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Cardinal vowel chart showing peripheral (white) and central (blue) vowel space, based on the chart in Collins & Mees (2003:227). Phonetic reduction most often involves a mid-centralization of the vowel, that is, a reduction in the amount of movement of the tongue in pronouncing the vowel, as with the characteristic change of many unstressed vowels at the ends of English words to something ...
In phonology, syncope (/ ˈ s ɪ ŋ k ə p i /; from Ancient Greek: συγκοπή, romanized: sunkopḗ, lit. 'cutting up') is the loss of one or more sounds from the interior of a word, especially the loss of an unstressed vowel.
Stress is a prominent feature of the English language, both at the level of the word (lexical stress) and at the level of the phrase or sentence (prosodic stress).Absence of stress on a syllable, or on a word in some cases, is frequently associated in English with vowel reduction – many such syllables are pronounced with a centralized vowel or with certain other vowels that are described as ...
Trisyllabic laxing, or trisyllabic shortening, is any of three processes in English in which tense vowels (long vowels or diphthongs) become lax (short monophthongs) if they are followed by two or more syllables, at least the first of which is unstressed, for example, grateful vs gratitude, profound vs profundity.
In unstressed positions, vowels /i, y, u/ become lax sounds [ɪ, ʏ, ʊ]. In an unstressed position, some vowels cannot be realized and become more closed vowels: The stressed vowel /ɔ/ ò becomes the unstressed vowel [u] o . For instance (stress underlined): còde /ˈkɔde/ → codificar /kudifiˈka/.
Only a general overview of the more important changes is given here; for a full list, see the Proto-Germanic article. Unstressed word-final /a/, /e/ and /o/ were lost. Early PGmc *barta > late PGmc *bart "you carried (sg)". Word-final /m/ became /n/. Word-final /n/ was then lost after unstressed syllables with nasalization of the preceding vowel.
All unstressed vowels came to be shortened, and many texts only show a clear distinction in this context between three vowels, which can be phonemically transcribed as /ɑ e u/. [112] Even this reduced three-way contrast was lost by Middle English, and the merger of unstressed /ɑ e u/ seems in fact to have occurred before the end of the Old ...
General American has a three-way merger between the first vowels in hurry and furry and the unstressed vowel in letters. In Received Pronunciation, all of them have different sounds (/ʌ/, /ɜː/ and /ə/, respectively), and some minimal pairs exist between unstressed /ɜː/ and /ə/, such as foreword /ˈfɔːwɜːd/ vs. forward /ˈfɔːwəd/.