ELISION

ELISION 

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. It is easy to find examples of elision, but very difficult to state rules that govern which sounds may be elided and which may not. Elision of vowels in English usually happens when a short, unstressed vowel occurs between voiceless consonants, e.g. in the first syllable of ‘perhaps’, ‘potato’, the second syllable of ‘bicycle’, or the third syllable of ‘philosophy’. In some cases we find a weak voiceless sound in place of the normally voiced vowel that would have been expected. Elision also occurs when a vowel occurs between an obstruent consonant and a sonorant consonant such as a nasal or a lateral: this process leads to syllabic consonants, as in ‘sudden’ s dn! , ‘awful’ ɔ fl! (where a vowel is only heard in the second syllable in slow, careful speech).
Elision of consonants in English happens most commonly when a speaker “simplifies” a complex consonant cluster: ‘acts’ becomes ks rather than kts, ‘twelfth night’ becomes twelθnait or twelfnait rather than twelfθnait. It seems much less likely that any of the other consonants could be left out: the l and the n seem to be unelidable.
It is very important to note that sounds do not simply “disappear” like a light being switched off. A transcription such as ks for ‘acts’ implies that the t phoneme has dropped out altogether, but detailed examination of speech shows that such effects are more gradual: in slow speech the t may be fully pronounced, with an audible transition from the preceding k and to the following s, while in a more rapid style it may be articulated but not given any audible realisation, and in very rapid speech it may be observable, if at all, only as a rather early movement of the tongue blade towards the s position. Much more research in this area is needed (not only on English) for us to understand what processes are involved when speech is “reduced” in rapid articulation.