Thursday, 22 September 2011

dissimilative elision

After non-eliding dissimilation and dissimilative addition this blog posting is about dissimilative elision. A sound is dropped because otherwise two identical/similar sounds would be too close together.

Credit must be given to Jack Windsor Lewis who coined the term dissimilative elision. It describes the deletion of "repeated sounds or syllables even when there is no logical objection to them." (source + examples here)

1. Dissimilative elision of /r/
 - caterpillar (in GA)
 - particular (in GA)
 - surprise (in GA)

2. Dissimilative elision of /l/
 - Pachelbel

3. Dissimilative elision of /h/
 - hold her hand
 - he has

I also wrote about dissimilative addition and about non-eliding dissimilation.
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1 comment:

  1. JWL22 September 2011 at 17:06

    Anyone who cares to take up Kraut's link to Section 4.7 of my website will find the items he mentions at ¶¶ 23 and 32. At its Section 3.1 they can find a further dozen examples from GA. My Blog 359 mentioned as its last item GB such elisions of program. These and the word prescription undergo dissimilative elision very frequently indeed in GB.

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