Syncope (phonology)

Not to be confused withSyncope (medicine).

Inphonology,syncope(/ˈsɪŋkəpi/;fromAncient Greek:συγκοπή,romanized:sunkopḗ,lit. 'cutting up') 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 bothsynchronic and diachronicanalyses of languages. Its opposite, whereby sounds are added, isepenthesis.

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 ininflection,poetry,and informal speech.

Inflections

In languages such asIrishandHebrew,the process ofinflectioncan cause syncope:

• In some verbs

imir(to play) should become *imirím(I play). However, the addition of the-ímcauses syncope and the second-last syllable voweliis lost soimirimbecomesimrím.

כָּתַב(katav), (he) wrote, becomesכָּתְבוּ(katvu), (they) wrote, when the third-person plural ending־וּ(-u) is added.

• In some nouns

inis(island) should become *inisein thegenitive case.However, instead of *Baile na hInise,road signs say,Baile na hInse(the town of the island). Once again, there is the loss of the secondi.

If the present root form in Irish is the result of diachronic syncope, synchronic syncope forinflectionis 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.

• Latincommōverat> poeticcommōrat( "he had moved" )
• Englishhastening> poetichast'ning
• Englishheaven> poeticheav'n
• Englishover> poetico'er
• Englishever> poetice'er,often confused withere( "before" )

Informal speech

Various sorts of colloquial reductions might be called "syncope" or "compression".

Contractionsin English such as "didn't" or "can't" are typically cases of syncope.

• EnglishAustralian> colloquialStrine,pronounced/straɪn/
• Englishdid not>didn't,pronounced/ˈdɪdənt/
• EnglishI would have>I'd've,pronounced/ˈaɪdəv/
• Englishgoing to> colloquialgonna(generally only when unstressed and when expressing intention rather than direction), pronounced/ɡənə/or, before a vowel,/ɡənu/
• Englishlibrarypronounced as/laɪbri/(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 Latincalidus(stress on first syllable) develops as bisyllabiccaldoin several Romance languages.

Loss of any sound

• Old Englishhlāfweard>hlāford> Middle Englishloverd> Modern Englishlord,pronounced/lɔːrd/
• EnglishWorcester,pronounced/ˈwʊs.tə/
• EnglishGloucester,pronounced/ˈɡlɒs.tə/
• EnglishLeicester,pronounced/ˈlɛs.tə/
• EnglishTowcester,pronounced/ˈtoʊs.tə/
• EnglishGodmanchester,pronounced/ˈɡʌms.tə/(archaic)

Loss of unstressed vowel

• Latincálidum> Italiancaldo[ˈkaldo]"hot"
• Latinóculum> Italianocchio[ˈɔkkjo]"eye"
• Proto-Norsearmaʀ>Old Norsearmr"arm"
• Proto-Norsebókiʀ> Old Norsebǿkr"books"
• Proto-Germanic*himinōz> Old Norsehimnar"heavens"

A syncope rule has been identified inTonkawa,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,theadditionof sounds to the interior of a word
• Poetic contraction
• Synaeresis
• Synalepha
• Syncopationin music
• Vowel reduction

References

Sources

• Cockayne, T. Oswald(1854)."On certain instances of Synkope".Transactions of the Philological Society(11).
• Crowley, Terry (1997).An Introduction to Historical Linguistics(3rd ed.). New York: Oxford University Press.ISBN0-19-558378-7.