- Sandhi
Sandhi (
Sanskrit "IAST|saṃdhi" _sa. संधि "joining") is a cover term for a wide variety of phonological processes that occur atmorpheme or word boundaries (thus belonging to what is called "morphophonology "). Examples include the fusion of sounds across word boundaries and the alteration of sounds due to neighboring sounds or due to the grammatical function of adjacent words. Sandhi occurs particularly prominently in Sanskrit phonology, hence its name, but many other languages have it.As a non-English word, the pronunciation of the word "sandhi" is rather diverse among English speakers. According to Sanskrit phonology it can be pronounced|sən̪d̪ʱi. English pronunciations include IPAlink-en|ˈsʌndi (identical with "Sunday" for some
British English speakers), IPA|/ˈsændi/ (identical with "sandy" for those speakers without the bad-lad split), and IPA|/ˈsɑːndi/.Types of sandhi
*Internal sandhi features the alteration of sounds within words at morpheme boundaries, as in "sympathy" ("syn- + pathy").
*External sandhi refers to changes found at word boundaries, such as in the pronunciation IPA| [tɛm bʊks] for "ten books". This is not true of all dialects of English. The "Linking R " of some dialects of English is a kind of external sandhi, as is the process called "liaison" in theFrench language .While it may be extremely common in speech, sandhi (especially external) is typically ignored in spelling, as is the case in English, with the exception of the distinction between "a" and "an" (sandhi is, however, reflected in the writing system of Sanskrit). External sandhi effects can sometimes become morphologized (i.e. apply only in certain morphological and syntactic environments) and, over time, turn into
consonant mutation s.Most tonal languages have
tone sandhi , in which the tones of words alter according to pre-determined rules. For example: Mandarin has four tones: a high monotone, a rising tone, a falling-rising tone, and a falling tone. In the common greeting "nǐ hǎo", both words in isolation would normally have the falling-rising tone. However, this is difficult to say, so the tone on "nǐ" is pronounced as "ní" (but still written nǐ inHanyu Pinyin ).See also
*
Alternation (linguistics)
*Crasis
*Elision
*Liaison (French)
*Linking and intrusive R External links
* [http://flaez.ch/cgi-bin/sandhi.pl Online tool to perform and undo Sanskrit sandhi effects]
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