Epenthesis


In phonology, epenthesis means the addition of one or more sounds to a word, especially in the first syllable, the last syllable, or between two syllabic sounds in a word. The opposite process in which one or more sounds are removed is referred to as syncope or elision.

Etymology

The word epenthesis comes from and en- and thesis. Epenthesis may be divided into two types: excrescence for the addition of a consonant, and for the addition of a vowel, svarabhakti or alternatively anaptyxis.

Uses

Epenthesis arises for a variety of reasons. The phonotactics of a given language may discourage vowels in hiatus or consonant clusters, and a consonant or vowel may be added to help pronunciation. Epenthesis may be represented in writing, or it may be a feature only of the spoken language.

Separating vowels

A consonant may be added to separate vowels in hiatus, as is the case with linking and intrusive R in English.
  • drawing → ''draw-r-ing''

    Bridging consonant clusters

A consonant may be placed between consonants in a consonant cluster where the place of articulation is different.
  • something → somepthing
  • hamster → hampster
  • *a-mrotos → ''ambrotos''

    Breaking consonant clusters

A vowel may be placed between consonants to separate them.
  • Hamtramck → ''Hamtramick''

    Other contexts

While epenthesis most often occurs between two vowels or two consonants, it can also occur between a vowel and a consonant or at the ends of words. For example, the Japanese prefix transforms regularly to when it is followed by a consonant, as in. The English suffix, often found in the form, as in , is an example of terminal excrescence.

Excrescence

Excrescence is the epenthesis of a consonant.

Historical sound change

  • Latin tremulare > French trembler
  • Old English þunor > English thunder
  • French messager, passager > English messenger, passenger
  • French message, messager > Portuguese mensagem, mensageiro
  • Proto-Germanic > Old English, Old Saxon sāian
  • Proto-Greek *amrotos > Ancient Greek
  • Latin homine > homne > homre > Spanish hombre
  • Latin audire > ouir > Portuguese ouvir

    Synchronic rule

In French, -t- is inserted between an inverted subject and verb, when the verb ends in a vowel and the subject is a pronoun beginning with a vowel: il a > a-t-il ; elle s'exclama > s'exclama-t-elle. There is no epenthesis from a historical perspective since the a-t is derived from Latin habet, and so the t is the original third-person verb inflection. It is incorrect to call it epenthesis unless it is viewed synchronically since the modern basic form of the verb is a and so the psycholinguistic process is the addition of t to the base form.
A similar example is the English indefinite article a, which becomes an before a vowel. It originated from Old English , which retained an n in all positions, so a diachronic analysis would see the original n disappearing except if a following vowel required its retention: an > a. However, a synchronic analysis, in keeping with the perception of most native speakers, would see it as epenthesis: a > an.
In Dutch, whenever the suffix is attached to a word already ending in -r, an additional -d- is inserted in between. For example, the comparative form of the adjective is, but the comparative of is and not the expected **zurer. Similarly, the agent noun of is , but the agent noun of is .

Variable rule

In English, a stop consonant is often added as a transitional sound between the parts of a nasal + fricative sequence:
  • English hamster often pronounced with an added p sound, GA: or RP:
  • English warmth often pronounced with an added p sound, GA: or RP:
  • English fence often pronounced

    Poetic device

  • Latin reliquiās > poetic relliquiās
The three short syllables in reliquiās do not fit into dactylic hexameter because of the dactyl's limit of two short syllables so the first syllable is lengthened by adding another l. However, the pronunciation was often not written with double ll, and may have been the normal way of pronouncing a word starting in rel- rather than a poetic modification.

In Japanese

A limited number of words in Japanese use epenthetic consonants to separate vowels. An example is the word, a compound of haru and ame in which an is added to separate the final of haru and the initial of ame. That is a synchronic analysis, looking just at the modern language.
As for a diachronic analysis, looking at historical change, this epenthetic only appears in a small number of compounds coined mostly in Old Japanese, and only applying to a handful of words used as the second element in such compounds. For examples like,, and, one possibility is that Old Japanese /ame2/ was once pronounced */same2/; the appearing in these compounds would then be not epenthetic but simply an archaic pronunciation. This is the case for the apparent epenthetic in, which is instead from Old Japanese, from the intensifier plus merging of the in sa- and the following in awo.

Anaptyxis

Epenthesis of a vowel is known as anaptyxis. Some accounts distinguish between "intrusive" optional vowels, vowel-like releases of consonants as phonetic detail, and true epenthetic vowels that are required by the phonotactics of the language and are acoustically identical with phonemic vowels.

Historical sound change

End of word

Many languages insert a so-called prop vowel at the end of a word, often as a result of the common sound change where vowels at the end of a word are deleted. For example, in the Gallo-Romance languages, a prop schwa was added when final non-open vowels were dropped leaving clusters at the end, e.g., Latin nigrum ' black' > * > Old French neɡre 'black'.

Middle of word

Similarly as above, a vowel may be inserted in the middle of a word to resolve an impermissible word-final consonant cluster. An example of this can be found in Lebanese Arabic, where 'heart' corresponds to Modern Standard Arabic قلب and Egyptian Arabic. In the development of Old English, Proto-Germanic 'field, acre' would have ended up with an impermissible final cluster, so it was resolved by inserting an before the rhotic consonant: .
Vowel insertion in the middle of a word can be observed in the history of the Slavic languages, which had a preference for open syllables in medieval times. An example of this is the Proto-Slavic form *gordŭ 'town', in which the East Slavic languages inserted an epenthetic copy vowel to open the closed syllable, resulting in городъ, which became in modern Russian. Other Slavic languages used metathesis for the vowel and the syllable-final consonant, producing *grodŭ in this case, as seen in Polish gród, Old Church Slavonic градъ gradŭ, Serbo-Croatian grad and Czech hrad.
In many West Germanic language varieties, a phonetic is inserted between or and labial or velar . This leads to Dutch kalm 'calm' being pronounced, Limburgish sjolk 'apron' being pronounced, Luxembourgish Vollek 'people' being pronounced and Ripuarian Dörp 'village' being pronounced. The city names Bergen op Zoom and Utrecht as pronounced by locals can be spelled Berrege and Utereg in eye dialect. The exact details vary depending on the language and dialect, with some dialects permitting the addition across syllable boundaries and others restricting it to the syllable coda. This unetymological schwa is never written in Standard Dutch, but is usually written in Luxembourgish. In Limburgish and Ripuarian, the practices vary as there is not one standard orthography.
Dialects with both types of anaptyxis regularize the schwa-insertion, making it phonemic:,, etc. comparably to the GOAT split in London English. In those dialects, schwa insertion also occurs between or on the one hand and or on the other. Most speakers with a hard G do not have as a phoneme in their system; thus, broad Amsterdam and Utrecht pronunciations of balgen and bergen are,, with no change in the voicing of the fricative. and are markedly southern dialectal pronunciations. Anaptyxis does not occur across morpheme boundaries, so that while the surname Voorn can be pronounced, the noun/verb voornemen 'intention', 'to intend' is never pronounced *.
In Irish and Scottish English, anaptyxis famously occurs in words such as 'film', spelled 'fillum' in eye dialect.
Another environment can be observed in the history of Modern Persian, in which former word-initial consonant clusters, which were still extant in Middle Persian, are regularly broken up: Middle Persian brādar 'brother' > modern Iranian Persian برادر , Middle Persian stūn 'column' > Early New Persian ستون > modern Iranian Persian ستون .
In Spanish, as a phonetic detail, it is usual to find a schwa vowel in sequences of a consonant followed by a flap. For instance, vinagre 'vinegar' may be but also.
Many Indo-Aryan languages carry an inherent vowel after each consonant. For example, in Assamese, the inherent vowel is "o", while in Hindi and Marathi, it is "a". Sanskrit words like maaŋsa, ratna, yatna, padma, harsha, dvaara etc. become moŋoh, roton, zoton, podum, horix, duwar etc. in Assamese. Other, non-Tatsama words also undergo anaptyxis, for example, the English word glass becomes gilas.

Beginning of word

In the Western Romance languages, a prothetic vowel was inserted at the beginning of any word that began with and another consonant, e.g. Latin spatha 'two-edged sword, typically used by cavalry' becomes the normal word for 'sword' in Romance languages with an inserted : Spanish/Portuguese espada, Catalan espasa, Old French espede > modern épée.
French in fact presents three layers in the vocabulary in which initial vowel epenthesis is or is not applied, depending on the time a word came into the language:
  • insertion of epenthetic in inherited and commonly used learned and semi-learned words, which then drop the following after the medieval period: Latin stēlla, stēla > Old French esteile > modern étoile 'star', studium > Old French estude > modern étude 'study', schola > OF escole > modern école 'school'
  • insertion of and keeping in learned words borrowed during the Middle Ages or the Renaissance: speciēs > espèce, spatium > espace
  • then in the modern period, is not inserted and uncommon old learned borrowings are remolded to look more like Latin: scholāris > scolaire, spatiālis > spatial, speciālis > learned Old French especiel > remolded to modern spécial
Similarly, at some point in the Proto-Armenian language and Classical Armenian, the prothetic vowel ե was placed at the beginning of the word before the sound ր, leading to words like երախ from Iranian rax, or երազ from Iranian raz.