Epenthesis

In phonology, epenthesis (Template:IPAc-en; Greek Template:Wikt-lang) means the addition of one or more sounds to a word, especially in the first syllable (prothesis), the last syllable (paragoge), or between two syllabic sounds in a word. The opposite process in which one or more sounds are removed is referred to as syncope or elision.

Etymology

The word epenthesis comes from Template:Wikt-lang Template:Gloss and en- Template:Gloss and thesis Template:Gloss. Epenthesis may be divided into two types: excrescence for the addition of a consonant, and for the addition of a vowel, svarabhakti (in Sanskrit) or alternatively anaptyxis (Template:IPAc-en).

Uses

Epenthesis arises for a variety of reasons. The phonotactics of a given language may discourage vowels in hiatus or consonant clusters, and a consonant or vowel may be added to help pronunciation. Epenthesis may be represented in writing, or it may be a feature only of the spoken language.

Separating vowels

A consonant may be added to separate vowels in hiatus, as is the case with linking and intrusive R in English.

• drawing → draw-r-ing

Bridging consonant clusters

A consonant may be placed between consonants in a consonant cluster where the place of articulation is different (such as if one consonant is labial and the other is alveolar).

• something → somepthing
• hamster → hampster
• *a-mrotos → ambrotos (see below)

Breaking consonant clusters

A vowel may be placed between consonants to separate them.

• Hamtramck → Hamtramick

Other contexts

While epenthesis most often occurs between two vowels or two consonants, it can also occur between a vowel and a consonant or at the ends of words. For example, the Japanese prefix transforms regularly to when it is followed by a consonant, as in . The English suffix Template:Wikt-lang, often found in the form Template:Wikt-lang, as in Template:Wikt-lang (from Template:Wikt-lang + Template:Wikt-lang), is an example of terminal excrescence.

Excrescence

Excrescence is the epenthesis of a consonant.

Historical sound change

• Latin > French (Template:Gloss)
• Old English > English thunder
• French , > English messenger, passenger
• French , > Portuguese ,
• (Reconstructed) Proto-Germanic Template:Wikt-lang > Old English Template:Wikt-lang, Old Saxon (Template:Gloss)
• (Reconstructed) Proto-Greek > Ancient Greek Template:Wikt-lang Template:Grc-transl (Template:Gloss; cf. ambrosia)
• Latin > homne > homre > Spanish (Template:Gloss)
• Latin > ouir > Portuguese (Template:Gloss)

Synchronic rule

In French, is inserted between an inverted subject and verb, when the verb ends in a vowel and the subject is a pronoun beginning with a vowel: ('he has') > ('has he'); ('she exclaimed') > ('exclaimed she'). There is no epenthesis from a historical perspective since the is derived from Latin ('he has'), and so the is the original third-person verb inflection. It is incorrect to call it epenthesis unless it is viewed synchronically since the modern basic form of the verb is and so the psycholinguistic process is the addition of to the base form.

A similar example is the English indefinite article a, which becomes an before a vowel. It originated from Old English Template:Wikt-lang (Template:Gloss), which retained an n in all positions, so a diachronic analysis would see the original n disappearing except if a following vowel required its retention: an > a. However, a synchronic analysis, in keeping with the perception of most native speakers, would (though incorrectly) see it as epenthesis: a > an.

In Dutch, whenever the suffix Template:Wikt-lang (which has several meanings) is attached to a word already ending in -r, an additional is inserted in between. For example, the comparative form of the adjective Template:Wikt-lang (Template:Gloss) is Template:Wikt-lang, but the comparative of Template:Wikt-lang (Template:Gloss) is Template:Wikt-lang and not the expected **. Similarly, the agent noun of Template:Wikt-lang (Template:Gloss) is Template:Wikt-lang (Template:Gloss), but the agent noun of Template:Wikt-lang (Template:Gloss) is Template:Wikt-lang (Template:Gloss).

Variable rule

In English, a stop consonant is often added as a transitional sound between the parts of a nasal + fricative sequence:

• English hamster Template:IPAc-en often pronounced with an added p sound, GA: or RP:
• English warmth Template:IPAc-en often pronounced with an added p sound, GA: or RP:
• English fence Template:IPAc-en often pronounced

Poetic device

• Latin Template:Gloss (accusative plural) > poetic

The three short syllables in do not fit into dactylic hexameter because of the dactyl's limit of two short syllables so the first syllable is lengthened by adding another l. However, the pronunciation was often not written with double ll, and may have been the normal way of pronouncing a word starting in rel- rather than a poetic modification.

In Japanese

A limited number of words in Japanese use epenthetic consonants to separate vowels. An example is the word , a compound of and in which an is added to separate the final of and the initial of . That is a synchronic analysis, looking just at the modern language.

As for a diachronic analysis, looking at historical change, this epenthetic only appears in a small number of compounds coined mostly in Old Japanese, and only applying to a handful of words used as the second element in such compounds. For examples like , , and , one possibility is that Old Japanese /ame₂/ was once pronounced */same₂/; the appearing in these compounds would then be not epenthetic but simply an archaic pronunciation. This is the case for the apparent (but not actually) (second) epenthetic in , which is instead from Old Japanese , from the intensifier plus merging of the in sa- and the following in awo (Template:Slink).

Anaptyxis

Epenthesis of a vowel is known as anaptyxis (Template:IPAc-en, from Greek Template:Gloss). Some accounts distinguish between "intrusive" optional vowels, vowel-like releases of consonants as phonetic detail, and true epenthetic vowels that are required by the phonotactics of the language and are acoustically identical with phonemic vowels.

Historical sound change

End of word

Many languages insert a so-called prop vowel at the end of a word, often as a result of the common sound change where vowels at the end of a word are deleted. For example, in the Gallo-Romance languages, a prop schwa was added when final non-open vowels were dropped leaving clusters at the end, e.g., Latin '(shiny) black' > * > Old French 'black' (thus avoiding the impermissible , cf. > 'cart').

Middle of word

File:Hasselt Dorpsstraat.jpg

Anaptyxis in the Hasselt dialect word 'village street' shown below the Standard Dutch form , spelled etymologically but pronounced with by many speakers, including those from Hasselt.

Similarly as above, a vowel may be inserted in the middle of a word to resolve an impermissible word-final consonant cluster. An example of this can be found in Lebanese Arabic, where 'heart' corresponds to Modern Standard Arabic and Egyptian Arabic . In the development of Old English, Proto-Germanic Template:Wikt-lang 'field, acre' would have ended up with an impermissible final cluster (), so it was resolved by inserting an before the rhotic consonant: Template:Wikt-lang (cf. the use of a syllabic consonant in Gothic Template:Wikt-lang).

Vowel insertion in the middle of a word can be observed in the history of the Slavic languages, which had a preference for open syllables in medieval times. An example of this is the Proto-Slavic form 'town', in which the East Slavic languages inserted an epenthetic copy vowel to open the closed syllable, resulting in (), which became Template:Wikt-lang () in modern Russian. Other Slavic languages used metathesis for the vowel and the syllable-final consonant, producing *grodŭ in this case, as seen in Polish , Old Church Slavonic , Serbo-Croatian and Czech .

In many West Germanic language varieties (such as Dutch (including local Brabantian and Hollandic dialects), Limburgish, Luxembourgish and Ripuarian), a phonetic is inserted between or and labial or velar (also , in the case of the preceding ). This leads to Dutch 'calm' being pronounced , Limburgish 'apron' being pronounced , Luxembourgish 'people' being pronounced (from Old High German , a monosyllable) and Ripuarian 'village' being pronounced . The city names Bergen op Zoom and Utrecht as pronounced by locals can be spelled Berrege and Utereg in eye dialect. The exact details vary depending on the language and dialect, with some dialects (such as many dialects of Limburgish) permitting the addition across syllable boundaries (but not morpheme boundaries) and others restricting it to the syllable coda (such as Standard Dutch). This unetymological schwa is never written in Standard Dutch, but is usually written in Luxembourgish. In Limburgish and Ripuarian, the practices vary as there is not one standard orthography.

Anaptyxis of the schwa in Dutch
Phonemic sequence	In closed syllables (standard)	Across syllable boundaries (dialectal)
	'calm'	'calmer'
	'alp'	'alps'
	'beam'	'beams'
	'calf'	'calves'
(Northern)	'leather bag'	'leather bags'
(Southern)		'leather bags'
	'intestine'	'intestines'
	'harp'	'harps'
	'park'	'parks'
	'carve'	'carves'
(Northern)	'mountain'	'mountains'
(Southern)		'mountains'
	'nucleus'	'nuclei'

Dialects with both types of anaptyxis regularize the schwa-insertion, making it phonemic: , , etc. comparably to the GOAT split in London English (except that no new phoneme is created, as already exists in Dutch as a phoneme). In those dialects, schwa insertion also occurs between or on the one hand and or on the other. Most speakers with a hard G do not have as a phoneme in their system; thus, broad Amsterdam and Utrecht pronunciations of balgen and bergen are , , with no change in the voicing of the fricative. and are markedly southern (Brabantian/Limburgish-influenced) dialectal pronunciations. Anaptyxis does not occur across morpheme boundaries, so that while the surname can be pronounced , the noun/verb 'intention', 'to intend' is never pronounced *.

In Irish and Scottish English (also West Germanic varieties), anaptyxis famously occurs in words such as 'film' , spelled 'fillum' in eye dialect.

Another environment can be observed in the history of Modern Persian, in which former word-initial consonant clusters, which were still extant in Middle Persian, are regularly broken up: Middle Persian 'brother' > modern Iranian Persian , Middle Persian 'column' > Early New Persian > modern Iranian Persian .

In Spanish, as a phonetic detail, it is usual to find a schwa vowel in sequences of a consonant followed by a flap. For instance, 'vinegar' may be but also .

Many Indo-Aryan languages carry an inherent vowel after each consonant. For example, in Assamese, the inherent vowel is "o" (), while in Hindi and Marathi, it is "a" (). Sanskrit words like (Template:Gloss, ), (Template:Gloss, ), (Template:Gloss, ), (Template:Gloss, ), (Template:Gloss, ), (Template:Gloss, ) etc. become ( > ), ( > ), ( > ), ( > ), ( > ), ( > ) etc. in Assamese. Other, non-Tatsama words also undergo anaptyxis, for example, the English word glass becomes ().

Beginning of word

In the Western Romance languages, a prothetic vowel was inserted at the beginning of any word that began with and another consonant, e.g. Latin 'two-edged sword, typically used by cavalry' becomes the normal word for 'sword' in Romance languages with an inserted : Spanish/Portuguese , Catalan , Old French > modern (see also Template:Wikt-lang 'swordfish').

French in fact presents three layers in the vocabulary in which initial vowel epenthesis is or is not applied, depending on the time a word came into the language:

• insertion of epenthetic in inherited and commonly used learned and semi-learned words, which then drop the following after the medieval period: Latin > Old French > modern 'star', > Old French > modern 'study', > OF > modern 'school'
• insertion of and keeping in learned words borrowed during the Middle Ages or the Renaissance: > , >
• then in the modern period, is not inserted and uncommon old learned borrowings are remolded to look more like Latin: > , > , > learned Old French > remolded to modern

Similarly, at some point in the Proto-Armenian language and Classical Armenian, the prothetic vowel was placed at the beginning of the word before the sound , leading to words like (Template:Gloss, ) from Iranian (Template:Gloss), or (Template:Gloss, ) from Iranian (Template:Gloss).

Grammatical rule

Epenthesis often breaks up a consonant cluster or vowel sequence that is not permitted by the phonotactics of a language. Regular or semi-regular epenthesis commonly occurs in languages with affixes. For example, a reduced vowel or (here abbreviated as ) is inserted before the English plural suffix and the past tense suffix when the root ends in a similar consonant: glass → glasses or ; bat → batted . However, this is a synchronic analysis as the vowel was originally present in the suffix but has been lost in most words.

Borrowed words

Vocalic epenthesis typically occurs when words are borrowed from a language that has consonant clusters or syllable codas that are not permitted in the borrowing language.

Languages use various vowels, but schwa is quite common when it is available:

• Hebrew uses a single vowel, the schwa (pronounced in Israeli Hebrew).
• Japanese generally uses except after and , when it uses , and after , when it uses an echo vowel. For example, English cap becomes in Japanese; English street, ; the Dutch name , ; and the German name , .
• Korean uses in most cases. is used after borrowed , , , , or , although may also be used after borrowed depending on the source language. is used when is followed by a consonant or when a syllable ends with . For example, English strike becomes , with three epenthetic vowels and a split of English diphthong Template:IPAc-en into two syllables.
• Brazilian Portuguese uses , which, in most dialects, triggers palatalization of a preceding or : nerd > ; stress > ; McDonald's > with normal vocalization of to . Most speakers pronounce borrowings with spelling pronunciations, and others try to approximate the nearest equivalents in Portuguese of the phonemes in the original language. The word stress became estresse as in the example above.
• Classical Arabic does not allow clusters at the beginning of a word, and typically uses to break up such clusters in borrowings: Latin Template:Wikt-lang > Template:Wikt-lang 'street'. In Modern Standard Arabic and Egyptian Arabic, copy vowels are often used as well, e.g. English/French klaxon (car horn) > Egyptian Arabic 'car horn', but note French > Egyptian Arabic (where corresponds to Modern Standard Arabic ). Many other modern varieties such as North Levantine Arabic and Moroccan Arabic allow word-initial clusters, however.
• Persian also does not allow clusters at the beginning of a word and typically uses to break up such clusters in borrowings except between and , when is added.
• Spanish does not allow clusters at the beginning of a word with an in them and adds e- to such words: Latin > , English stress > .
• Turkish prefixes close vowels to loanwords with initial clusters of alveolar fricatives followed by another consonant: < Greek Template:Wikt-lang (), < set screw, < Greek Template:Wikt-lang (), < Byzantine Greek (), < steamboat, < Scotland, < Greek (), < Greek (). The practice is no longer productive as of late 20th century and a few such words have changed back: < < French Template:Wikt-lang.

Informal speech

Epenthesis most often occurs within unfamiliar or complex consonant clusters. For example, in English, the name Dwight is commonly pronounced with an epenthetic schwa between the and the (), and many speakers insert a schwa between the and of realtor. Irish English and Scottish English are some of the dialects that may insert a schwa between and in words like film () under the influence of Celtic languages, a phenomenon that also occurs in Indian English due to the influence of Indo-Aryan languages like Hindi.

Epenthesis is sometimes used for humorous or childlike effect. For example, the cartoon character Yogi Bear says "pic-a-nic basket" for picnic basket. Another example is found in the chants of England football fans in which England is usually rendered as or the pronunciation of athlete as "ath-e-lete". Some apparent occurrences of epenthesis, however, have a separate cause: the pronunciation of nuclear as nucular () in some North American dialects arises out of analogy with other -cular words (binocular, particular, etc.) rather than from epenthesis.

In colloquial registers of Brazilian Portuguese, is sometimes inserted between consonant clusters except those with (), () or syllable-ending (; note syllable-final is pronounced in a number of dialects). Examples would be , and . Some dialects also use , which is deemed as stereotypical of people from lower classes, such as those arriving from rural flight in internal migrations to cities such as Rio de Janeiro, Brasília and São Paulo.

In Finnish

In Finnish, there are two epenthetic vowels and two nativization vowels. One epenthetic vowel is the preceding vowel, found in the illative case ending : → , → . The second is , connecting stems that have historically been consonant stems to their case endings: → .

In Standard Finnish, consonant clusters may not be broken by epenthetic vowels; foreign words undergo consonant deletion rather than addition of vowels: (Template:Gloss) from Proto-Germanic Template:Wikt-lang. However, modern loans may not end in consonants. Even if the word, such as a personal name, is native, a paragogic vowel is needed to connect a consonantal case ending to the word. The vowel is : → , or in the case of personal name, + → Template:Gloss (elative case).

Finnish has moraic consonants: , and are of interest. In Standard Finnish, they are slightly intensified before a consonant in a medial cluster: . Some dialects, like Savo and Ostrobothnian, have epenthesis instead and use the preceding vowel in clusters of type and , in Savo also . (In Finnish linguistics, the phenomenon is often referred to as ; the same word can also mean Template:Gloss, but it is not a phoneme in Finnish so there is usually no danger of confusion.)

For example, Template:Gloss → , → , and Savo → . Ambiguities may result: Template:Gloss vs. . (An exception is that in Pohjanmaa, and become and , respectively: → . Also, in a small region in Savo, is used instead.)

In constructed languages

Lojban, a constructed language that seeks logically-oriented grammatical and phonological structures, uses a number of consonant clusters in its words. Since it is designed to be as universal as possible, it allows a type of anaptyxis called "buffering" to be used if a speaker finds a cluster difficult or impossible to pronounce. A vowel sound that is nonexistent in Lojban (usually /ɪ/ as in Template:Gloss) is added between two consonants to make the word easier to pronounce. Despite altering the phonetics of a word, the use of buffering is completely ignored by grammar. Also, the vowel sound used must not be confused with any existing Lojban vowel.

An example of buffering in Lojban is that if a speaker finds the cluster in the word Template:Wikt-lang (Template:Gloss) (pronounced ) hard or impossible to pronounce, the vowel can be pronounced between the two consonants, resulting in the form . Nothing changes grammatically, including the word's spelling and the syllabication.

In sign language

A type of epenthesis in sign language is known as "movement epenthesis" and occurs, most commonly, during the boundary between signs while the hands move from the posture required by the first sign to that required by the next.

Related phenomena

• Infixation: the insertion of a morpheme within a word
• Metathesis: the reordering of sounds within a word
• Paragoge: the addition of a sound to the end of a word
• Prothesis: the addition of a sound to the beginning of a word
• Tmesis: the inclusion of a whole word within another one

See also

• Assibilation
• Assimilation
• Coarticulation (Co-articulated consonant, Secondary articulation)
• Consonant harmony
• Crasis
• Dissimilation
• Labialisation
• Language game
• Lenition
• Metathesis
• Palatalization
• Pharyngealisation
• Sandhi
• Velarization
• Vowel harmony

External links

• Definition at BYU