EPENTHESIS AND ELISION AS MARKERS OF PHONETIC ECONOMY IN SPOKEN ENGLISH

This article explores two key phonological processes—epenthesis (the insertion of extra sounds) and elision (the omission of sounds)—as mechanisms reflecting phonetic economy in natural spoken English. By analyzing conversational speech data and corpora such as the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) and The British National Corpus (BNC), the study identifies common patterns where these phenomena occur, particularly in casual and fast speech. The article argues that such alternations are not random but serve a functional role in optimizing articulatory effort and maintaining fluency, especially in connected speech contexts. It further examines how factors such as speech rate, stress patterns, and phonotactic constraints trigger these reductions or insertions. Special attention is given to the implications of these processes for second language acquisition, particularly how learners of English often struggle with reduced forms and may hypercorrect or misperceive fast speech.