Sandhi

Sandhi (Template:IPAc-en Template:Respell; Template:Langx, ) is any of a wide variety of sound changes that occur at morpheme or word boundaries. Examples include fusion of sounds across word boundaries and the alteration of one sound depending on nearby sounds or the grammatical function of the adjacent words. Sandhi belongs to morphophonology.

Sandhi occurs in many languages, e.g. in the phonology of Indian languages (especially Sanskrit, Tamil, Sinhala, Telugu, Marathi, Hindi, Pali, Kannada, Odia, Bengali, Assamese and Malayalam). Many dialects of British English show linking and intrusive R.

Tone sandhi in particular defines tone changes affecting adjacent words and syllables. This is a common feature of many tonal languages such as Burmese and Chinese.

Types

Internal and external sandhi

Sandhi can be either:

• internal, at morpheme boundaries within words, such as syn- + pathy: sympathy, or
• external, at word boundaries, such as the pronunciation "tem books" for ten books in some dialects of English. The linking process of some dialects of English ("I saw-r-a film" in British English) is a kind of external sandhi, as are French liaison (pronunciation of usually silent final consonants of words before words beginning with vowels) and Italian raddoppiamento fonosintattico (lengthening of initial consonants of words after certain words ending in vowels).

It may be extremely common in speech, but sandhi (especially external) is typically ignored in spelling, as is the case in English (exceptions: the distinction between a and an; the prefixes con-, en-, in- and syn-, whose n assimilates to m before p, m or b). Sandhi is, however, reflected in the orthography of Sanskrit, Sinhala, Telugu, Marathi, Pali and some other Indian languages, as with Italian in the case of compound words with lexicalised syntactic gemination.

External sandhi effects can sometimes become morphologised (apply only in certain morphological and syntactic environments) as in Tamil and, over time, turn into consonant mutations.

Tone sandhi

Most tonal languages have tone sandhi in which the tones of words alter according to certain rules. An example is the behavior of Mandarin Chinese; in isolation, tone 3 is often pronounced as a falling-rising tone. When a tone 3 occurs before another tone 3, however, it changes into tone 2 (a rising tone), and when it occurs before any of the other tones, it is pronounced as a low falling tone with no rise at the end.

An example occurs in the common greeting (with two words containing underlying tone 3), which is in practice pronounced . The first word is pronounced with tone 2, but the second is unaffected.

Examples

Celtic languages

In Celtic languages, the consonant mutation sees the initial consonant of a word change according to its morphological or syntactic environment. Following are some examples from Breton, Irish, Scottish Gaelic, and Welsh:

Breton	Welsh	Irish	Scottish Gaelic	Gloss
			*	woman/wife
				big
				the big woman
				cat
				his cat
				her cat
				their cat

Portuguese

When two words belonging to the same phrase are pronounced together, or two morphemes are joined in a word, the last sound in the first may be affected by the first sound of the next (sandhi), either coalescing with it, or becoming shorter (a semivowel), or being deleted. This affects especially the sibilant consonants , and the unstressed final vowels .

Consonant sandhi

As was mentioned above, the dialects of Portuguese can be divided into two groups, according to whether syllable-final sibilants are pronounced as postalveolar consonants or as alveolar . At the end of words, the default pronunciation for a sibilant is voiceless, , but in connected speech the sibilant is treated as though it were within a word (assimilation):

• If the next word begins with a voiceless consonant, the final sibilant remains voiceless ; ('good times').
• If the next word begins with a voiced consonant, the final sibilant becomes voiced as well /z, ʒ/; ('good days').
• If the next word begins with a vowel, the final sibilant is treated as intervocalic, and pronounced [z]; ('good friends').

When two identical sibilants appear in sequence within a word, they reduce to a single consonant. For example, are pronounced with [s] by speakers who use alveolar sibilants at the end of syllables, and is pronounced with by speakers who use postalveolars. But if the two sibilants are different they may be pronounced separately, depending on the dialect. Thus, the former speakers will pronounce the last example with , whereas the latter speakers will pronounce the first examples with [s] if they are from Brazil or if from Portugal (although in relaxed pronunciation one of the siblants may be dropped). This applies also to words that are pronounced together in connected speech:

• sibilant + /s/, e.g., : either [s] (most of Brazil); [ʃs] (Portugal, standard)
• sibilant + /z/, e.g., : either [z] (mostly in Brazil); [ʒz] (Portugal, standard)
• sibilant + /ʃ/, e.g., : always [ʃ];
• sibilant + /ʒ/, e.g., : always [ʒ].

Vowel sandhi

Normally, only the three vowels /ɐ/, /i/ (in BP) or /ɨ/ (in EP), and /u/ occur in unstressed final position. If the next word begins with a similar vowel, they merge with it in connected speech, producing a single vowel, possibly long (crasis). Here, "similar" means that nasalization can be disregarded, and that the two central vowels /a, ɐ/ can be identified with each other. Thus,

• /aa, aɐ, ɐa, ɐɐ/ → [a(ː)] (henceforth transcribed [a (a)]); or ('all night'), or ('at that point').
• /aɐ̃, ɐɐ̃/ → [ã(ː)]) (henceforth transcribed [ã (ã)]); ('the ancient one') and ('in the ancient way'), both pronounced or . The open nasalized [ã] appears only in this environment.
• /ii, iĩ/ → [i(ː), ĩ(ː)] (henceforth transcribed [i (i), ĩ (ĩ)]); ('aged').
• /ɨɨ/ → [ɨ]; ('waiting line') (EP only).
• /uu, uũ/ → [u(ː), ũ(ː)] (henceforth transcribed [u (u), ũ (ũ)]); ('all day').

If the next word begins with a dissimilar vowel, then /i/ and /u/ become approximants in Brazilian Portuguese (synaeresis):

• /i/ + V → [jV]; ('during the course'), ('more than one').
• /u/ + V → [wV]; ('all this time') ('of the object').

In careful speech and in with certain function words, or in some phrase stress conditions (see Mateus and d'Andrade, for details), European Portuguese has a similar process:

• ; ('if you see her'), ('more than one').
• ; ('all this time'), ('of the object').

But in other prosodic conditions, and in relaxed pronunciation, EP simply drops final unstressed and /u/ (elision), though this is subject to significant dialectal variation:

• ('during the course'), ('this tenant').
• ('all this time'), ('there's a lot of this').

Aside from historical set contractions formed by prepositions plus determiners or pronouns, like , etc., on one hand and combined cliticpronouns such as (it/him/her/them to/for me), and so on, on the other, Portuguese spelling does not reflect vowel sandhi. In poetry, however, an apostrophe may be used to show elision such as in .

German dialects

In various German dialects or the spoken Standard German one can find phonological processes that can be analysed as Sandhi. For example some varieties of Central Hessian show a vowel length alternation where, if the same long vowel were else to repeat in two consecutive syllables, the vowel is shortened/reduced in the first, but maintained in the second. Examples are [hɪɡiː] for HG hingehen ("go towards") (hin corresponds to [hiː] in Hessian) or [kən aːnʒ̊ə] for HG kein einziger ("no single [thing]").

English

In English phonology, rhotic sandhi can be seen in non-rhotic dialects, when a word ends in a vowel followed by /r/, and the next word starts with a vowel as well, a [ɹ] (voiced alveolar approximant) sound will be inserted between the word, see for example, in Standard Southern British English "law and order" pronounced as [lo:rəno:də], "America and China" pronounced as [əmɛrikəɹənʧɑjnə] (see linking and intrusive R)

French

French liaison and enchaînement can be considered forms of external sandhi.

In enchaînement, a word-final consonant, when followed by a word that starts with a vowel, is articulated as though it is part of the following word. For example, (Template:Gloss) is pronounced and (Template:Gloss) is pronounced Template:Ipa; (Template:Gloss, as a street) is pronounced Template:Ipa.

Liaison is a similar phenomenon, applicable to words ending in a consonant that was historically pronounced but that, in Modern French, is normally silent when occurring at the end of a phrase or before another consonant. In some circumstances, when the following word starts with a vowel, the consonant may be pronounced, and in that case is articulated as if part of the next word. For example, (Template:Gloss) is pronounced with a silent Template:Angle brackets, and (Template:Gloss) is pronounced , but (Template:Gloss) is pronounced .

Japanese

In Japanese phonology, sandhi is primarily exhibited in rendaku (consonant mutation from unvoiced to voiced when not word-initial, in some contexts) and conversion of or (, ) to a geminate consonant (orthographically, the sokuon ), both of which are reflected in spelling – indeed, the symbol for gemination is morphosyntactically derived from , and voicing is indicated by adding two dots as in , , making the relation clear. It also occurs much less often in , where, most commonly, a terminal on one morpheme results in an (or ) being added to the start of the next morpheme, as in ( + = ), meaning "emperor"; that is also shown in the spelling (the kanji do not change, but the kana, which specify pronunciation, change).

Korean

Korean has sandhi which occurs in the final consonant or consonant cluster, such that a morpheme can have two pronunciations depending on whether or not it is followed by a vowel. For example, the root , meaning ‘read’, is pronounced before a consonant, as in , but is pronounced like before vowels, as in , meaning ‘please read’. Some roots can also aspirate following consonants, denoted by the letter (hieut) in the final consonant. This causes to become in , ‘to not be’.

Tamil

Tamil 'punarchi' (புனர்ச்சி) or sandhi has been rigorously and exhaustively documented in Tamil grammar texts since the early centuries AD. As modern Tamil is strongly characterised by diglossia: there are two separate registers varying by speech context, a high register and a low one. This in turn presents two corresponding domains for forming Sandhi. Tamil employs Sandhi for certain morphological and syntactic structures.

Vowel position

The vowel sandhi occurs when words or morphemes ending in certain vowels are followed by morphemes beginning with certain vowels. Consonant glides (Template:Langx and Template:Langx) are then inserted between the vowels in order to 'smooth the transition' from one vowel to another.

"The choice of whether the glide inserted will be (Template:Langx and Template:Langx) in Tamil is determined by whether the vowel preceding the glide is a front vowel such as Template:Langx or a back vowel, such as Template:Langx."

Examples in Spoken Tamil

Sandhi following front vowels

Vowel Ending	Noun	Grammatical Suffix	Result
இ	Template:Langx	Interrogative, Template:Langx	Template:Langx
ஈ	Template:Langx	Interrogative, Template:Langx	Template:Langx
எ	No literary Tamil word ends in எ	Template:Longdash	Template:Longdash
ஏ	No literary Tamil word ends in ஏ	Template:Longdash	Template:Longdash
ஐ	Template:Langx	Interrogative, Template:Langx	Template:Langx

Sandhi following back vowels

Vowel Ending	Noun	Grammatical Suffix	Result
உ	Template:Langx	Interrogative, Template:Langx	Usually deleted, or added later after sandhi rules have applied. A few exceptions: Template:Langx
ஊ	Template:Langx	Interrogative, Template:Langx	Template:Langx
ஒ	Doesn't occur in Spoken Tamil, but might occur in loan word	Template:Longdash	Template:Longdash
ஓ	Template:Langx	Interrogative, Template:Langx	Template:Langx
அ	Template:Langx	Affirmative, Template:Langx	Template:Langx
ஆ	Template:Langx	Interrogative, Template:Langx	Template:Langx
ஔ	Doesn't occur in Spoken Tamil	Template:Longdash	Template:Longdash

In rapid speech, especially in polysyllabic words: Template:Langx may become — Template:Langx, which may then be further simplified to Template:Langx.

Consonant sandhi

In lateral-stop clusters, the lateral assimilates to the stop's manner of articulation, before c, ṇ too becomes ṭ, eg. nal-mai, kal-kaḷ, vaṟaḷ-ci, kāṇ-ci, eḷ-ney > naṉmai, kaṟkaḷ, vaṟaṭci, kāṭci, eṇṇey (ṟ was historically a plosive).

Elision

In Spoken Tamil the final laterals, nasals or other sonorants may lose the final position. The final retroflex laterals for pronouns and their PNG markers for example Template:Langx of (female gender marker) are deleted: (To indicate the omitted stop-consonant is covered in parantheses): Template:Langx.

Noun cases

In some nouns, sandhi is triggered by the addition of a case ending to the stem.

Sanskrit

Sanskrit has formalized and systematized sandhi changes; like in all Indian languages, the sandhi changes are also recorded in the written language. There are two categories of sandhi in Sanskrit: internal and external sandhi. Internal sandhi takes place within words, at the junctures of morphemes. External sandhi occurs at word boundaries and between members of compounds.

The basic rule is to make it easier to pronounce words and sentences. Therefore, clashing consecutive sounds are avoided as much as possible. In the case of internal and external vowel sandhi, this means, generally speaking, that two vowels should not come into direct contact. This is avoided by the combination of the two consecutive vowels into a single sound. That can happen in three different ways: by coalescence of the two vowels, by changing the first vowel to a consonant, or by dropping one of the vowels. Similarly to vowels, clashing consonants are avoided by assimilation of either one or both of the juxtaposed sounds.

The number of sandhi changes in Sanskrit is extensive, these are described in various books on Sanskrit grammar and most notably, in the Aṣṭādhyāyī grammar by Pāṇini. A couple of examples are given in the following sections to illustrate the kind of changes which occur.

Examples of external vowel sandhi

In compounding, if the first word ends with /i, u/ and the second word starts with a vowel, the i, u become glides y, v, e.g. su-āgata > svāgata. If a word ends with and the second word begins with /i, u/ they become , eg. mahā-utsava > mahotsava; if the latter vowel is long, it becomes /ai, au/, eg. pra-ūḍha > prauḍha.

Examples of external consonant sandhi

The visarga ('' ) becomes a /r/ before voiced phones, eg. duḥ-labha > durlabha. Anusvara + plosive makes it a homorganic nasal, before a fricative or /r/ it nasalizes the previous vowel and before it nasalizes the .

In come compounds s follows the RUKI rule, eg. vi-sama > viṣama, pitr-svaseya > pitrṣvaseya.

See also

• Alternation (linguistics)
• Crasis
• Elision
• Liaison (French)
• Linking and intrusive R
• Movable nu

External links

• Sandhi Calculator by Vedic Society