Epenthesis
From Freepedia
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 would be "The Umbrella Man" where the meter requires "umbrella" to be pronounced with four syllables "um-buh-rel-la", so "any umbrellas, any umbrellas" matches "toodle luma luma, toodle luma luma".
Regular or semiregular epenthesis commonly occurs in languages which use affixes. For example, /ɪ/ is inserted before the English plural suffix -/z/ and the past tense suffix -/d/ when the root ends in a similar consonant. For example, glass → glasses (/glæsɪz/) and bat → batted (/bætɪd/).
(An alternative view would be that the root form of these suffixes is /ɪz/ and /ɪd/ repectively and that the /ɪ/ undergoes elision in most cases.)
Epenthesis may also occur for ease of pronunciation in consonant clusters, especially unfamiliar or complex ones. For example, the name Duane is commonly pronounced with an epenthetic schwa between the /d/ and the /w/ at the beginning, and the word hamster is often pronounced with a /p/ after the /m/. Many speakers insert an extra vowel between the /l/ and /t/ of realtor. This is common when languages which have a restricted syllable structure borrow words from a language with complex syllables, such as when Japanese borrows words from English. Street becomes sutorito in Japanese, with the insertion of three epenthetic vowels.
Epenthesis is also used for humorous or childlike effect, for example the cartoon characters Yogi Bear who says "pic-a-nic basket" and Homer Simpson who says "saxo-ma-phone".
Related phenomena
- Different languages use different epenthetic vowels
- Contraction is the opposite, the omission of a sound or syllable inside a word.
- Tmesis is the inclusion of a whole word in another one.
- Prothesis is the addition of a sound to the start of a word.
- Paragoge is the addition of a sound to the end of a word.
