{"id":2611,"date":"2026-11-11T14:38:32","date_gmt":"2026-11-11T19:38:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.wellformedness.com\/blog\/?p=2611"},"modified":"2026-11-11T14:38:32","modified_gmt":"2026-11-11T19:38:32","slug":"does-bomb-end-in-b","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wellformedness.com\/blog\/does-bomb-end-in-b\/","title":{"rendered":"Does bomb end in \/b\/?"},"content":{"rendered":"

It has been commonplace, since at least Borowsky (1986: ch. 2) and possibly much earlier, that the English word bomb\u00a0<\/em>ends in a \/b\/ which is deleted word-finally, perhaps taking a free ride on the same rule that deletes the \/\u0261\/ in words that end in a velar nasal (e.g., sing<\/em>). This \/b\/, however, is present in two related words: bombard<\/em> [b\u0259m\u02c8b\u0251\u0279d] and bombardier<\/em>.<\/p>\n

There is some distributional evidence for such an analysis because word-final [mb] is quite rare. For what it’s worth, I find final [mb] unobjectionable in the late-learned iamb<\/em>; CELEX2, which transcribes RP, also gives this pronunciation. But there is no reason to assume that it is bomb-ard<\/em>\u00a0in the first place: there are no other words in –<\/em>ard<\/em> or –ardier\u00a0<\/em>in all of English. <\/strong>Two other possibilities suggest themselves:<\/strong>\u00a0first, the suffix could itself be \/b\/-initial -bard<\/em>, or it might be the case that speakers do not decompose these words at this juncture in the first place. Certainly, I know of no other “English suffix” which selects for exactly one root. Thus the only evidence that bomb\u00a0<\/em>ends in \/b\/ is purely distributional, and reasonable phonologists can disagree how compelling that evidence is. I for one am unconvinced.<\/p>\n

References<\/h1>\n

Borowsky, T. 1986. Topics in the lexical phonology of English. Doctoral dissertation, University of Massachusetts Amherst.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It has been commonplace, since at least Borowsky (1986: ch. 2) and possibly much earlier, that the English word bomb\u00a0ends in a \/b\/ which is deleted word-finally, perhaps taking a free ride on the same rule that deletes the \/\u0261\/ in words that end in a velar nasal (e.g., sing). This \/b\/, however, is present … Continue reading “Does bomb end in \/b\/?”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2611","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-language","category-phonology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wellformedness.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2611","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wellformedness.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wellformedness.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wellformedness.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wellformedness.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2611"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.wellformedness.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2611\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2614,"href":"https:\/\/www.wellformedness.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2611\/revisions\/2614"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wellformedness.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2611"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wellformedness.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2611"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wellformedness.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2611"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}