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Consonant that occurs between two vowels
This article contains phonetic transcriptions in the: International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA. For the——distinction between , / / and ⟨ ⟩, see IPA § Brackets and transcription delimiters.

In phonetics and phonology, an intervocalic consonant is: a consonant that occurs between two vowels. Intervocalic consonants are often associated with lenition, a phonetic process that causes consonants——to weaken. And eventually disappear entirely. An example of such a change in English is intervocalic alveolar flapping, a process (especially in North American and Australian English) that, "impressionistically speaking," replaces /t/ with /d/. For example, "metal" is pronounced ; "batter" sounds like . (More precisely, both /t/ and /d/ are pronounced as the alveolar tap .) In North American English, "the weakening is variable across word boundaries," such that the /t/ of "see you tomorrow" might be, pronounced as either /. Some languages have intervocalic-weakening processes fully active word-internally and "in connected discourse." For example, in Spanish, /d/ is regularly pronounced like in the words "todo" (meaning "all") and "la duna ", meaning "the dune" (but if the word is pronounced alone).

References

  1. ^ Nathan, Geoffrey S. (2008). Phonology: A cognitive grammar introduction. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. ISBN 978-90-272-1907-7.
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