Elision

 Many phonological processes present in connected speech are

designed to ease the articulation of sequences of sounds. One
of the most radical things that we can do to make a string of
sounds easier to articulate is to omit one of them. This is
known as ELISION or DELETION. Obviously, the elision of
sounds is not at random, that is to say, we do not just drop any
sound anywhere. In different languages there are different
sounds which tend to be elided. And of course they are not
dropped always, otherwise they would dissapear from the
language altogether.
 Alveolar plosive elision:
 Alveolar plosives are quite unstable in English, they
often undergo phonological processes. One example
of their instability is the fact that they are the only
obstruents which can be elided.
 Elision does not occur across the board. It happens
under certain conditions. The environments for
alveolar plosive elision are the following:
 The alveolar plosive must be in the coda of the syllable, not
in the onset.
 It must be preceded by a consonant of the same voicing.
 The following sound must be a consonant other than /h/
 Examples:
 Last night 
 Locked door 
 Send them 
 Bold man 
 Exactly
 But NOT in:
 Built them the preceding consonant
is voiced
 Send it the following sound is a
vowel
 Bad thing the preceding sound is a
vowel
 Most horrible the following
sound is /h/
 NOTICE THAT:
 Alveolar plosive elision may be word-internal.
 It often affects the regular past tense suffix so tense is
often indicated by context.
 The /d/ in the weak form of “and” may be elided
whatever the following sound.
 /t/ deletion is possible in negative contractions such
as don’t, didn’t, and can’t even if the the next word
begins with /h/ or a vowel sound, though not ifthe
negtive contraction is followed by a pause.
 Examples:
 Don’t shout 
 Didn’t dare 
 Can’t think 
 Wouldn’t answer 
 Needen’t hurry 

BUT NOT IN: I don’t. 

 Schwa Elision:
 Schwa is elided when followed by /n/ or by a
liquid sound after which there must be an
unestressed syllable in the same word.
 History 
 Travelling 
 Federal 
 Counsellor 
 Gardening 
 Exceptional schwa elision:
 In some cases elision may happen when
schwa precedes the stressed syllable as in:
 Police 
But this is not generally possible. For example the
word polite cannot lose its schwa
 Polite NOT
 Ocassionally schwa may be elided when the
following consonant is other than This
quite often happens in words such as suppose
Again that is not generally
possible
 Notice that schwa can only be elided if it is an
independent vowel. The component of
diphthongs such as cannot be elided.
Exercise: transcribe the following passage. Make use
of weak forms where possible. Identify elisions,
linking and intrusive /r/ if present.

Overhearing conversations on trains can be amusing,

sometimes even alarming. Some years ago I used to
travel on the London Underground to get to work.
Quite often I used to spend the journey marking
student’s work, especially phonetic transcriptions of
English. One morning in summer a group of tourists
got into the carriage where I was sitting. It was an
Italian family who were going into the centre of the
city to see the sights.