Syncope (or compression)

Count the number of syllables in the following sentence:

History is her favourite subject

Did you count there to be 9 syllables or 10 syllables, perhaps? The normal pronunciations of history and favourite are with just two syllables, so we would count 8.

These words are examples of syncope: the complete elision of a syllable which the written form of the word suggests should be present. Syncope is found in words like secretary, camera, general and library; where in some cases a syllable has disappeared completely and in other cases it is optional, appearing perhaps when a speaker decides to speak carefully but not in his normal speech. There are many dozens of words like this.

Syncope is sometimes called ‘compression’. It is often found in the presence of /r/, where the syllable which precedes it in a multi-syllabic word may completely disappear. All the examples above show pre-/r/ syncope. The phenomenon is also seen in a few words before /n/, like business and personal (for example, in personal pronoun), and before /l/, in words like chocolate and occasionally.

Unfortunately, different native speakers make different judgements about when syncope is required, acceptable or unacceptable. When we looked up a selection of words in the Longman Pronunciation Dictionary (1990), Oxford Advanced Learners Dictionary (1995) and Cambridge Advanced Learners Dictionary (2003) (all for British English) we got the results in the table below. A zero (0) indicates that the weak syllable is elided (it isn't even given as an option for the primary pronunciation), a 1 indicates that it is shown as optional, and a 2 shows that the primary pronunciation is given with the weak syllable as definitely present:

	LPD	OALD	CALD
camera	1	2	0
boundary	1	0	1
secretary	1	0	0
library	1	2	2
different	0	0	1

So camera is given as /kam^ərə/, /kæmərə/ and /kæmrə/ respectively. As you can see, the native-speaker judgments of the various pronunciation editors differ somewhat.

There are words for which everyone is in agreement. Chocolate and business are two-syllable words. When there is some uncertainty, though, there may be a 'maximal-syllable' way of pronouncing a word that is acceptable even if it is not always the most natural. Learners are usually happy with this pronunciation, since it will be what corresponds most readily with the spelling. One can then ask the students which syllable might be left out. If they are already familier with syllable reduction, we find that they get it right most of the time. They quickly get a feel for the system.