is a unit of organization for a sequence of speech sounds typically made up of a syllable nucleus (most often a vowel) with optional initial and final margins (typically, consonants). Syllables are often considered the phonological " ...
s in medieval times. An example of this is the
Proto-Slavic
Proto-Slavic (abbreviated PSl., PS.; also called Common Slavic or Common Slavonic) is the unattested, reconstructed proto-language of all Slavic languages. It represents Slavic speech approximately from the 2nd millennium B.C. through the 6th ...
form 'town', in which the
East Slavic languages inserted an epenthetic
copy vowel to open the
closed syllable
A syllable is a unit of organization for a sequence of speech sounds typically made up of a syllable nucleus (most often a vowel) with optional initial and final margins (typically, consonants). Syllables are often considered the phonological ...
, resulting in (), which became () in modern Russian and Ukrainian. Other Slavic languages used
metathesis for the vowel and the syllable-final consonant, producing *''grodŭ'' in this case, as seen in Polish ,
Old Church Slavonic градъ ''gradŭ'', Serbo-Croatian and Czech .
Another environment can be observed in the history of Modern
Persian
Persian may refer to:
* People and things from Iran, historically called ''Persia'' in the English language
** Persians, the majority ethnic group in Iran, not to be conflated with the Iranic peoples
** Persian language, an Iranian language of the ...
, in which former word-initial consonant clusters, which were still extant in
Middle Persian, are regularly broken up: Middle Persian ''brādar'' 'brother' > modern
Iranian Persian
Iranian Persian, Western Persian or Western Farsi, natively simply known as Persian (, ), refers to the varieties of the modern Persian language spoken in Iran and by minorities in neighboring countries, as well as by Iranian communities th ...
, Middle Persian ''stūn'' 'column' >
Early New Persian > modern Iranian Persian .
In Spanish, as a phonetic detail, it is usual to find a
schwa vowel in sequences of a consonant followed by a flap. For instance, 'vinegar' may be but also .
Many
Indo-Aryan language
The Indo-Aryan languages (or sometimes Indic languages) are a branch of the Indo-Iranian languages in the Indo-European language family. As of the early 21st century, they have more than 800 million speakers, primarily concentrated in India, Pa ...
s carry an inherent vowel after each consonant. For example, in
Assamese, the inherent vowel is "o" (অ), while in
Hindi and
Marathi, it is "a" (अ). Sanskrit words like "maaŋsa" (meat, মাংস), "ratna" (jewel, ৰত্ন), "yatna" (effort, যত্ন), "padma" (lotus, পদ্ম), "harsha" (joy, হৰ্ষ), "dvaara" ("door", দ্বাৰ) etc. become "moŋoh" (মাংস > মঙহ), "roton" (ৰত্ন > ৰতন), "zoton" (যত্ন > যতন), "podum" (পদ্ম > পদুম), "horix" (হৰ্ষ > হৰিষ), "duwar" (দ্বাৰ > দুৱাৰ) etc. in Assamese.
Other, non-
Tatsama words also undergo anaptyxis, for example, the English word "glass" becomes "gilas" (গিলাছ).
Beginning of word
In the
Western Romance languages
Western Romance languages are one of the two subdivisions of a proposed subdivision of the Romance languages based on the La Spezia–Rimini Line. They include the Gallo-Romance and Iberian Romance branches. Gallo-Italic may also be included. ...
, a prothetic vowel was inserted at the beginning of any word that began with and another consonant, e.g. Latin 'two-edged sword, typically used by cavalry' becomes the normal word for 'sword' in Romance languages with an inserted : Spanish/Portuguese , Catalan , Old French > modern (see also '
swordfish').
French in fact presents three layers in the vocabulary in which initial vowel epenthesis is or is not applied, depending on the time a word came into the language:
* insertion of epenthetic in inherited and commonly-used learned and semi-learned words, which then drop the following after the medieval period: Latin >
Old French > modern 'star', > Old French > modern 'study', > OF > modern 'school'
* insertion of and keeping in learned words borrowed during the
Middle Ages or the
Renaissance: > , >
* then in the modern period, is not inserted and uncommon old learned borrowings are remolded to look more like Latin: > , > , > learned Old French > remolded to modern
Grammatical rule
Epenthesis often breaks up a
consonant cluster
In linguistics, a consonant cluster, consonant sequence or consonant compound, is a group of consonants which have no intervening vowel. In English, for example, the groups and are consonant clusters in the word ''splits''. In the education fi ...
or vowel sequence that is not permitted by the
phonotactics of a language. Regular or semi-regular epenthesis commonly occurs in languages with
affix
In linguistics, an affix is a morpheme that is attached to a word stem to form a new word or word form. Affixes may be derivational, like English ''-ness'' and ''pre-'', or inflectional, like English plural ''-s'' and past tense ''-ed''. They ar ...
es. For example, a
reduced vowel
In phonetics, vowel reduction is any of various changes in the acoustic ''quality'' of vowels as a result of changes in stress, sonority, duration, loudness, articulation, or position in the word (e.g. for the Creek language), and which are pe ...
or (here abbreviated as ) is inserted before the English plural suffix and the past tense suffix when the root ends in a similar consonant: ''glass'' → ''glasses'' or ; ''bat'' → ''batted'' . However, this is a
synchronic
Synchronic may refer to:
* ''Synchronic'' (film), a 2019 American science fiction film starring Jamie Dornan and Anthony Mackie
* Synchronic analysis, the analysis of a language at a specific point of time
* Synchronicity, the experience of two or ...
analysis as the vowel was originally present in the suffix but has been lost in most words.
Borrowed words
Vocalic epenthesis typically occurs when words are borrowed from a language that has consonant clusters or
syllable coda
A syllable is a unit of organization for a sequence of speech sounds typically made up of a syllable nucleus (most often a vowel) with optional initial and final margins (typically, consonants). Syllables are often considered the phonological "b ...
s that are not permitted in the borrowing language.
Languages use various vowels, but schwa is quite common when it is available:
*
Hebrew
Hebrew (; ; ) is a Northwest Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Historically, it is one of the spoken languages of the Israelites and their longest-surviving descendants, the Jews and Samaritans. It was largely preserved ...
uses a single vowel, the
schwa (pronounced in
Israeli Hebrew).
*
Japanese
Japanese may refer to:
* Something from or related to Japan, an island country in East Asia
* Japanese language, spoken mainly in Japan
* Japanese people, the ethnic group that identifies with Japan through ancestry or culture
** Japanese diaspor ...
generally uses except after and , when it uses , and after , when it uses an
echo vowel
An echo vowel, also known as a synharmonic vowel, is a paragogic vowel that repeats the final vowel in a word in speech. For example, in Chumash, when a word ends with a glottal stop and comes at the end of an intonation unit, the final vowel ...
. For example, English ''cap'' becomes in Japanese; English ''street'', ; the
Dutch name , ; and the
German
German(s) may refer to:
* Germany (of or related to)
**Germania (historical use)
* Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language
** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law
**Ge ...
name , .
*
Korean uses in most cases. is used after borrowed , , , , or , although may also be used after borrowed depending on the source language. is used when is followed by a consonant or when a syllable ends with . For example, English ''strike'' becomes , with three epenthetic vowels and a split of English diphthong into two syllables.
*
Brazilian Portuguese uses , which, in most dialects, triggers
palatalization of a preceding or : ''nerd'' > ; ''stress'' > ; ''McDonald's'' > with normal
vocalization of to . Most speakers pronounce borrowings with
spelling pronunciations, and others try to approximate the nearest equivalents in Portuguese of the phonemes in the original language. The word ''stress'' became ''
estresse'' as in the example above.
*
Classical Arabic
Classical Arabic ( ar, links=no, ٱلْعَرَبِيَّةُ ٱلْفُصْحَىٰ, al-ʿarabīyah al-fuṣḥā) or Quranic Arabic is the standardized literary form of Arabic used from the 7th century and throughout the Middle Ages, most notab ...
does not allow clusters at the beginning of a word, and typically uses to break up such clusters in borrowings: Latin > 'street'. In
Modern Standard Arabic and
Egyptian Arabic, copy vowels are often used as well, e.g. English/French ''
klaxon
A horn is a sound-making device that can be equipped to motor vehicles, buses, bicycles, trains, trams (otherwise known as streetcars in North America), and other types of vehicles. The sound made usually resembles a "honk" (older vehicles) o ...
'' (car horn) > Egyptian Arabic كلكس 'car horn', but note French ''blouse'' > Egyptian Arabic بلوزة (where corresponds to MSA ). Many other modern varieties such as
North Levantine Arabic
North Levantine Arabic ( ar, اللهجة الشامية الشمالية, al-lahja š-šāmiyya š-šamāliyya, North Levantine Arabic: ) is a subdivision of Levantine Arabic, a variety of Arabic.
It stems from the north in Turkey, specifica ...
and
Moroccan Arabic allow word-initial clusters however.
*
Persian
Persian may refer to:
* People and things from Iran, historically called ''Persia'' in the English language
** Persians, the majority ethnic group in Iran, not to be conflated with the Iranic peoples
** Persian language, an Iranian language of the ...
also does not allow clusters at the beginning of a word and typically uses to break up such clusters in borrowings except between and , when is added.
*
Spanish
Spanish might refer to:
* Items from or related to Spain:
**Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain
**Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many Latin American countries
**Spanish cuisine
Other places
* Spanish, Ontario, Can ...
does not allow clusters at the beginning of a word with an in them and adds ''e-'' to such words: Latin > , English ''stress'' > .
*
Turkish prefixes
close vowel
A close vowel, also known as a high vowel (in U.S. terminology), is any in a class of vowel sounds used in many spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a close vowel is that the tongue is positioned as close as possible to the roof of th ...
s to loanwords with
initial
In a written or published work, an initial capital, also referred to as a drop capital or simply an initial cap, initial, initcapital, initcap or init or a drop cap or drop, is a letter at the beginning of a word, a chapter, or a paragraph that ...
cluster
may refer to:
Science and technology Astronomy
* Cluster (spacecraft), constellation of four European Space Agency spacecraft
* Asteroid cluster, a small asteroid family
* Cluster II (spacecraft), a European Space Agency mission to study th ...
s of
alveolar fricatives followed by another consonant: < Greek (), < ''set screw'', < Greek (), < Byzantine Greek (), < ''steamboat'', < ''Scotland'', < Greek (), < Greek (). The practice is no longer productive as of late 20th century and a few such words have changed back: < < French .
Informal speech
Epenthesis most often occurs within unfamiliar or complex consonant clusters. For example, in English, the name ''Dwight'' is commonly pronounced with an epenthetic
schwa between the and the (), and many speakers insert a schwa between the and of ''realtor''.
Irish English
Hiberno-English (from Latin ''Hibernia'': "Ireland"), and in ga, Béarla na hÉireann. or Irish English, also formerly Anglo-Irish, is the set of English dialects native to the island of Ireland (including both the Republic of Ireland a ...
and
Scottish English are some of the dialects that may insert a schwa between and in words like ''film'' () under the influence of
Celtic languages
The Celtic languages ( usually , but sometimes ) are a group of related languages descended from Proto-Celtic. They form a branch of the Indo-European language family. The term "Celtic" was first used to describe this language group by Edward ...
, a phenomenon that also occurs in
Indian English
Indian English (IE) is a group of English dialects spoken in the republic of India and among the Indian diaspora. English is used by the Indian government for communication, along with Hindi, as enshrined in the Constitution of India. ...
due to the influence of
Indo-Aryan languages like
Hindi.
Epenthesis is sometimes used for humorous or childlike effect. For example, the cartoon character
Yogi Bear says "pic-a-nic basket" for ''picnic basket''. Another example is found in the chants of
England football fans in which England is usually rendered as or the pronunciation of ''athlete'' as "ath-e-lete". Some apparent occurrences of epenthesis, however, have a separate cause: the pronunciation of ''nuclear'' as ' () in some North American dialects arises out of analogy with other -''cular'' words (''binocular'', ''particular'', etc.) rather than from epenthesis.
In colloquial registers of Brazilian Portuguese, is sometimes inserted between consonant clusters except those with (), () or syllable-ending (; note syllable-final is pronounced in a number of dialects). Examples would be , and . Some dialects also use , which is
deemed as stereotypical of people from lower classes, such as those arriving from
rural flight
Rural flight (or rural exodus) is the migratory pattern of peoples from rural areas into urban areas. It is urbanization seen from the rural perspective.
In industrializing economies like Britain in the eighteenth century or East Asia in th ...
in internal migrations to cities such as
Rio de Janeiro,
Brasília
Brasília (; ) is the federal capital of Brazil and seat of government of the Federal District. The city is located at the top of the Brazilian highlands in the country's Central-West region. It was founded by President Juscelino Kubitschek o ...
and
São Paulo.
In Finnish
In
Finnish, there are two epenthetic vowels and two nativization vowels. One epenthetic vowel is the
preceding vowel, found in the
illative case ending : → , → . The second is , connecting stems that have historically been consonant stems to their case endings: → .
In Standard Finnish, consonant clusters may not be broken by epenthetic vowels; foreign words undergo consonant deletion rather than addition of vowels: ("shore") from Proto-Germanic . However, modern loans may not end in consonants. Even if the word, such as a personal name, is native, a
paragogic vowel is needed to connect a consonantal case ending to the word. The vowel is : → , or in the case of personal name, + → "about Bush" (
elative case
In grammar, the elative case (abbreviated ; from la, efferre "to bring or carry out") is a locative grammatical case with the basic meaning "out of". Usage Uralic languages
In Finnish, the elative is typically formed by adding ", in Estonian b ...
).
Finnish has
moraic consonants: , and are of interest. In Standard Finnish, they are slightly intensified before a consonant in a medial cluster: . Some dialects, like
Savo
Savo may refer to:
Languages
* Savo dialect, forms of the Finnish language spoken in Savonia
* Savo language, an endangered language spoken on Savo
People
* Savo (given name), a masculine given name from southern Europe (includes a list of people ...
and
Ostrobothnian, have epenthesis instead and use the preceding vowel in clusters of type and , in Savo also . (In Finnish linguistics, the phenomenon is often referred to as ; the same word can also mean schwa, but it is not a
phoneme
In phonology and linguistics, a phoneme () is a unit of sound that can distinguish one word from another in a particular language.
For example, in most dialects of English, with the notable exception of the West Midlands and the north-west ...
in Finnish so there is usually no danger of confusion.)
For example, "Ostrobothnia" → , → , and Savo → . Ambiguities may result: "strait" vs. . (An exception is that in Pohjanmaa, and become and , respectively: → . Also, in a small region in Savo, is used instead.)
In constructed languages
Lojban, a
constructed language
A constructed language (sometimes called a conlang) is a language whose phonology, grammar, and vocabulary, instead of having developed naturally, are consciously devised for some purpose, which may include being devised for a work of fiction. ...
that seeks
logically-oriented grammatical and phonological structures, uses a number of consonant clusters in its words. Since it is designed to be as universal as possible, it allows a type of anaptyxis called "buffering" to be used if a speaker finds a cluster difficult or impossible to pronounce. A vowel sound that is nonexistent in Lojban (usually /ɪ/ as in "hit") is added between two consonants to make the word easier to pronounce. Despite altering the phonetics of a word, the use of buffering is completely ignored by grammar. Also, the vowel sound used must not be confused with any existing Lojban vowel.
An example of buffering in Lojban is that if a speaker finds the cluster in the word ("cat") (pronounced ) hard or impossible to pronounce, the vowel can be pronounced between the two consonants, resulting in the form . Nothing changes grammatically, including the word's spelling and the
syllabication.
In sign language
A type of epenthesis in
sign language is known as "movement epenthesis" and occurs, most commonly, during the boundary between signs while the hands move from the posture required by the first sign to that required by the next.
Related phenomena
*
Prothesis: the addition of a sound to the beginning of a word
*
Paragoge: the addition of a sound to the end of a word
*
Infixation: the insertion of a
morpheme within a word
*
Tmesis: the inclusion of a whole word within another one
*
Metathesis: the reordering of sounds within a word
See also
*
Assibilation
In linguistics, assibilation is a sound change resulting in a sibilant consonant. It is a form of spirantization and is commonly the final phase of palatalization.
Arabic
A characteristic of Mashreqi varieties of Arabic (particularly Levanti ...
*
Assimilation
*
Coarticulation Coarticulation in its general sense refers to a situation in which a conceptually isolated speech sound is influenced by, and becomes more like, a preceding or following speech sound. There are two types of coarticulation: ''anticipatory coarticulat ...
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Co-articulated consonant
Co-articulated consonants or complex consonants are consonants produced with two simultaneous places of articulation. They may be divided into two classes: doubly articulated consonants with two primary places of articulation of the same manner ...
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Secondary articulation)
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Consonant harmony
Consonant harmony is a type of "long-distance" phonological assimilation, akin to the similar assimilatory process involving vowels, i.e. vowel harmony.
Examples
In Athabaskan languages
One of the more common harmony processes is ''coronal harm ...
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Crasis
Crasis (; from the Greek , "mixing", "blending"); cf. , "I mix" ''wine with water''; '' kratēr'' "mixing-bowl" is related. is a type of contraction in which two vowels or diphthongs merge into one new vowel or diphthong, making one word out of ...
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Dissimilation
In phonology, particularly within historical linguistics, dissimilation is a phenomenon whereby similar consonants or vowels in a word become less similar. In English, dissimilation is particularly common with liquid consonants such as /r ...
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Labialisation
Labialization is a secondary articulatory feature of sounds in some languages. Labialized sounds involve the lips while the remainder of the oral cavity produces another sound. The term is normally restricted to consonants. When vowels involve ...
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Language game
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Lenition
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Metathesis
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Palatalization
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Pharyngealisation
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Sandhi
Sandhi ( sa, सन्धि ' , "joining") is a cover term for a wide variety of sound changes that occur at morpheme or word boundaries. Examples include fusion of sounds across word boundaries and the alteration of one sound depending on near ...
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Velarization
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Vowel harmony
References
Sources
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* {{cite book, isbn=978-0-19-954583-4, title=The Phonology of Japanese, last=Labrune, first=Laurence, year=2012, publisher=Oxford University Press, url=http://ukcatalogue.oup.com/product/9780199545834.do, series=The Phonology of the World's Languages
External links
Definition at BYU
Phonotactics
Phonology
Figures of speech