Vowel insertion phenomenon
When I, maybe Br.E speaker, pronounce adverbs ending '-bly' I find myself occasionally inserting an extra vowel.
So I say feeble-y, noble-y but I 'correctly' say 'nim-bly' and 'lim-ply' (I've placed the hyphen to approximate stress).
Various online dictionaries give the pronunciation without that extra vowel/different stress:
- Wiktionary: /ˈfiːbli/, /ˈnəʊbli/
- Merriam-Webster: ˈfē-blē, ˈnō-blē also -bə-lē
- Cambridge: /ˈfiː.bli/, /ˈnəʊ.bli/
(I note that Merriam-Webster does provide an alternative pronunciation, but with no explanation)
What is this inclination towards vowel epenthesis called, if it even has a name? I know similar insertions with r has a name: Linking R and intrusive R, but I've not found a similar article on vowel insertion.
1 answer
The closest term I’ve found is anaptyxis, the form of epenthesis that refers to inserting a vowel, but this is still fairly vague.
A similar phenomenon is mentioned in this paper, regarding the pronunciation of words ending in -ed, -ly, and -ness. Specifically, the tendency for English speakers to add an extra syllable (consisting of an extra vowel) to words that undergo specific suffix modifications when their grammatical purpose is changed (e.g. feeble -> feebly, going from adjective -> adverb). Here, the phenomenon is referred to as vowel epenthesis resulting from ambiguity in syllabification. Still vague unfortunately.
It’s possible that this phenomenon hasn’t been given a more specific name, or one that has been generally accepted by the linguistic community. If one did exist, I would expect to be able to find relevant publications via sites like Google Scholar or Research Gate making use of the term.
Cited.
Kawamoto, A. H., & Farrar, W. T., IV. (1990). Non-Obligatory Vowel Epenthesis in -Ed Pseudowords: Ambiguity in Syllabification Resolved by Syntax and Suffixation. In Language and Speech (Vol. 33, Issue 2, pp. 137–158). SAGE Publications. https://doi.org/10.1177/002383099003300203
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