Another question that springs to mind when thinking of elision is why some consonants seem to be more “elidable” than others. I think I’m going to have to stick to English here, because I am woefully ignorant of the details of elision in other languages.
It’s well-known that [t] and [d] are readily elided in many, if not all, varieties of English. But what about other candidates? Remember I’m talking of synchronic elision here.
Can any other plosives be elided in English? Well, \/yes….There is the occasional deletion of [k] in words like asked. [p] gets deleted by some speakers (sometimes) in words like tempt, temperature. However, I can’t think of plausible examples of the elision of or [g].
When it comes to fricatives, other than [h], (if you really insist that [h] is a fricative), elision must be pretty rare, I think. About the only example I can come up with is the pronunciation of afternoon as [ɑːʔənuːn] and that is either used jocularly or is confined to a few accents.
Affricates? Nope.
So what is so special about [t] and [d] and are they similarly treated in other languages? I’d love to know.
