Dropped syllables, syncope

Does the word interesting have three syllables or four? How many syllables in the word favorite, every, and different?
Transcript

Dictionaries show it both as a three and four syllables, as in in-tres-ting and in-ter-es-ting. The discussion about that word led to things other than the number of syllables in the word, but it is only the optional number of syllables in the word interesting, as well as other common words, that I'm going to talk about today.

The linguistic term for the loss of a syllable in spoken word is syncope, but I simply refer to it as dropped syllables.

Other examples of dropped syllables are the words every, favorite, and different.

That was:

ev-er-y versus ev-ry
or
fav-o-rite versus fav-rite
or
dif-fer-ent versus diff-rent

Dropping syllables occurs mostly on high-frequency words, and dictionaries are pretty good about showing both options when two choices of pronunciation are available.

The syllable that can be dropped, not surprisingly, follows a pattern. The syllables before or after a stressed syllable in a word are often unstressed. (This is opposed to a secondary stress that can occur two syllables apart from a stressed syllable.) Only the vowel sounds of unstressed syllables can get dropped, and usually the original word needed to have at least three syllables to begin with. I mentioned four words above, which I'll repeat now.

interesting
every
favorite
different

Here are some more examples. (I'm only going to pronounce these the less formal way, with the dropped syllable):

laboratory
family
vegetable
camera
mystery
beverage
restaurant

I also want to tell you the most common 2-syllable word can be reduced to a single syllable: s'pose (for suppose), as in "I s'pose I can help you tomorrow."

Also, like most informal options of pronouncing English, they may go away is the word is emphasized in a sentence. For instance, the word every. In normal speech, it drops to 2 syllables, every. However, if I were emphasizing that word, it may go back to the more proper 3 syllables, every. For example, in the sentence:

You don't need to practice every day, but you should try to most days.

I stressed the word every, and it was said with three syllables, as ev-e-ry.

Now, I do need to say, North Americans and British do this differently. So if you are more exposed to British English, you will not notice this to the same extent.

One last thing I found interesting when double checking facts for this episode, when I went to Merriam Webster Online to listen to their audio, they almost always pronounce the word with the less formal pronunciation. However, they sometimes show the syllabic breakdown with the extra syllable, and the phonetic transcription with the dropped syllable. It's an interesting discrepancy.

Intonation (linguistics)

In linguistics, intonation is variation of pitch while speaking which is not used to distinguish words. It contrasts with tone, in which pitch variation does distinguish words. Intonation, rhythm, and stress are the three main elements of linguistic prosody. Intonation patterns in some languages, such as Swedish and Swiss German, can lead to conspicuous fluctuations in pitch, giving speech a sing-song quality.[1] Fluctuations in pitch either involve a rising pitch or a falling pitch. Intonation is found in every language and even in tonal languages, but the realisation and function are seemingly different. It is used in non-tonal languages to add attitudes to words (attitudinal function) and to differentiate between wh-questions, yes-no questions, declarative statements, commands, requests, etc. Intonation can also be used for discourse analysis where new information is realised by means of intonation. It can also be used for emphatic/contrastive purposes.

All languages use pitch pragmatically as intonation — for instance for emphasis, to convey surprise or irony, or to pose a question. Tonal languages such as Chinese and Hausa use pitch for distinguishing words in addition to providing intonation.

Generally speaking, the following intonations are distinguished:

Rising Intonation means the pitch of the voice rises over time [↗];
Falling Intonation means that the pitch falls with time [↘];
Dipping Intonation falls and then rises [↘↗];
Peaking Intonation rises and then falls [↗↘].

INTERNET LINGUISTICS

Most research in Internet linguistics pertains to the English language, because the vast majority of InternetInternet linguistics is to determine how, if at all, the Internet has created a more global lexicon. Patterns developing on English language websites also appear in dialogues and conversations in other languages. Internet users also coin more globally accepted terms, many of which have consistent meanings from place to place. communications happen in English. The discipline is by no means limited to standard English, however. One of the goals of

The majority of Internet linguistics research is performed by people who have devoted their lives to the understanding of how languages spread and develop. David Crystal, a professor at England's University of Reading, was one of the first to advocate dedicated studies of the Internet’s role in language development and progression, and he has championed Internetlinguistics at institutions all over the world. Others outside of academia also have use for the discipline, however, particularly as it relates to advertising. 

Advertisements are ubiquitous online, and they are one of the driving reasons that so much of the web’s content is free of charge to users. To be profitable, however, ads must be effective. This usually means that users must click on them, and they often make a purchase or spend time perusing a sponsored website. Many advertisers seek the advice of Internet linguistics experts to determine ways of phrasing ad content that is both consistent with the lexicon of most users and in touch with the reigning language of the Internet.

Exploitation of the Internet

The Internet can also be exploited for activities such as terrorism, internet fraud and pedophilia. In recent years, there has been an increase in crimes that involved the use of the Internet such as e-mails and Internet Relay Chat (IRC), as it is relatively easy to remain anonymous. These conspiracies carry concerns for security and protection. From a forensic linguistic point of view, there are many potential areas to explore. While developing a chat room child protection procedure based on search terms filtering is effective, there is still minimal linguistically orientated literature to facilitate the task. In other areas, it is observed that the Semantic Web has been involved in tasks such as personal data protection, which helps to prevent fraud.

Linguistic future of the Internet

With the emergence of greater computer/Internet mediated communication systems, coupled with the readiness with which people adapt to meet the new demands of a more technologically sophisticated world, it is expected that users will continue to remain under pressure to alter their language use to suit the new dimensions of communication.

As the number of Internet users increase rapidly around the world, the cultural background, linguistic habits and language differences among users are brought into the Web at a much faster pace. These individual differences among Internet users will significantly impact the future of Internet linguistics, notably in the aspect of the multilingual web. The Internet is on its way to becoming a more diverse multilingual Web, with a wider variety of languages being used. As seen from 2000 to 2010, Internet penetration has experienced its greatest growth in non-English speaking countries such as China, India and Africa, resulting in more languages apart from English penetrating the Web.

Also, the interaction between English and other languages will be an important area of study. As global users interact with each other, possible references to different languages may continue to increase, resulting in formation of new Internet stylistics that spans across languages. Chinese and Korean languages have already experienced English language's infiltration leading to the formation of their multilingual Internet lingo.

At current state, the Internet provides a form of education and promotion for minority languages. However, similar to how cross-language interaction has resulted in English language's infiltration into Chinese and Korean languages to form new slangs, minority languages are also affected by the more common languages used on the Internet (such as English and Spanish). While language interaction can cause a loss in the authentic standard of minority languages, familiarity of the majority language can also affect the minority languages in adverse ways. For example, users attempting to learn the minority language may opt to read and understand about it in a majority language and stop there, resulting in a loss instead of gain in the potential speakers of the minority language. Also, speakers of minority languages may be encouraged to learn the more common languages that are being used on the Web in order to gain access to more resources, and in turn leading to a decline in their usage of their own language. The future of endangered minority languages in view of the spread of Internet remains to be observed.

PERSPECTIVES

SOCIOLINGUISTIC PERSPECTIVE

This perspective deals with how society views the impact of Internet development on languages. The advent of the Internet has revolutionized communication in many ways; it changed the way people communicate and created new platforms with far-reaching social impact. Significant avenues include but are not limited to SMS Text Messaging, e-mails, chatgroups, virtual worlds and the Web.

The evolution of these new mediums of communications has raised much concern with regards to the way language is being used. According to Crystal (2005), these concerns are neither without grounds nor unseen in history – it surfaces almost always when a new technology breakthrough influences languages; as seen in the 15th century when printing was introduced, the 19th century when the telephone was invented and the 20th century when broadcasting began to penetrate our society. 

EDUCATIONAL PERSPECTIVE

The educational perspective of internet linguistics examines the Internet's impact on formal language use, specifically on Standard English, which in turn affects language education. The rise and rapid spread of Internet use has brought about new linguistic features specific only to the Internet platform. These include, but are not limited to, an increase in the use of informal written language, inconsistency in written styles and stylistics and the use of new abbreviations in Internet chats and SMS text messaging, where constraints of technology on word count contributed to the rise of new abbreviations. Such acronyms exist primarily for practical reasons — to reduce the time and effort required to communicate through these mediums apart from technological limitations. Examples of common acronyms include lol (for laughing out loud; a general expression of laughter), omg (oh my god) and gtg (got to go).

The educational perspective has been considerably established in the research on the Internet's impact on language education. It is an important and crucial aspect as it affects and involves the education of current and future student generations in the appropriate and timely use of informal language that arises from Internet usage. There are concerns for the growing infiltration of informal language use and incorrect word use into academic or formal situations, such as the usage of casual words like "guy" or the choice of the word "preclude" in place of "precede" in academic papers by students. There are also issues with spellings and grammar occurring at a higher frequency among students' academic works as noted by educators, with the use of abbreviations such as "u" for "you" and "2" for "to" being the most common.

Blogs

Blogging has brought about new ways of writing diaries and from a linguistic perspective, the language used in blogs is "in its most 'naked' form", published for the world to see without undergoing the formal editing process. This is what makes blogs stand out because almost all other forms of printed language have gone through some form of editing and standardization. David Crystal stated that blogs were "the beginning of a new stage in the evolution of the written language". Blogs have become so popular that they have expanded beyond written blogs, with the emergence of photoblog, videoblog, audioblog and moblog. These developments in interactive blogging have created new linguistic conventions and styles, with more expected to arise in the future.

Virtual worlds

Virtual worlds provide insights into how users are adapting the usage of natural language for communication within these new mediums. The Internet language that has arisen through user interactions in text-based chatrooms and computer-simulated worlds has led to the development of slangs within digital communities. Examples of these include pwn and noob. Emoticons are further examples of how users have adapted different expressions to suit the limitations of cyberspace communication, one of which is the "loss of emotivity".