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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 ...
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 ...
The effect may be dependent on lexical stress (for example, the unstressed first syllable of the word photographer contains a schwa / f ə ˈ t ɒ ɡ r ə f ər /, whereas the stressed first syllable of photograph does not /ˈfoʊtəˌɡræf-ɡrɑːf/), or on prosodic stress (for example, the word of is pronounced with a schwa when it is ...
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.
In the approach used by the Longman Pronunciation Dictionary, Wells [81] claims that consonants syllabify with the preceding rather than following vowel when the preceding vowel is the nucleus of a more salient syllable, with stressed syllables being the most salient, reduced syllables the least, and full unstressed vowels ("secondary stress ...
In this example, the underline means that the /t/ or /d/ that becomes flapped must be in between two vowels (where the first is stressed and the second is not). The sound, or the features of the sound, that follows the one to be changed. In this example, the /t/ or /d/ that becomes flapped must be followed by an unstressed vowel.
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 a broader sense, it can refer to the loss of any initial sound (including consonants) from a word or, in a less technical sense, to the loss of one or more sounds from the beginning of a word. [1] The more specific term aphesis (and its adjective aphetic) is sometimes used to refer to the loss of unstressed vowels.