CONSONANT ELISION IN WORD-FINAL CONSONANT CLUSTERS IN SINGAPORE ENGLISH

Abstract

This academic exercise has sought to analyze the phonological process of consonant elision in word-final clusters in standard educated Singapore English (SE). in an effort to discover the types of consonants which are liable to be elided and the phonological environments in which such elisions take place. The material for our study of the English spoken in Singapore is a corpus of running text and sentences recorded by informants selected as representing each of the three main ethnic groups and those who are educated in the English medium. Chapter three of this exercise deals with the analysis of consonant elision in word-final clusters. noting the regularities and patterns of such elisions. From our analysis. we may conclude that the elision in word-final clusters is a common phenomenon in Singapore English. However. such elisions are not prevalent among all types of consonants. It is revealed by my data that stop consonants and dental fricative consonants have the highest tendency to be elided when occurring in appropriate environments. Stops are elided when preceded by another consonant in word-final consonant clusters (One exception is that only voiced alveolar stops are elided when preceded by a lateral approximant). Dental fricatives are elided when preceded by a consonant and followed by another fricative. Other variable factors such as: the number of consonants occurring in the clusters, the similarity or non-similarity of place of articulation of consonants in word-final clusters. whether the consonants occur in the same morpheme or separate morphemes. whether the consonants agree in voicing and the different phonological environments, were also examined to determine their influence on the frequency of elision of both stop and fricatives in word-final clusters. My study concludes with a comparison between elision of consonants in word-final clusters in SE and in a dialect of standard native English, RP. It is also acknowledged that this study is not exhaustive and has its own limitations as well.