在语音学和音位学中，省略是指语音中省略一个声音（音素）。省略在随意的谈话中很常见。

更具体地说，省略可能是指省略未重读的元音、辅音或音节。这种省略在印刷品中经常用撇号表示。

如何使用省略

"Elision of sounds can ... be seen clearly in contracted forms like isn't (is not), I'll (I shall/will), who's (who is/has), they'd (they had, they should, or they would), haven't (have not) and so on. We see from these examples that vowels or/and consonants can be elided. In the case of contractions or words like library (pronounced in rapid speech as /laibri/), the whole syllable is elided."

Tej R.Kansakar，“英语语音课程”

发音减少的本质

"It is easy to find examples of elision, but very difficult to state rules that govern which sounds may be elided and which may not. Elision of vowels in English usually happens when a short, unstressed vowel occurs between voiceless consonants, e.g. in the first syllable of perhaps, potato, the second syllable of bicycle, or the third syllable of philosophy." "It is very important to note that sounds do not simply 'disappear' like a light being switched off. A transcription such as /æks/ for acts implies that the /t/ phoneme has dropped out altogether, but detailed examination of speech shows that such effects are more gradual: in slow speech the /t/ may be fully pronounced, with an audible transition from the preceding /k/ and to the following /s/, while in a more rapid style it may be articulated but not given any audible realisation, and in very rapid speech it may be observable, if at all, only as a rather early movement of the tongue blade toward the /s/ position."

丹尼尔·琼斯，《英语发音词典》

从冰茶到冰茶

"An elision is the omission of a sound for phonological reasons ..: 'cause (also spelled 'cos, cos, coz) from because; fo'c'sle from forecastle; or ice tea from iced tea (in which -ed is pronounced /t/ but omitted because of the immediately following /t/)."

约翰·阿尔及奥，《词汇》，在《剑桥英语史》中

从冰激凌到冰激凌

"[Ice cream] is an extremely common term and no one these days, I believe, would be tempted to describe the confection as iced cream — and yet this was its original description. . . . With time, however, the -ed ending eroded. In pronunciation, it would have been swallowed very early and eventually, this was reflected in the way it was written."

凯特·布里奇，“戈布的礼物：英语语言历史的点点滴滴。”

文学中的省略实例

"In "North and South", Mr. [John] Jakes is careful to keep his elisions within quotation marks: 'I'm sure, Cap'n,' says a farmer in his novel, and a stevedore calls a young soldier a 'sojer boy.' "Stephen Crane, in his "Maggie, a Girl of the Streets", in 1896 pioneered wanna in literature with 'I didn' wanna give 'im no stuff.' The spelling is designed to recreate the way the spoken word pounds, shapes and knocks about the original words."

威廉·萨菲尔，“Elision Fields”，《纽约时报》杂志，1989年8月13日。

来源

• 阿尔吉奥，约翰。剑桥英语史。苏珊娜·罗曼编辑，第4卷，剑桥大学出版社，1999年。
• 布里奇，凯特。Gob的礼物：英语语言历史的一小部分。哈珀·柯林斯澳大利亚，2011年。
• 《剑桥英语发音词典》。第17版，剑桥大学出版社，2006年。
• 堪萨卡，Tej R.英语语音学课程。东方朗文，1998年。
• 萨菲尔，威廉。“省略场”，《纽约时报》杂志，1989年8月13日。