Hiatus (linguistics)

Hiatus (Latin "yawning") in linguistics

Linguistics

Linguistics is the scientific study of natural language. Linguistics encompasses a number of sub-fields. An important topical division is between the study of language structure and the study of meaning...

 is the separate pronunciation of two adjacent vowel

Vowel

In phonetics, a vowel is a sound in spoken language, such as English ah! or oh! , pronounced with an open vocal tract so that there is no build-up of air pressure at any point above the glottis. This contrasts with consonants, such as English sh! , where there is a constriction or closure at some...

s, sometimes with an intervening glottal stop

Glottal stop

The glottal stop, or more fully, the voiceless glottal plosive, is a type of consonantal sound used in many spoken languages. In English the feature is represented for example by the hyphen in uh-oh! and by the apostrophe or [[ʻokina]] in Hawaii among those attempting an authentic pronunciation of...

. In poetic metre (or "poetic meter"), hiatus can also refer to the failure of two vowels straddling a word boundary to coalesce, for example by elision

Elision

Elision is the omission of one or more sounds in a word or phrase, producing a result that is easier for the speaker to pronounce. Sometimes, sounds may be elided for euphonic effect....

 of the first vowel.

In written English it was formerly common to use a diaeresis mark (or "trema") to indicate a hiatus (for example: coöperate, daïs, reëlect), but this is increasingly rare in modern English.

Hiatus (Latin "yawning") in linguistics

Linguistics

Linguistics is the scientific study of natural language. Linguistics encompasses a number of sub-fields. An important topical division is between the study of language structure and the study of meaning...

 is the separate pronunciation of two adjacent vowel

Vowel

In phonetics, a vowel is a sound in spoken language, such as English ah! or oh! , pronounced with an open vocal tract so that there is no build-up of air pressure at any point above the glottis. This contrasts with consonants, such as English sh! , where there is a constriction or closure at some...

s, sometimes with an intervening glottal stop

Glottal stop

The glottal stop, or more fully, the voiceless glottal plosive, is a type of consonantal sound used in many spoken languages. In English the feature is represented for example by the hyphen in uh-oh! and by the apostrophe or [[ʻokina]] in Hawaii among those attempting an authentic pronunciation of...

. In poetic metre (or "poetic meter"), hiatus can also refer to the failure of two vowels straddling a word boundary to coalesce, for example by elision

Elision

Elision is the omission of one or more sounds in a word or phrase, producing a result that is easier for the speaker to pronounce. Sometimes, sounds may be elided for euphonic effect....

 of the first vowel.

In written English it was formerly common to use a diaeresis mark (or "trema") to indicate a hiatus (for example: coöperate, daïs, reëlect), but this is increasingly rare in modern English. Nowadays the diaeresis is normally left out (cooperate), or a hyphen is used (co-operate). It is, however, still common in loanwords such as naïve and noël.

Many languages disallow hiatus, avoiding it either by deleting or assimilating the vowel, or by adding an extra consonant. In particular, some (but not all) non-rhotic dialects of English insert an to avoid hiatus after many vowels, although prescriptive guides for Received Pronunciation

Received Pronunciation

Received Pronunciation , also called the Queen's English and BBC English, is the accent of Standard English in England, with a relationship to regional dialects similar to that of other European languages...

 discourage this.

In Greek and Latin poetry, hiatus is generally avoided, though it does occur in many authors under certain rules with varying degrees of poetic licence. Strategies of avoidance of hiatus include elisio (elision

Elision

Elision is the omission of one or more sounds in a word or phrase, producing a result that is easier for the speaker to pronounce. Sometimes, sounds may be elided for euphonic effect....

 of final vowel), prodelisio (elision of initial vowel, rare) and synaloiphe/krasis (synalepha

Synalepha

A synalepha or synaloepha is the elision of two syllables into one.Examples:* "Apollo's priest to th'Argive fleet doth bring"...

 and crasis

Crasis

Crasis is the contraction of a vowel or diphthong at the end of a word with a vowel or diphthong at the start of the following word. Since it applies across word boundaries, crasis is a postlexical rule...

, merging final and initial vowels). Other strategies include shortening of final long vowels, maybe in connection with a process of synalepha or crasis, or the transformation of vowels (or final diphthong components) into semivowels (e.g. → , → ). This latter process is sometimes also at work in the English pronunciation of the Latin word "hiatus" (sometimes pronounced with a distinct y sound between the first two syllables). The Classical Latin word hiātus was pronounced and originally meant "gaping."