nonelided

Nonelided is an adjective used in linguistics to describe a form that retains an element—such as a vowel, consonant, or syllable—that might otherwise be omitted or reduced in connected speech. In this sense, a nonelided segment is the opposite of elided, because it is not removed by the phonological process of elision. The term is most often used to distinguish careful or formal pronunciations from more casual, reduced realizations, or to describe languages and dialects where certain segments are consistently preserved due to phonotactic, prosodic, or morphosyntactic constraints.

Usage and scope: The label nonelided is not universally standardized and appears primarily in theoretical discussions of elision, retention, and morphophonology. Some researchers prefer to describe the phenomenon in terms of retention or non-elision rather than adopting the explicit term nonelided. The notion is thus contextual and may vary in definition across studies.

Contexts and implications: Nonelided forms can occur in environments where deletion would otherwise be possible, such as near morpheme boundaries, after certain consonants, or in languages with rigid syllable structures. Studying nonelision helps linguists understand how prosody, phonotactics, and morphophonology interact to preserve or omit segments.

Relation to related concepts: Nonelided is discussed in relation to elision, retention, morphophonology, phonology, prosody, and sociolinguistics. While the term is encountered in some linguistics literature, researchers often frame the idea in terms of retention or non-elision, depending on the theoretical approach.