Phonetic Processes

cluster reduction

when a consonant cluster is produced with only one consonant.

“truck” → “tuck”

“slide” → “side”

final consonant deletion

when the last consonant of a word is omitted.

“dog” → “daw”

initial consonant deletion

when the first consonant of a word is omitted.

“dog” → “awg”

weak syllable deletion

when the first unstressed syllable of a word is omitted.

“banana” → “nana”

epenthesis

when a sound is added between two consonants, often “uh”.

“plane” → “puh-lane”

backing

when alveolar sounds /t/ or /d/ are substituted with /k/ or /g/.

“tea”→”key”

“lid”→”lig”

fronting

when velar sounds /k/ or /g/ are substituted with alveolar sounds /t/ or /d/.

“bag”→ “bad”

“lake”→ “late”

affrication

when a non-affricate is substituted with an affricate, “ch” or “j”.

“doggie” → “joggie”

deaffrication

when an affricate “ch” or “j” is substituted with a fricative or stop, like “sh” or /d/.

“choo-choo” → “shoo-shoo”

“chip” → “dip”

alveolarization

when a non-alveolar sound is substituted with an alveolar sound.

“shoe” → “tu”

“make” → “nake”

depalatlization

when a palatal sound is substituted with a non-palatal sound.

“dish” → “dit”

labialization

when a non-labial sound is substituted with a labial sound /m/, /p/, or /b/.

“toad” → “poad”

“nail” → “mail”

gliding

when /l/ or /r/ becomes a /w/ or /y/ sound.

“yellow” → “yewo”

“rock” → “wock”

stopping

when a fricative or affricate is replaced with a stop.

“foot” → “put”

“jump” → “dump”

vowelization

when /l/ or “er” sounds are replaced with a vowel.

“apple” → “appo”

“color” → “colluh”

assimilation

when a consonant is substituted with another consonant within the word.

“ladder” → “dadder”

“bub” → “bus”

denaslization

when a nasal consonant like /n/ or /m/ is substituted with a non-nasal sound like /d/ or /b/.

“monkey” → “bunkey”

“nose” → “dose”

final consonant devoicing

when a voiced consonant at the end of the word, like /d/ is produced as its unvoiced counterpart, like /t/.

“bug” → “buck”

“road” → “wrote”

prevocalic voicing

when an unvoiced consonant at the beginning of the word, like /f/, is produced as its voiced counterpart, like /v/.

“fish” → “vish”

“sip” → “zip”

coalescence

when two phonemes are substituted with a consonant that has similar features.

“spoon” → “foon”

reduplication

when a sound or incomplete syllable is repeated.

“bottle” → “baba”

elision

when a sound is left out or omitted from a word.

“spoon”→”poon”

“plane”→”pane”

metathesis

when two sounds in a word switch places.

“animal”→”aminal”

“spaghetti”→”pasghetti”