Resyllabification
Appearance
In some languages, resyllabification is a phenomenon where consonants become attached to vowels in a syllable different than the one from which they originally came. This can even occur across word boundaries, as happens in the enchaînment of contemporary French-language phonology.
Resyllabification is related to the process of rebracketing.
English
[edit]In English, the word apron is an example of historical resyllabification. Originally naperon in French (from nappe, "cloth"), the ⟨n⟩ in the phrase ⟨a napron⟩ shifted across the word boundary to create the modern form ⟨an apron⟩, changing the pronunciation of the word in contexts even without the indefinite article ⟨a⟩ present.[1]
Notes
[edit]- ^ "Definition of APRON". www.merriam-webster.com. 2024-02-16. Retrieved 2024-02-19.