The Phonology of connected speech in Israeli Hebrew

Abstract

Abstract Connected speech is a natural, continuous stream of sounds, as in normal conversation, in which natural phonetically-motivated processes optimize articulation (through assimilation, elision, etc.), but are still constrained by the need to maintain morpho-semantic transparency at the receiving end. This paper discusses connected speech in Israeli Hebrew, based mostly on data from a spoken corpus. The paper starts with consonant assimilation (voicing assimilation and total assimilation), and then concentrates on various reduction phenomena: vowel elision or reduction, elision of consonants (with or without adjacent vowels), and the “expanded” elision of multiple segments and even complete morphemes and words. As long as the entity targeted is frequent enough, it can easily be reconstructed from the context by the hearer. We proceed to discuss prosodic phenomena in connected speech: pre-tonic lengthening, whose scope seems to be expanding today, and rhythmic secondary stress alternation.