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In poetry and phonetics, epenthesis (Greek epi "on" + en "in" + thesis "putting") is the insertion of a consonant, a vowel, or a whole syllable into a word, usually to facilitate pronunciation. The deletion of a sound is called elision. In songs and poetry, epenthesis is often used to make words conform to the meter. An example in an English song is "The Umbrella Man", where the meter requires "umbrella" to be pronounced with four syllables, um-buh-rel-la, so that "any umbrellas" has the meter ány úmberéllas. In linguistics, epenthesis generally breaks up a consonant cluster or vowel sequence that is not permitted by the phonotactics of a language. Regular or semiregular epenthesis commonly occurs in languages which use affixes. For example, a schwa (or in RP an ) is inserted before the English plural suffix and the past tense suffix when the root ends in a similar consonant: glass → glasses or or and bat → batted or . (An alternate view is that the root form of these suffixes is and respectively, and that the undergoes elision in most cases.) Epenthesis most often occurs within unfamiliar or complex consonant clusters. For example, the name Duane is commonly pronounced with an epenthetic schwa between the and the , and many speakers insert schwa between the /l/ and /t/ of realtor. The word hamster is often pronounced with a after the . In English, epenthesis is sometimes used for humorous or childlike effect. For example, the cartoon character Yogi Bear says "pic-a-nic basket" for "picnic basket." Another example is to be found in the chants of England football fans in which England is usually rendered as . In German, which readily forms new words agglutinatively, epenthetic letters are commonplace to enable the words to sound euphonic. In French, the letter "t" is inserted in inverted interrogative phrases between a verb ending in a vowel and a pronoun beginning with a vowel, such as in "y a-t-il" (meaning "is there...?").
Epenthetic vowels Vocalic epenthesis typically occurs when words are borrowed from a language that has consonant clusters or syllable codas that are not permitted in the borrowing language, though this is not always the cause. Languages use various vowels for this purpose, though schwa is quite common when it is available. For example, Finnish In Finnish, there are two epenthetic vowels and two nativization vowels. One epenthetic vowel is the preceding vowel, found in the illative case ending -(h) In standard Finnish, consonant clusters may not be broken by epenthetic vowels; foreign words undergo consonant deletion rather than addition of vowels. However, modern loans may not end in consonants. Even if the word, such as a personal name, is not loaned, a paragogic vowel is needed to connect a consonantal case ending to the word. The vowel is , e.g. (Inter)net → netti, or in the case of personal name, Bush + -sta → Bushista "about Bush". Finnish has moraic consonants, of which L, H and N are of interest in this case. In standard Finnish, these are slightly intensified when preceding a consonant in a medial cluster, e.g. -hj-. Some dialects, like Savo and Ostrobothnian, employ epenthesis instead, using the preceding vowel in clusters of type -lC- and -hC-, and in Savo, -nh-. For example, Pohjanmaa "Ostrobothnia" → Pohojammaa, ryhmä → ryhymä, and Savo vanha → vanaha. Ambiguities may result: salmi "strait" vs. salami. (An exception is that in Pohjanmaa, -lj- and -rj- become -li- and -ri-, respectively, e.g. kirja → kiria. Also, in a small region in Savo, the vowel is used in the same role.) Related phenomena See also Reference Välivokaali | ||||||||
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