Complete the account of the syllable and connected speech.
The obligatory part of a syllable is the ______, and the consonants that follow it form the ______. When a sound takes on a feature of its neighbour the process is ______, and when a sound is dropped entirely it is ______.
Word bank: nucleus · coda · assimilation · elision · onset · intrusion
Hints
- The obligatory part is nearly always a vowel.
- The last two blanks are change against disappearance.
Show the answer
The obligatory part of a syllable is the nucleus, and the consonants that follow it form the coda. When a sound takes on a feature of its neighbour the process is assimilation, and when a sound is dropped entirely it is elision.
Keeping assimilation and elision apart is worth the effort because they have different consequences for a listener: an assimilated sound is still there in altered form and remains recoverable, while an elided one is gone and has to be reconstructed from context.
Practise Transcription and Connected Speech
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