Apheresis (linguistics)

In phonetics and phonology, apheresis (/əˈfɛrɪsɪs, əˈfɪərɪsɪs/; British English: aphaeresis) is a sound change in which a word-initial vowel is lost, e.g., American > 'Merican. In a broader sense, it can refer to the loss of any initial sound (including consonants) from a word or, in a less technical sense, to the loss of one or more sounds from the beginning of a word.[1] The more specific term aphesis (and its adjective aphetic) is sometimes used to refer to the loss of unstressed vowels.

  1. ^ Campbell, Lyle (2007). Glossary of Historical Linguistics. Edinburgh University Press. p. [13 https://archive.org/details/glossaryofhistor0000camp/page/13]. ISBN 978-0-7486-3019-6.

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