Fusion (phonetics)

Examples

Indo-European languages

English

Historically, the alveolar plosives and fricatives have fused with in a process referred to as yod coalescence. Words like nature and omission have had such consonant clusters, being pronounced like and . Words ending in the Latin-derived suffixes -tion and -sion, such as fiction and mission, are examples that exhibit yod coalescence.

The sound change was not, however, distributed evenly. Words like module may be realised as either or . Words that did not experience universal yod coalescence, are always realised as two segments in accents like Received Pronunciation. They are pronounced as one segment in most other dialects such as American English.

Words with primary stress on a syllable with such a cluster also did not experience coalescence: tune and assume . Some dialects exhibit coalescence in those cases, where some coalesce only and , and others also coalesce and . In General American, elides entirely after alveolar consonants in a process called yod dropping. The previous examples are then respectively pronounced and

Australian English exhibits yod coalescence to an extreme degree even when the cluster is in a stressed syllable, but there is some sociolectal variation. In an accent with full yod coalescence, tune and assume are pronounced and . That can result in homophony between previously-distinct words, as between dune and June, both of which are then pronounced .

Romance languages

Most Romance languages have coalesced sequences of consonants followed by . Sequences of plosives followed by most often became affricates, often being intermediary stages to other manners of articulation. Sonorants in such a sequence (except bilabial consonants) mostly became palatalized.

Greek

During the development of Ancient Greek from Proto-Greek, , and became , and . Although the labiovelars were already a single consonant, they had two places of articulation: a velar articulation and labial secondary articulation (). However, the development of labiovelars varies from dialect to dialect, and some may have become dental instead. An example is the word ** "cow" from Proto-Greek **.

A vowel coalescence from Ancient Greek to Koine Greek fused many diphthongs, especially those including : ; ; and and .

Celtic languages

Several consonant clusters in Proto-Celtic underwent fusion, most prominently /*ɡ/ to the following consonant in coda position. Examples are and in Old Irish.

North Germanic languages

In Norwegian and Swedish, the process occurs whenever the phoneme is followed by an alveolar consonant. The articulation of the resulting fusion becomes retroflex. Examples include the Norwegian and Swedish . That occurs even across word boundaries, as in the sentence går det bra? (is it all right?) becoming .

The process continues for as long as there are more alveolar consonants, but when there are four, people usually try to break it up or shorten it, usually by replacing with , or eliding . An extreme example of this would be the word ordensstraff , having six retroflex consonants in a row.

In colloquial Norwegian, the sequence /rt/ may even coalesce over non-alveolar phonemes and change their place of articulation to retroflex even if /r/ would normally not trigger that. Examples are , , and . This process does not occur across word boundaries, e.g. sterk tann is pronounced and not

In dialects where is articulated uvularly, the process invariably takes place by idiolect. For example, may be realised as or . This may appear in regions where /r/ has recently become uvular.

Austronesian languages

Malay

In Malay, the final consonant of the prefix (where N stands for a "placeless nasal", a nasal with no specified place of articulation) coalesces with a voiceless stop at the beginning of the root to which the prefix is attached. The resulting sound is a nasal that has the place of articulation of the root-initial consonant. For example:

• becomes 'cut' ( and are both pronounced with the lips)
• becomes 'write' ( and are both pronounced with the tip of the tongue)
• becomes 'guess' ( and are both pronounced at the back of the tongue)

Japanese

Vowel coalescence occurs in Owari Japanese. The diphthongs and change to , ; changes to ; and changes to : , , . Younger speakers may vary between Standard Japanese diphthongs and dialectal monophthongs.

References

Sources

• Crowley, Terry. (1997) An Introduction to Historical Linguistics. 3rd edition. Oxford University Press.

References

1. Solhaug, Tor H. (2010) ''[https://munin.uit.no/bitstream/handle/10037/2952/thesis.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y Retroflexion in Norwegian]''. University of Tromsø. Retrieved 2019-10-12
2. Johnson, Sverre S. (2012) ''[https://folk.uio.no/sverrej/publication_files/2012/phonology/stausland.johnsen_phonology.2012.pdf A diachronic account of phonological unnaturalness*]''. University of Oslo. Cambridge University Press. {{doi. 10.1017/S0952675712000243. Retrieved 2019-10-12
3. Laura Benua, July 1995, [http://roa.rutgers.edu/files/74-0000/74-0000-BENUA-0-0.PDF Identity Effects in Morphological Truncation]. Retrieved 2009-05-03
4. Youngberg, Connor. (2013) ''[https://www.soas.ac.uk/linguistics/research/workingpapers/volume-16/file88036.pdf Vocalic Coalescence in Owari Japanese] {{Webarchive. link. (2022-01-11 '' SOAS Working Papers in Linguistics, vol. 16.)