Elision

Elision

Elision is defined as the disappearance of a sound. In technical terms Elision means that a phoneme has zero realization.

Kinds of Elision

Elision is of two kinds:

     

      1-     Historical Elision

There are historical elisions where a sound which existed in an earlier form of a word was omitted (چھوڑدیے گئے ) in later for.

Example:

     I.        The loss of all /r/ sounds finally and before consonants in RP(Received Pronunciation) up to the 15^th century the /r/ sound in words like ‘arm’, ‘more’ , ‘horse’ were always pronounced.

           II.        The loss of /l/ sound in words ‘like’, ‘walk’, ‘talk’ , ‘half’ which were pronounced with /l/ in earlier times.

          III.        The /p/ sound in ‘cupboard’ now pronounced /kʌbəd/ the /d/ sound in ‘windmill’ now pronounced /win mil/ and the /d/ in ‘kindness’ now pronounced /kain nis/ have all disappreared through Elision.

         IV.        The Elision of unstressed vowels specially /i/ and /ə/ is common in in English ‘history’ is now pronounced /histri/ and ‘university’ is now pronounced /ju:niveɜːsti/.

    2-   Contextual Elision

This is quite common especially in rapid speech.

Examples:

                 I.    Blind man                   /blain mæn/

               II.    A good deal                /ə gʊdi:l/

              III.    Last time          /lɑːs taim/

             IV.    Sit down           /si daʊn/

               V.    Good bye                   /gʊ bai/