Phonological Elision in Malaysian Cantonese casual speech

Abstract

In fast and casual speech of Malaysian Cantonese (MyCan), there is an elision of phonological segments during the utterance of familiar items. MyCan elision is commonly attested in casual utterances of trisyllabic strings, and it only applies at the boundaries between syllables, known as Window of Elision. The locus of elision is generally at the initial and medial syllables, sometimes triggering the merger of adjacent syllables and produces a disyllabic output. This effect is attributed to the combination of the binarity requirement in casual prosody, and the rightheadedness of MyCan prosody. However, merging of syllables after elision will be blocked if there are intervening residue consonants. There are also cases where elision cannot apply, no matter how familiar that item is. In fact, elision involves only either reduplicants or a very specific set of consonant segments.