Syncope (phonology)

Syncope (phonology)
In phonology, syncope (from ) is the loss of one or more sounds from the interior of a word, especially the loss of an unstressed vowel. It is found in both synchronic and diachronic analyses of languages. Its opposite, whereby sounds are added, is epenthesis.
Synchronic analysis
Synchronic analysis studies linguistic phenomena at one moment of a language's history, usually the present, in contrast to diachronic analysis, which studies a language's states and the patterns of change across a historical timeframe. In modern languages, syncope occurs in inflection, poetry, and informal speech.
Inflections
In languages such as Irish and Hebrew, the process of inflection can cause syncope:
In some verbs
(to play) should become * (I play). However, the addition of the causes syncope and the second-last syllable vowel is lost so becomes .
(katav), (he) wrote, becomes (katvu), (they) wrote, when the third-person plural ending (-u) is added.
In some nouns
(island) should become * in the genitive case. However, instead of *, road signs say, (the town of the island). Once again, there is the loss of the second .
If the present root form in Irish is the result of diachronic syncope, synchronic syncope for inflection is prevented.
As a poetic device
Sounds may be removed from the interior of a word as a rhetorical or poetic device: for embellishment or for the sake of the meter.
Latin > poetic ("he had moved")
English hastening > poetic hast'ning
English heaven > poetic heav'n
English over > poetic o'er
English ever > poetic e'er, often confused with ere ("before")
Informal speech
Various sorts of colloquial reductions might be called "syncope" or "compression".
Contractions in English such as "didn't" or "can't" are typically cases of syncope.
English Australian > colloquial Strine, pronounced
English did not > didn't, pronounced
English I would have > I'd've, pronounced
English going to > colloquial gonna (generally only when unstressed and when expressing intention rather than direction), pronounced or, before a vowel,
English library pronounced as (haplology)
Diachronic analysis
In historical phonology, the term "syncope" is often limited to the loss of an unstressed vowel, in effect collapsing the syllable that contained it: trisyllabic Latin calidus (stress on first syllable) develops as bisyllabic caldo in several Romance languages.
Loss of any sound
Old English > > Middle English > Modern English lord, pronounced
English Worcester, pronounced
English Gloucester, pronounced
English Leicester, pronounced
English Towcester, pronounced
English Godmanchester, pronounced (archaic)
Loss of unstressed vowel
Latin > Italian "hot"
Latin > Italian "eye"
Proto-Norse > Old Norse "arm"
Proto-Norse > Old Norse "books"
Proto-Germanic > Old Norse "heavens"
A syncope rule has been identified in Tonkawa, an extinct American Indian language in which the second vowel of a word was deleted unless it was adjacent to a consonant cluster or a final consonant.
See also
Apheresis (linguistics)
Apocope
Clipping (morphology)
Clipping (phonetics)
Deletion (phonology)
Elision
Epenthesis, the addition of sounds to the interior of a word
Poetic contraction
Synaeresis
Synalepha
Syncopation in music
Vowel reduction
References
Sources
Figures of speech
Phonology
Prosody (linguistics)