Re: Lenition or Elision or What?

According to some dictionaries, the difference between
synizesis and syn(a)eresis is, that synizesis does not form a diphthong,
but synaeresis or syneresis does.

http://www.bartleby.com/61/88/S0968800.html
http://www.bartleby.com/61/73/S0967300.html

Neither of them has to do with spelling.

They seem to be poetic terms, having to do with variant pronunciation;
pronouncing "seest" as [sist] instead of [sijest] would be synizesis;
pronouncing the "-dience" of "disobedience" as [djens] instead of [dijens]
would be syneresis.  They are kinds of metaplasm, as are crasis and elision.

One dictionary has syneresis operating between the final vowel of a word
that ends in a vowel and the initial vowel of the next word which begins in
a vowel; it uses a different term, synaloepha, for the same kind of
phenomenon occurring word-internally.  But
http://www.willamette.edu/~blong/Words/MetaplasmIII.html
has syneresis and synizesis both as subtypes of synaloepha.

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Question;

When two words occur together, the first ending in a vowel and the second
beginning in a vowel, and the pronunciation of the vowels influences each
other, isn't that called "sandhi"?  Wouldn't this "syneretic coalescence"
be a kind of "sandhi", then?  I kept wondering why no-one brought
up "sandhi".

For that matter, why did no-one bring up "mutation"?

Perhaps neither word would have been adequate.  But would neither word have
been appropriate at all?  It seems to me they both would apply, even if not
well enough.

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Tom H.C. in MI

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