Intervocalic consonant

 ( Phonetics ) 

In phonetics and phonology, an intervocalic consonant is a consonant that occurs between two .

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 language 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 or . Some languages have intervocalic-weakening processes fully active word-internally and in connected discourse. For example, in Spanish language, /d/ is regularly pronounced like in the words "todo" (meaning "all") and "la duna ", meaning "the dune" (but if the word is pronounced alone).

Categories: Phonetics, Phonology

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