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Language units large and small
Marked forms of words - Inflection, Derivation, Declension, Conjugation · Diminutive, Augmentative
Groups and categories and properties of words - Syntactic and lexical categories · Grammatical cases · Correlatives · Expletives · Adjuncts
Words and meaning -
Morphology ·
Lexicology ·
Semiotics ·
Onomasiology
· Figures of speech, expressions, phraseology, etc. · Word similarity ·
Ambiguity ·
Modality ·
Segment function, interaction, reference - Clitics · Apposition· Parataxis, Hypotaxis· Attributive· Binding · Coordinations · Word and concept reference
Sentence structure and style - Agreement · Ellipsis· Hedging
Phonology - Articulation · Formants· Prosody · Sound change · Intonation, stress, focus · Diphones · Intervocalic · Glottal stop · Vowel_diagrams · Elision · Ablaut_and_umlaut · Phonics
Analyses, models, software - Minimal pairs · Concordances · Linguistics software · Some_relatively_basic_text_processing · Word embeddings · Semantic similarity
Unsorted - Contextualism ·
· Text summarization ·
Accent, Dialect, Language · Pidgin, Creole · Natural language typology ·
Writing_systems · Typography, orthography ·
Digraphs, ligatures, dipthongs ·
More linguistic terms and descriptions ·
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Elision (yielding elided forms) refers to unmorphologized omissions of sounds from words, often part of a syllable, or an entire syllable, rarely more.
Elided forms are often simpler to pronounce, but are not formalized in writing - you might e.g. pronounce camera as camra but you would still write camera.
Consider the seemingly unusual writing of Gloucester, and subtler cases like Parliament, etc.
(You can probably have technical arguments over whether loanwords have adapted or elided.)
Reasons for elision include easier pronunciation after adoption of somewhat unnaturally pronounced words,
easing pronunciation of words before formal adoption,
dialectical variation,
poetic license (e.g. for keeping the meter in poetry),
laziness,
or even just drunken slurring.
Some elided forms become accepted spellings over time, through common use; consider contractions like "can't" for "cannot".
These are often morphologically recognizable tendencies.
See also