Editing Elision (section)

==Citation forms and contextual forms==
A word may be spoken individually in what is called the [[Lemma (morphology)|citation form]]. This corresponds to the pronunciation given in a dictionary. However, when words are spoken in context, it often happens that some sounds that belong to the citation form are omitted. Elision is not an all-or-nothing process: elision is more likely to occur in some styles of speaking and less likely in others.<ref name="Shockey">{{cite book |last1=Shockey |first1=Linda |title=Sound Patterns of Spoken English |date=2003 |publisher=Blackwell |isbn=0-631-23080-7 |pages=14–29}}</ref>  Many writers have described the styles of speech in which elision is most commonly found, using terms such as "casual speech",<ref>{{cite book |last1=McMahon |first1=April |title=An Introduction to English Phonology |date=2002 |publisher=Edinburgh University Press |isbn=0-7486-1251-3 |pages=47–8}}</ref> "spontaneous speech",<ref name="Cauldwell">{{cite book |last1=Cauldwell |first1=Richard |title=Phonology for Listening |date=2013 |publisher=SpeechinAction |isbn=978-0954344726}}</ref> "allegro speech"<ref>{{cite book |last1=Akamatsu |first1=Tsutomu |editor1-last=Windsor Lewis |editor1-first=Jack |editor1-link=Jack Windsor Lewis |chapter=On some neutralisations and archiphonemes in English allegro speech |title=Studies in General and English Phonetics: Essays in Honour of Professor J.D. O'Connor |year=1995 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=0-415-08068-1 |pages=3–9}}</ref> or "rapid speech".<ref name="Gimson"/> In addition, what may appear to be the disappearance of a sound may in fact be a change in the articulation of a sound that makes it less audible. For example, it has been said that in some dialects of Spanish the word-final ''-ado'', as in ''cansado'' (tired) is pronounced /ado/ in citation form but the /d/ is omitted in normal speech, giving "cansao". More careful description will show that the Spanish phoneme /d/ is usually pronounced as a [[voiced dental fricative]] [ð] when it occurs between vowels. In casual speech it is frequently weakened to a [[voiced dental approximant]] [ð̞].<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Martinez-Celdran |first1=Eugenio |title=Problems in the classification of approximants |journal=Journal of the International Phonetic Association|date=2004 |volume=34 |issue=2 |pages=201–210|doi=10.1017/S0025100304001732 |s2cid=144568679 }}</ref> The most extreme possibility is complete elision resulting in a diphthong with no observable consonantal tongue gesture.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Clark |first1=John |last2=Yallop |first2=Colin |title=An Introduction to Phonetics and Phonology |date=1995 |publisher=Blackwell |isbn=0-631-19452-5 |page=90 |edition=2nd}}</ref> In this view, elision is the final stage in [[lenition]] or consonant weakening, the last phase of a cline or continuum describable as d > ð > ð̞ > ∅. Whether the elision is of vowel or consonant, if it is consistent through time, the form with elision may come to be accepted as the norm: ''tabula'' > ''tabla'' as in Spanish, ''mutare'' > ''muer'' ("change, molt") in French, ''luna'' > ''lua'' ("moon") in Portuguese.
It is usual to explain elision and related connected-speech phenomena in terms of the [[principle of least effort]] or "economy of effort". This concept has been stated as "If a word or expression remains perfectly intelligible without a certain sound, people tend to omit that sound."<ref>{{cite book |last1=Jones |first1=Daniel |title=The Pronunciation of English |date=1963 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |page=133 |edition=4th}}</ref>