The Secret of Sounding Native

Proclitics have traditionally been considered either as erratic sloppiness of articulation or as morphologically determined weak forms. It could be shown that the reduction typical of the unstressed position preceding a nucleus is highly regular and further-reaching than so far assumed. A multi-dimensional model of phonology analyzes the proclitic position as a subsystem of the phonology of English with its own inventory of distinctive units and its characteristic dynamic processes of reduction.