Intervocalic consonant

This article contains phonetic transcriptions in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA. For the distinction between [ ], / / and ⟨ ⟩, see IPA § Brackets and transcription delimiters.

In phonetics and phonology, an intervocalic consonant is a consonant that occurs between two vowels.^[1]^: 158 Intervocalic consonants are often associated with lenition, a phonetic process that causes consonants to weaken and eventually disappear entirely.^{[citation needed]} An example of such a change in English is intervocalic alveolar flapping, a process (especially in North American and Australian English) that, impressionistically speaking, replaces /t/ with /d/. For example, "metal" is pronounced [mɛɾl]; "batter" sounds like ['bæ.ɾɚ]. (More precisely, both /t/ and /d/ are pronounced as the alveolar tap [ɾ].) In North American English, the weakening is variable across word boundaries, such that the /t/ of "see you tomorrow" might be pronounced as either [ɾ] or [tʰ].^[1]^: 96 Some languages have intervocalic-weakening processes fully active word-internally and in connected discourse. For example, in Spanish, /d/ is regularly pronounced like [ð] in the words "todo" [ˈtoðo] (meaning "all") and "la duna [laˈðuna]", meaning "the dune" (but [ˈduna] if the word is pronounced alone).^{[citation needed]}

References

^ ^a ^b Nathan, Geoffrey S. (2008). Phonology: A cognitive grammar introduction. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. ISBN 978-90-272-1907-7.

This phonology article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.

[nathan-1] Nathan, Geoffrey S. (2008). Phonology: A cognitive grammar introduction. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. ISBN 978-90-272-1907-7.

[1]