Glottal stop, clipping and elision
I got into a conversation with somebody on Twitter yesterday about the phonetic processes. To be truthful, it wasn’t much of a conversation and rather a question asked by them followed by my monologue with possible answers. They wanted to know ‘’what term refers to the process of dropping the last letter of one word when it is the same beginning letter of the following word’’. Now, the question itself confused me slightly since we don’t really omit letters but sounds. That led me to think that they aren’t aware of very basics of phonetics and suggested glottal stop which wouldn’t strictly answer their question (glottal stop doesn’t really have much to do with whatever sound that follows it) but then again nothing would answer their question since like I said it’s all about sounds rather than letters. Thinking, on the other hand, that perhaps they really meant letters I walked away from phonetics suggesting clipping (I explain the term clipping in one of my previous posts but will remind you shortly what it is). It turns out, as somebody else finally got it, the term they were looking for was elision. Now, what do these three terms mean and what processes are there associated with them?
Glottal stop plosive – type of sound used in numerous languages in their spoken versions that is produced when the flow of air from our lungs is stopped by the closing glottis. It can be represented for example by the apostrophe but it is not a written phoneme in English (to see what a phoneme is look up one of my previous posts Phones, phonemes and allophones). In English glottal stops occur before a tautosyllabic (when two or more phonemes occur in the same syllable) voiceless plosive (in English the following sounds are voiceless plosives: /p t k/) in words such as tha’t, ca’t, ro’t, sto’p (sounds, yes sounds rather than letters, /t/ and /p/ in those examples are glottal stops and can’t be heard when words are pronounced).
Clipping – word formation process based on reduction of a word to a part of it, also known as shortening. There are different types of clipping depending on what part of word remains (back clipping, middle clipping, fore-clipping and complex clipping). E.g. advertisement – ad, information – info.
Elision – omission of a sound (consonant, vowel or syllable) in words where doing so makes them easier to pronounce or sometimes used as a stylistic device in poetry and suchlike. E.g. ‘cause rather than because and who’s rather than who is.
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