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I was studying for my exam and I came across something called elision. So my question is... Can "often" be considered an elision? Because of the silent t? Or am I just not getting the concept of elision?

tchrist
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fallanga
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  • Related. – tchrist Jan 07 '18 at 17:43
  • Thanks, but I'm not concerned about the pronunciation, I'm just interested, whether or not it really is an example of elision. – fallanga Jan 07 '18 at 17:50
  • Define elision. What are you imagining has been removed? – tchrist Jan 07 '18 at 17:51
  • Well, it's an ommision of a vowel or a consonant, right? So, the question is, is the silent t is considered as "left out"? – fallanga Jan 07 '18 at 17:53
  • It’s no more “left out” than any other so-called “silent” letters like you find in more, you, should, gnome, psychology, knight, pneumatic, and 42 million others. It’s simply what happens with words like listen, aglisten, christen, often, moisten, hasten, chasten, soften, faster. We retain an old letter so you know where the word came from so that you can know what it means. Letters aren't about sounds in English. But we can't tell you what to write down on your test to make your teacher happy. They may have their own ideas. – tchrist Jan 07 '18 at 17:59
  • Alright, I'm starting to get the point. If I can have on more question, are contracted forms considered an elision (isn't, I'll, etc...)? The test isn't that important by the way, I will always write something :) It's more of a matter of personal interest. – fallanga Jan 07 '18 at 18:06
  • Considered by whom? For what purpose? Questions of the form "Is X considered to be Y?" are about as meaningful as "Who is the father of?" – Colin Fine Jan 07 '18 at 18:12
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    Well, considered by linguists. Does it fit the definition? – fallanga Jan 07 '18 at 18:36
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    No, not really. Letters and spelling aren't real language; they're technology for recording real language, which can be spoken by illiterates, who don't know how to spell anything. Consequently, when linguists use the term elision, they refer only to sounds or words or morphemes -- things that are part of real language -- and not to spellings, which do not generally represent the sounds of modern English. – John Lawler Jan 07 '18 at 18:54

1 Answers1

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It depends on the context.

"often" is an example of the diachronic elision of "t"

Historically, the word "often" started out with a /t/ sound in the pronunciation, and it lost it. So we can say that the loss of /t/ in "often" is an example of elision from a diachronic perspective.

"often" could be argued to be an example of synchronic elision of "t", but that's disputable, & so probably not the best example for you to give of a synchronic elision process

It's harder to make the case that the t-less pronunciation of "often" is an example of elision from a synchronic perspective, although it can be done (and I expect it has, although I'm not familiar with the relevant linguistics literature). The strongest argument in favor is probably not the spelling, but the existence of the related word "oft", where the phoneme /t/ is still present for modern-day speakers. However, "often" is is actally a much more frequent word than "oft", so it doesn't seem obvious that the former should be analyzed as synchronically derived from the latter. But as noted in the comments, there are words like "soften", from which we could make a stronger case for the existence of a synchronic process of /t/ elision in present-day English in words that would otherwise end in /ftən/.

Even with "soften" and the "-sten" and "-stle" and words, however, there just aren't that many examples of this kind of /t/-elision as an apparently synchronic process.

And there do seem to be words that end in /ftən/ with no elision of the /t/, such as chieftain (for speakers who can merge weak vowels before /n/ in unstressed final syllables) and the proper name Crofton, which ends in /ftən/.

It's possible to come up with ways to account for exceptions like this in the context of a synchronic elision rule. For example, we might say the elision only occurs in words derived from morphemes ending in /ft/, so "chieftain" does not experience elision because its morphological structure is "chief + tain" rather than "chieft + ain", and "Crofton" does not experience elision because it is morphologically simple. (Or, as Janus Bahs Jacquet points out in the comments, "Crofton" could be analyzed as a cranberry-morpheme "Crof" + a place-name suffix "-ton"; this seems to match with some analysis I vaguely remember reading that explained the lack of elision of /t/ in "-ston" proper nouns like "Boston" and "Aston" the same way. There are other types of /stən/ proper nouns for which such an analysis seems more far-fetched, though, like "Austen/Austin" (for speakers with the weak vowel merger), "Kristen" and "Kirsten".)

But the thing is, it's not really clear if the limited amount of evidence for it justifies the rule in the first place. An answer I got to a question I asked recently on Linguistics SE, "What are current perspectives on analyzing word-final /i/ in English words like “potency” as synchronically derived from /j/?", indicates that many phonologists aren't particularly convinced that minor alternations between related words like this are best explained by postulating the existence of synchronic morphophonological rules.

Community
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herisson
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  • Thank you, this was really helpful. I just needed reassurance, that it CAN be elision. I'm still gonna ask my teacher about this, but I'm more confident that I get the concept. Thanks a lot. – fallanga Jan 07 '18 at 19:06
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    I would have said Crofton doesn’t get elided because synchronically (whatever the actual etymology), its morphological structure is Crof + -ton. Given the number of place names in -ton, I think it’s fair to say it’s a morpheme (perhaps a cranberry one, but still a morpheme) and those names aren’t morphologically simple. – Janus Bahs Jacquet Jan 07 '18 at 19:23
  • @JanusBahsJacquet I can well think of Crofton as comprising two morphemes to make it a town of crofts. I may well be wrong, but I’ve always imagined that the -ton bit at the end of so many English toponyms “virtually always” represents the common Germanic (and Celtic) element tun for a (probably enclosed or fenced) yard, the same one which would in the fullness of time also give rise to modern town in English. – tchrist Jan 07 '18 at 19:56
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    @tchrist It does, absolutely. Diachronically, it is certainly a morpheme—a lexeme, in fact. I think a fair number of speakers would likely be able to make the connection if they thought about it, but I don’t think it’s obvious enough that I would call -ton and town the same morpheme in current English. But I would definitely think of -ton as a morpheme still. – Janus Bahs Jacquet Jan 07 '18 at 19:58
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    @JanusBahsJacquet: Good point about "Crofton" possibly being analyzable as having the ending "-ton". It wasn't obvious to me, but it seems plausible now that you point it out. However, I think there are some proper nouns ending in a fricative + /tən/ where this explanation doesn't seem plausible to me, like "Austin"/"Austen" (which is apparently a shortened form of "Augustine", like how "maudlin" is a shortened form of "Magdalene"). – herisson Jan 07 '18 at 21:03