PHENOMENA


Dwi Nita Febriyanti 

14 

Assimilation, Reduction and Elision Reflected in the 
Selected Song Lyrics of Avenged Sevenfold 

Dwi Nita Febriyanti  
dwinitafebriyanti@yahoo.com 
English Language Studies, Sanata Dharma University 

Abstract 

This paper discusses the phenomena of phonological rules, especially assimilation, reduction 
and elision processes. In this paper, the writer conducted phonological study which attempts to find 
the phenomena of those processes in song lyrics. In taking the data, the writer transcribed the lyrics 
of the songs, along with checking them to the internet source, then observed the lyrics to find the 
phenomena of assimilation, reduction, and elision. After that, she classified the observed phenomena 
in the lyrics based on the phonological processes. From the data analysis, the results showed that 
there were three processes found both in the first and second songs: assimilation, reduction and 
elision. The difference is that in the first song, it has four kinds of assimilation, while from the second 
song only has three kinds of assimilation. 

Keywords: assimilation, reduction, elision 

Introduction 

As English spoken by the native 
speakers, it sometimes undergoes 
simplification to ease the native speakers in 
expressing their feelings. That is why, it is 
common for them to speak English in high 
speed along with their emotions. As the 
result, they make a ‘shortcut’ to get ease of 
their pronunciation. The native speakers 
often do some ‘improvement’ in their speech 
to reach maximum transfer of messages with 
minimum efforts of articulation.  

Sometimes they pronounce a sound to 
become similar to either preceding or 
following sound to keep the speed of their 
speech; or linguists call it as assimilation 
process. They also reduce even delete a 
vowel or a consonant in the unstressed 
position as an attempt to fasten their 
pronunciation in their daily speech, and it is 
known as reduction and deletion (also 
elision) process. All these phenomena 
mostly happen in the informal speeches such 
as in an intimate talk of best-friends, 

brothers and sisters’ discussion or even in 
songs, for which songs are considered as the 
media for the composer to share his feelings. 

Assimilation usually happens in the 
double consonants. This is a phenomenon 
which shows the influence of one sound to 
another to become more similar. While for 
the reduction process, it can happen to the 
vowel which is in the unstressed position. 
Reduction is the substitution of a vowel to 
the unstressed position with a weak central 
vowel (called schwa /ə/). Van Bergem 
(1995) describes the schwa as a vowel 
without target so that it is completely 
assimilated with its phonemic context.  

Meanwhile, elision (also deletion) is the 
complete disappearance of one or more 
sounds in a word or phrase as an attempt to 
make a word or phrase easier to pronounce. 
One of the most common elisions in English 
is the omission of /t/ and /d/ when those 
sounds are at the boundary of words. 
Apostrophe is sometimes used as the 
indicator of elision. In this paper, the writer 



Vol. 15 No. 1 – April 2015 

15 

tries to recognize the phenomena of 
(anticipatory) assimilation, vowel reduction 
and consonant elision reflected in Avenged 
Sevenfold’s song lyrics. Therefore, in this 
study, the writer tries to find the phenomena 
of assimilation, reduction, and elision in the 
selected songs of Avenged Sevenfold Band. 

(Anticipatory) Assimilation 

This is a process which speakers make a 
‘transition’ in anticipating the following 
pronunciation. The ‘transition’ here happens 
because of the influence of preceding sound. 
That is why, this kind of ‘transition’ is called 
anticipatory assimilation. It is supported by 
Giegerich (1992) who defines that 
(anticipatory) assimilation is a common 
phenomenon for which a segment either 
fully or partially anticipates the place of 
articulation over the following segment 
(213). He also points out the characteristics 
of anticipatory assimilation as follows. 

1. /n//ņ/ whenever /n/ comes before
dental (/t/, /ð/ and /ɵ/), therefore it is
called as dentalization.

2. /k/ /k/ happens when /k/ precedes
front vowels (/i:/, /e/ and /a/) and it is
known as fronting.

3. /m/ /ɱ/ whenever /m/ comes before
labiodental (/f/, /v/); it is known as
labiodental nasal.

4. /a/ /ã/ happens when /a/ precedes
the nasal sounds (/m/, /n/ and /ŋ/) and
the process is called nasalization.

5. /k/ /k/ whenever /k/ comes before
rounded segment such as in words
‘queer’, ‘question’, ‘quack’, ‘quick’ and
‘cool’. This process is known as
labialization or rounding.

Besides the requirements above, 
Giegerich (1992) also mentions three other 
conditions when assimilation can happen in 
an individual speech: (1) the individual 
speaker’s habits in which a speaker has 
his/her own style and characteristics in 
speech, (2) the type of speech as well the 
rapid and informal speech appears greater 
assimilation than the slow and formal 
speech does, and (3) tempo for which it 
indicates the speed of speech. The faster a 

speaker talks, less articulatory efforts 
he/she does (214-215). 

Reduction 

Reduction is a process in which 
speakers reduce the ‘presence’ of a 
phoneme, especially a phoneme in the 
unstressed position, while vowel reduction 
is a feature of stress timing referring to the 
way vowels are reduced when unstressed. In 
reducing a vowel, speakers can either 
weaken or substitute the pronunciation with 
another sound. It is line with Griffen (1998) 
who defines a vowel reduction as “a 
phenomenon in which the vowel in an 
accented syllable is shifted toward the mid-
central position when the accent is removed 
from the syllable (17).” In reducing a 
phoneme, the speakers take less articulatory 
effort to get ease of pronunciation in speech, 
for instance: the central vowel in word ‘and’ 
/ænd/ becomes /ən/ [/æ/ə/] because it is 
in the unstressed syllable. It is line with 
Giegerich (1992) who argues that most of 
English vowels are suspended in the 
unstressed syllables (285).  

Van Bergem (1995) also defines a schwa 
as a ‘straight’ articulatory path between two 
consonants. Since a path always depends 
upon the surrounding environment, a schwa 
cannot exist as a separate phoneme, but only 
as a phonemic which a syllable embed. 
Furthermore, he also proposes several core 
factors of vowel reduction such as stress, 
frequency of word’s occurrence and 
speaking style. Giegerich (1992) mentions 
some examples of vowel reduction or schwa 
/ə/ such as in these words: canoe /kə’nu/, 
balloon /bə’lun/, federal /’fɛdərəl/, catalyst 
/’katəlɪst/ and botany /’bɒtənɪ/ (287). 

Elision 

Elision process happens when speakers 
leave or delete a phoneme out of 
pronunciation as an attempt to fasten and 
get rid of difficulties in speech. According to 
Giegerich (1992), elision often happens 
before sonorant consonants which give the 
consonants an opportunity to be syllabic so 
that they will occupy the peak of the syllable. 
The process is called vowel elision, for 



Dwi Nita Febriyanti 

16 

examples are button /bʌtən/ or /bʌtn/ and 
little /lɪtəl/ or /lɪtl/  (287).  

The most common elision in English 
words is the omission of sounds /t/ and /d/ 
at the word boundary: they are positioned at 
end of a word before go to the next word. 
Elision is also known as the complete 
dropping of a sound in a given context. If it 
has consonants as the target, then people 
know it as consonant elision. For instance is 
the elision of sound /t/ in the word postman 
/poʊstmən/ /poʊsmən/ because of the 
speed of speaker. In the case of /t/, the 
preceding consonant must be voiceless; in 
the case of /d/, the preceding consonant 
must be voiced. In both cases, elision 
happens with any following consonant, 
except /h/ and sometimes /j/, e.g. Christmas 
/’krɪsməs/, listen /lɪsən/, sandwich: 
/sænwiʧ/, kindness: /kaɪnes/, left foot 
/lefʊ:t/, but it doesn’t happen in left hand 
/left hænd/; left you: /lefʧʊ/, old man: /oʊld 
mæn/. 

Research Methodology 

This study will focus on assimilation, 
reduction and elision in Avenged Sevenfold’s 
song lyrics. This study belongs to qualitative 
research because it uses words as the source 
of data. More, it does not contain any 
statistical process. It is line with Moelong 
(1989) who states, “Qualitative research is a 
type of research, which does not include any 
calculation and numbering (2).” Therefore, 
hopefully this study can give further 
information toward those phenomena and 
can help the readers to understand them 
easily.  

The source of data is the song lyrics of 
Gunslinger and Second Heartbeat. To make 
the data sure, the writer checked the lyrics 
to the internet sources. Those sources of 
data above are relevant to the data which 
the writer needed. She also used those 
sources to check the validity of the data. The 
steps to analyze the data were: listening to 
the songs, understanding the general 
content of the songs, transcribing the lyrics 
of the songs, and checking the lyrics with the 
internet source.  

To find out the phonological processes 
in the lyrics, the writer applied some steps. 
The writer observed the lyrics of the songs 
carefully in order to find the phenomena of 
phonological processes of them. She 
observed the words that carried the 
phenomena. After observing the words that 
contain the phonological processes, she 
recognized the kind of processes that the 
words have. After that, the writer classified 
them to ease the reader in comprehending 
the results and providing the examples of 
each process. 

Discussion 
(Anticipatory) Assimilation 

Assimilation mostly appeared in 
Avenged Sevenfold’s song lyrics. It is not only 
because of the amount of (anticipatory) 
assimilation types, but also because the 
singer’s style in speech. Here are the cases of 
anticipatory assimilation reflected in 
Avenged Sevenfold’s song lyrics. 

No Song Title Occurrences 

1. Gunslinger 

15 times of Assimilation; 
6 times of Reduction; 6 
times of Elision; 4 times 
of double processes. 

2. 
Second 
Heartbeat 

14 times of Assimilation; 
6 times of Reduction; 7 
times of Elision; 2 times 
of double processes. 

Nasalization 

This type of assimilation happens when a 
vowel comes before nasal sounds /m/ /n/ or 
/ŋ/. The writer determined the nasalization 
process by making the letters in bold 
feature. Here are the examples of 
nasalization taken from the Gunslinger and 
Second Heartbeat lyrics: 

(1) been; alone; been; gone; long; many; 
things; when; strong; bring 

(2) changing; in; stand; alone; been; 
gone; wishing; wasting; growing 

Those examples above belong to the 
nasalization process since the vowels are 
going to meet nasal sounds as the following 
sound. The vowels in those words are 



Vol. 15 No. 1 – April 2015 

17 

pronounced like a nasal sound which the 
airstream comes out through the nose. 

Dentalization 

It is the process when the sound /n/ 
meets a dental sound such as /t/, /ð/ or /ɵ/. 
From the lyrics, the writer found three cases 
which belong to this process. The writer 
identified the dentalization process in the 
bold letter. Here are some cases of 
dentalization inside the lyrics: 

(3) been through; been true; in the 
night 

(4) when they; been there; in the 

Those examples (3) and (4) actually 
complete the types of dentalization in which 
the first example shows the rule when /n/ 
meets /ɵ/ in the word through, the second 
example represents the dentalization 
process when /n/ meets /t/ in the word true 
and the last example denotes when /n/ is 
followed by /ð/ in the word the. It also 
happens in the words they, there and the for 
which the sound /n/ meets /ð/. The 
dentalization process requires a speaker to 
position the tip of the tongue between the 
upper front teeth when he/she pronounces 
the sound /n/. It happens because of the 
dental sounds’ influence. 

Rounding 

This kind of nasalization is rare to find in 
the lyrics. The writer only found one case of 
rounding process in which the sound /k/ is 
followed by rounded segment. Here is the 
example of rounding process taken from the 
lyrics: 

(5) question 

The word question above shows the 
process of rounding in which the sound /k/ 
meets a diphthong /ʊɛ/ in which it belongs 
to the rounded segment. Because the 
diphthong influences the pronunciation of 
/k/, the sound /k/ undergoes the rounding 
process. That is why, the pronunciation of 
/k/ in the word question is started with the 
rounded shape of oral cavity. 

Fronting 

From the lyrics, the writer also only 
found one case which belongs to the fronting 
process. The writer wrote the letter which 
undergoes the fronting process in bold. Here 
is the example of fronting process taken 
from Gunslinger and Second Heartbeat lyrics: 

(6) keep 

In the example above, the sound /k/ 
undergoes the fronting process for which 
because the influence of front vowel /i/. In 
pronouncing the sound /k/ in the example 
above, the speaker needs to narrow his/her 
oral cavity along with the blade of the tongue 
raised to the hard palate. 

Reduction 

This process denotes when a phoneme is 
reduced in its pronunciation. The writer 
found several cases of this process. Here are 
the examples of reduction found in 
Gunslinger and Second Heartbeat lyrics: 

(7) too; to; towards; matter; letters; 
have 

(8) but; can; as; of; confide; to 

The examples above shows the reduction 
process in which the vowels turn into mid-
central vowel or it is called as schwa (/ə/). 
All the vowels above undergo the reduction 
process because of the speed of the speaker 
in speech. In that song, the singer 
pronounced those words in high-speed. For 
instance is in the word too /tu:/ in which the 
vowel is reduced and becomes /tə/. It also 
happens in the second word where to /tʊ/ 
turns into /tə/ as the result of vowel 
reduction. In the third word toward 
/tʊˈwɔːrd/ turns into /tə’wɔ:rd/, then matter 
/’mætəɹ/ becomes /’mætɹ/, letters /’lɛtəɹ/ 
becomes /’lɛtɹ/ while for the word have 
/hæv/, it turns into /həv/. 

The example (8) also show the process 
of reduction where all the vowels in the 
unstressed position turn into schwa such as 
in the word but /bʌt/ the pronunciation will 
be /bət/, the word can /kæn/ turns into 
/kən/. The vowel /o/ in of /ɑ:v/ turns into 



Dwi Nita Febriyanti 

18 

/əv/ and so does in the word confide 
/kən’faɪd/ where the first vowel is in the 
unstressed position. In the last word to /tʊ/ 
the vowel is also reduced because of the 
effect of speaker’s speed in speech. 

Elision 

This process involves the omission of a 
phoneme in its pronunciation. The writer 
found several cases which belong to Elision. 
Most of them are both the short form of a 
word (apostrophe is the indicator) and the 
elision of sound /t/ and /d/. Here are the 
found examples in Gunslinger and Second 
Heartbeat lyrics: 

(9) ’Cause; heart's; won't; you're  
(10) it through; It don't; helped me; just 

to 
(11) Left the; forget you; get to; left me; 

looked to 

In case (9), the elision process happens since 
those words constitute the short form and 
the apostrophe as the indicator of elision. 
The word ‘cause is the short form of because. 
While the apostrophe (’s) in the second and 
fourth word encode the short form of to be 
is. In the third word, the word won’t 
constitutes the short form of will not. While 
the apostrophe (‘re) in the example (10) 
means to be are 

In cases (10) and (11), the elision 
process happens because the omission of 
sounds /t/ and /d/ in the pronunciation. The 
pronunciation of the words it through /ɪt 
ɵru:/ will be /ɪɵru:/, while in the word I 
don’t, the /t/ sound will be altered by /d/ 
sound and the pronunciation will be 
/ɪdɔ:ɂ/.The words helped me are pronounced 
as /hɛlpmɪ/ while the words died my are 
pronounced as /daɪmaɪ/ then the words lend 
me will be pronounced as /lɛnmɪ/.  

Furthermore, the words left the, the 
pronunciation will be /lefðə/ and for the 
words forget you it will be pronounced as 
/fəɹ’gɛʧu:/. It also happens the words get to 
will be pronounced as /gɛʧu:/ and left me is 
pronounced as /lefmɪ/. For the last example, 
it constitutes the omission of /d/ sound for 
which the words looked to will be 

pronounced as /lu:ktu/. Elision is the way a 
speaker maintains the speed of speech in 
order to make their pronunciation easier. 

Double Processes 

Besides all the characteristics which are 
mentioned above, the writer also found 
several words from the lyrics which contain 
double processes as its phonological process. 
Here are several examples of words which 
denote either the double processes or the 
combination of the processes: 

(12) you've;  
(13)  coming;  
(14) grown to;  
(15) don't matter; 
(16) and;  
(17) won't be. 

In case (13), it has double process: they 
are elision and reduction, where its 
pronunciation /ju:ev/ undergoes both 
elision as well as it is a short form of have 
and the pronunciation /ev/ shows the 
reduction process of /hæv/. The word (13) 
undergoes the elision and assimilation 
processes. Elision since it turns from coming 
/kʌmɪŋ/ into /kʌmɪn/, while the sound /i/ 
undergoes the assimilation process, 
especially nasalization because the vowel /i/ 
is followed by a nasal sound /n/. In the word 
(14), its double assimilations as its process: 
nasalization and dentalization. The sound 
/oʊ/ is pronounced as nasal sound for which 
it is followed by a nasal /n/, while the 
dentalization happens because the sound 
/n/ is followed by a dental sound /t/. That is 
why the speakers need to put their tip of the 
tongue between the teeth when pronouncing 
the sound /n/. 

In the word (15), three processes 
happen there. The first is elision in which the 
apostrophe denotes the short form of not, 
while the second process is reduction in 
which it pronunciation is changed from 
/dɔ:ɂ/ into /də:ɂ/ and also /mætəɹ/ into 
/matɹ/. The last process is assimilation for 
which the pronunciation of /də:ɂ mætɹ/ 
turns into /də:mætɹ/. The sound /n/ turns 
into /m/ as the anticipation of meeting the 
bilabial sound /m/. Meanwhile, the 



Vol. 15 No. 1 – April 2015 

19 

nasalization process happens because the 
sound /i/ in the word making is influenced 
by the nasal sound /ŋ/ as the following 
sound.  

In the word (16), reduction and elision 
processes occur. The reduction of the vowel 
happens for which it is reduced from /æ/ 
into /ə/ and the elision happens to the 
sound /d/, so the pronunciation will be 
changed from /ænd/ to /ən/. In the word 
(17), it involves two processes in its 
pronunciation: elision and assimilation. The 
elision is marked by the apostrophe which 
represents the short form of will not and the 
assimilation happens in which the sound /n/ 
is pronounced as /m/ for anticipating the 
bilabial stop as its following sound. As a 
result, the pronunciation is changed from 
/wɔ:ɂ bɪ/ into /wɔ:mbɪ/. 

Conclusion 

From the findings and discussions 
above, the writer formulated some 
important points as the conclusion.  From 
the first song, the writer recognized four 
kinds of assimilation process namely 
nasalization, dentalization, rounding and 
fronting. While for the reduction process, 
she found six cases and twelve cases for 
elision process. She also found six cases 
which have more than one phonological 
process. In the second song, the writer found 
three kinds of assimilation namely 
nasalization, dentalization and fronting. For 
the reduction process, she recognized six 
cases and seven cases which belong to the 
elision process. Moreover, she found four 
cases which involve more than one 
phonological process in their 
pronunciations. 

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