Sunday, January 06, 2008
Syncope- a language quirk
I have came across the word 'syncopation' previously, but post some googling I had a good understanding of this less-known (and intriguing) quirk of the language, a non-too-famous figure of speech.
A Syncope is the loss of a syllable, the syllable being an unstressed vowel, and is exaggerated by strong stress accents. A common example is every. Other such every day examples being average, boundary, temperate...try cooking up some of your own- 'several' instance exist. I can think of conglomerate for one. Conglomerate is an obscure example, but you see I had to come up with words outside of the long and seemingly comprehensive list which a jstor online article presented me with. Fine, I make amends- general- now that is an adequate example.
I have a feeling syncopation must be especially accentuated in Indian English. Let me look around, hear around, rather, and see if I can bring out some solid evidence to establish my hypothesis.
A Syncope is the loss of a syllable, the syllable being an unstressed vowel, and is exaggerated by strong stress accents. A common example is every. Other such every day examples being average, boundary, temperate...try cooking up some of your own- 'several' instance exist. I can think of conglomerate for one. Conglomerate is an obscure example, but you see I had to come up with words outside of the long and seemingly comprehensive list which a jstor online article presented me with. Fine, I make amends- general- now that is an adequate example.
I have a feeling syncopation must be especially accentuated in Indian English. Let me look around, hear around, rather, and see if I can bring out some solid evidence to establish my hypothesis.
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