In phonology, epenthesis (; Greek ) is the addition of one or more sounds to a word, especially in the first syllable (prothesis), the last syllable (paragoge), or between two syllabic sounds in a word. The opposite processes, in which sounds are removed, are syncope and 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 (in Sanskrit), nēm fatḥa (in Persian) or alternatively anaptyxis ().
Uses Epenthesis arises for a variety of reasons. The phonotactics of a given language may discourage consonant clusters or vowels in hiatus, 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 (such as if one consonant is labial and the other is alveolar).
something → somepthing hamster → hampster *a-mrotos → ambrotos (see below)
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 (from + ), is an example of terminal excrescence.
Excrescence Excrescence is the epenthesis of a consonant.
Historical sound change Latin > French () Old English > English thunder French , > English messenger, passenger French , > Portuguese , (Reconstructed) Proto-Germanic > Old English , Old Saxon () (Reconstructed) Proto-Greek > Ancient Greek (; cf. ambrosia) Latin > homne > homre > Spanish () Latin > ouir > Portuguese ()
Synchronic rule In French, 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: ('he has') > ('has he'); ('she exclaimed') > ('exclaimed she'). There is no epenthesis from a historical perspective since the is derived from Latin ('he/she has'), and so the 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 and so the psycholinguistic process is the addition of 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 (though incorrectly) see it as epenthesis: a > an.
In Dutch, whenever the suffix (which has several meanings) is attached to a word already ending in -r, an additional is inserted in between. For example, the comparative form of the adjective () is , but the comparative of () is and not the expected **. 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 (accusative plural) > poetic
The three short syllables in 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 and in which an is added to separate the final of and the initial of . 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 (but not actually) (second) 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 (, from Greek ). 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 '(shiny) black' > * > Old French 'black' (thus avoiding the impermissible , cf. > 'cart').
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 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: (cf. the use of a syllabic consonant in Gothic ).
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 'town', in which the East Slavic languages inserted an epenthetic copy vowel to open the closed syllable, resulting in (), 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 , Old Church Slavonic , Serbo-Croatian and Czech .
In many West Germanic language varieties (such as Dutch (including local Brabantian and Hollandic dialects), Limburgish, Luxembourgish and Ripuarian), a phonetic is inserted between or and labial or velar (also , in the case of the preceding ). This leads to Dutch 'calm' being pronounced , Limburgish 'apron' being pronounced , Luxembourgish 'people' being pronounced (from Old High German , a monosyllable) and Ripuarian '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 (such as many dialects of Limburgish) permitting the addition across syllable boundaries (but not morpheme boundaries) and others restricting it to the syllable coda (such as Standard Dutch). 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.
Anaptyxis of the schwa in Dutch Phonemic sequence In closed syllables (standard) Across syllable boundaries (dialectal) 'calm' 'calmer' 'alp' 'alps' 'beam' 'beams' 'calf' 'calves' (Northern) 'leather bag' 'leather bags' (Southern) 'leather bags' 'intestine' 'intestines' 'harp' 'harps' 'park' 'parks' 'carve' 'carves' (Northern) 'mountain' 'mountains' (Southern) 'mountains' 'nucleus' 'nuclei'
Dialects with both types of anaptyxis regularize the schwa-insertion, making it phonemic: , , etc. comparably to the GOAT split in London English (except that no new phoneme is created, as already exists in Dutch as a phoneme). 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 (Brabantian/Limburgish-influenced) dialectal pronunciations. Anaptyxis does not occur across morpheme boundaries, so that while the surname can be pronounced , the noun/verb 'intention', 'to intend' is never pronounced *.
In Irish and Scottish English (also West Germanic varieties), 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 'brother' > modern Iranian Persian , Middle Persian 'column' > Early New Persian > modern Iranian Persian .
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, '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 (, ), (, ), (, ), (, ), (, ), (, ) etc. become ( > ), ( > ), ( > ), ( > ), ( > ), ( > ) etc. in Assamese. Other, non-Tatsama words also undergo anaptyxis, for example, the English word glass becomes ().
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 'two-edged sword, typically used by cavalry' becomes the normal word for 'sword' in Romance languages with an inserted : Spanish/Portuguese , Catalan , Old French > modern (see also 'swordfish').
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 > Old French > modern 'star', > Old French > modern 'study', > OF > modern 'school' insertion of and keeping in learned words borrowed during the Middle Ages or the Renaissance: > , > then in the modern period, is not inserted and uncommon old learned borrowings are remolded to look more like Latin: > , > , > learned Old French > remolded to modern
Similarly, at some point in the Proto-Armenian language and Classical Armenian, the prothetic vowel was placed at the beginning of the word before the sound , leading to words like (, ) from Iranian (), or (, ) from Iranian ().
Grammatical rule Epenthesis often breaks up a consonant cluster or vowel sequence that is not permitted by the phonotactics of a language. Regular or semi-regular epenthesis commonly occurs in languages with affixes. For example, a reduced vowel or (here abbreviated as ) is inserted before the English plural suffix and the past tense suffix when the root ends in a similar consonant: glass → glasses or ; bat → batted . However, this is a synchronic analysis as the vowel was originally present in the suffix but has been lost in most words.
Borrowed words