| Term | Definition |
|---|
| assimilation | Occurs when a phoneme changes due to the influence of a neighbouring sound; it changes to become more like (or identical to) the neighbouring sound. It's the natural result of your speech organs cutting corners as they make complex movements, generally occurs at word boundaries and generally effects consonants. |
| elision | occurs when a sound that would exist in an isolated word completely disappears in connected speech. It is also an instance of 'corner-cutting'. |
| vowel reduction | In connected speech, unaccented vowel sounds reduce in length and become 'centralized' - that is, produced with the lips and jaw relaxed and the jaw in a central position. |
| catenation | the linking of sounds together in speech, such as the grouping of phonemes into SYLLABLES, and the grouping of syllables and words through ASSIMILATION, ELISION, and JUNCTURE. |
| juncture | The boundary between two PHONEMES accounting for the flow and pauses between sounds in speech. |
| linking or liaison | a key ingredient of the 'flow' of natural speech; final consonants are linked to the following initial vowel sounds and initial consonants to the preceding final vowel sounds. |
| contraction | the reduction of a linguistic form and often its combination with another form. |
Combine with other sets
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