[θ]→[∅]Certainty: 5/5Commonality: 4/5
Voiceless dental fricative to Empty sound / Zero
The elision of the voiceless dental fricative [θ] is the final stage of lenition, where the sound disappears entirely, often in rapid speech or as a result of historical simplification of consonant clusters.
Phonetic Effects
Elision, Deletion, Lenition
Language Examples
fifth [fɪfθ]→[fɪf]— Common simplification in rapid speech and various non-standard dialects.
months [mʌnθs]→[mʌns]— Simplification of the complex cluster by eliding the dental fricative.
Historical [θ]→Ø— The interdental fricative was lost in many word-medial positions during the development of modern Finnish dialects.
Related Transformations
More Germanic Shifts
Sources & References
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