Talk:Syncope (phonology)

Is "Worcester" a syncope?
C'mon, Worcester is simply Worce (pronounced like "worse") + ster (pronounced like, well, "ster"). There's nothing in that that involves leaving phonemes out. Similarly, Gloucester is just Gloss + ster, and while it's odd that "Glouce" is pronounced "Gloss," there's still nothing left out. Same with Leicester (less-ster).
 * The '-cester' of Worcester is ultimately from Latin castrum "camp, encampment, small city" and Gloucester and the others are indeed examples of syncope. Check any dictionary worth it's salt if you don't believe me.--Hraefen 02:32, 9 December 2005 (UTC)


 * Worcester is pronounced ), not like "worse" at all. In fact, it ultimately comes from Weogoraceaster -> Wigranceastre -> Wireceastre -> Worcester, all of which are examples of syncope.

Split into two pages
Shouldn't this be made into a disambiguation page, with the two portions moved to separate articles? --Jacqui M Schedler 23:25, 31 August 2005 (UTC)

I agree with Jacqui above (though the section portion should be merged into the Fainting page, instead of becoming a new page. Any objections? --Arcadian 03:50, 29 November 2005 (UTC)
 * I've split the medical aspect into fainting. --Arcadian 03:25, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

I've removed this line, it seems to be a remainder from the medical article: Syncope: passing out or fainting; common syptom of dysautonomia

--81.151.44.90 21:39, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

Syncope vs. Elision
The article is unhelpful in saying "compare elision". Be more concrete! The Elision article says they are synonyms, and seems to be talking about the same thing. If so, the articles should be merged. -Pgan002 07:33, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

I've always understood syncope as a special kind of elision, based on my amateur knowledge of linguistics; syncope would be defined as the elision of medial sounds, especially unstressed vowels (decreasing the syllable count). Answers.com defines it as "The shortening of a word by omission of a sound, letter, or syllable from the middle of the word"; in a definition from another source (related to poetry) it says syncope is "a type of elision in which a word is contracted by removing one or more letters or syllables from the middle, as ne'er for never, or fo'c'sle for forecastle". Shortening and middle seem to be the important part of both definitions. One of the etymologies of syncope means "to cut short". I don't think this article should be merged with elision, though the relationship should indeed be made clearer. --Pablo D. Flores (Talk) 10:28, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

According to the Harmon/Holman Tenth Edition of A Handbook to Literature, "Syncope is distinguished from elision in that it is usually confined the the omission of elements (usually vowels) inside a word [emphasis added], whereas elision usually runs two words together by the omission of a final sound [emphasis added]." [p. 512] The example it gives for elision is the shortening of "the orient" to "th'orient" [p. 183], and the example given for syncope is the shortening of "every" to "ev'ry" [p. 513]. It also notes that elision has naturally occured in the English laguage in order to shorten words with redundant-sounding syllables, such as "pacificist" to pacifist" and "femininist" to "feminist" [p. 513], facilitating pronunciation.  It also notes that "Many Latin words have undergone syncope when passing into other languages, especially if an intervocalic consonant is invovled, as in magister which becomes, variously, "master," "maître," "maestro," and "Meister." I hope this helps in distinguishing the two. Certainly, if nothing else, elision and syncope are not synonyms. ~e.o.t.d~ 21:13, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

Compression and relaxed pronunciation
I think that it would be helpful if the difference between compression and relaxed pronunciation was given in this article and/or in the relaxed pronunciation article (see the section in this article titled "Syncope in informal speech"). Note that the redirect compression (phonetics) currently redirects to this article's section titled "Syncope in informal speech". I tried to find the difference using Google, but I could not find a website on which the terms "compression" and "relaxed pronunciation" were both used together in the phonetic sense. Perhaps the relaxed pronunciation article is simply incorrect in describing what relaxed pronunciation is, as it has no references. -- Kjkolb (talk) 13:22, 21 December 2009 (UTC)

English
Is English innit from "isn't it" a syncope?--71.111.229.19 (talk) 19:54, 27 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Probably, but I'm not sure. Peter238 (v̥ɪˑzɪʔ mɑˑɪ̯ tˢʰoˑk̚ pʰɛˑɪ̯d̥ʒ̊) 22:43, 27 October 2014 (UTC)
 * Seems more a case of extreme or multiple assimilation.47.32.20.133 (talk) 03:13, 24 June 2018 (UTC)

Phonetics...? or →Phonology?
Like most any phonological process, syncope can't really be adequately described without reference to phonetics. But it is, in each of its many occurrences, a phonological process. Why say "(phonetics)" in the title?--IfYouDoIfYouDon&#39;t (talk) 07:33, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

Postscript to above: Please see Phonetics.--IfYouDoIfYouDon&#39;t (talk) 08:06, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

English -ing -> -in
I'm always irritated to see that listed as an example of syncope: while the sound change corresponds to a dropped letter, -ng isn't and has never been pronounced [ng]. Rather, it's the single [ŋ] sound which [n] is substituted for. One might speculate that the pronunciation of [n] doesn't interfere with following vowels as much as [ŋ] does and is thus "cheaper", but it's still the replacement of one sound for another, not the addition or deletion of a sound.

176.7.55.99 (talk) 11:43, 6 June 2016 (UTC)

Proposed merge with Relaxed pronunciation
Similar info in both articles  Pariah24  ┃ ☏  23:03, 11 July 2017 (UTC)
 * Oppose:similar, but not identical and the pages are sufficiently linked for readers to move between them. Klbrain (talk) 22:22, 22 February 2019 (UTC)
 * Oppose:they are not talking about the same thing. Relaxed language may involve the use of syncopes, but not all syncopes are a form of relaxed language. ElectroChip123 (talk) 23:45, 5 March 2019 (UTC)

Problems in the Diachrony section
There are numerous problems in the article, but I'll stick to Diachrony for this comment.

I've moved North American English every >  to synchrony, corrected the misassigned stress, and adjusted the notation for synchrony, not restructuring (it may be possible to locate speakers for whom the syncopated form really is underlying/phonemic, but they'd be hard-to-find outliers).

Latin tremulare > Italian tremare is phonologically anomalous; much more plausible for It. tremare is the traditional explanation of "lat. trĕmĕre, con mutamento di coniug."

The toponyms in -cester are all examples of not just loss of any sound, but loss of exactly the same unstressed vowel.

There's syncope involved in Old English hlāfweard > hlāford > Middle English loverd > Modern English lord, pronounced /lɔːrd/, but it's a complex example for a general readership, and may lead to such readers conflating the lenition of /f/ > /v/ > /zero/ with syncope. (Australian > Strine is also vastly complex for a neophyte to deal with, but that's another section.) 2600:8800:A580:DAC0:D854:B039:BA8F:D044 (talk) 20:58, 10 March 2019 (UTC)