Prothesis in English grammar

Prothesis in English grammar Prothesis is a term used in phonetics and phonology to refer to the addition of a  syllable  or  a sound (usually a vowel) to the beginning of a word (for example, especial). Adjective: prothetic. Also called intrusion or  word-initial epenthesis.   Linguist David Crystal notes that the phenomenon of prothesis is common both in historical change  . . .  and in connected speech (A Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics, 1997).   The opposite of prothesis is aphesis  (or  aphaeresis  or procope)that is, the  loss of a short unaccented vowel  (or syllable) at the beginning of a word.   The intrusion of an extra sound at the end of a word (for example, whilst) is called epithesis or  paragoge. The intrusion of a sound between two consonants in the middle of a word (for example, fillum for film) is called anaptyxis or, more generally, epenthesis. Examples and Observations And its a hard, and its a hard, its a hard, its a hard,And its a hard rains a-gonna fall.(Bob Dylan, A Hard Rains A-Gonna Fall. The Freewheelin Bob Dylan, 1962)My characters will hence forth go afishing, and they will read Afield Astream. Some of them, perhaps all of them, will be asexual.(E.B. White in a letter to a New Yorker editor who changed the word fresh to afresh in one of his essays)[A prothetic sound is a vowel etc.] that has developed historically at the beginning of a word. E.g. the e of establish is in origin a prothetic vowel in Old French establir, from Latin stabilire.(P.H. Matthews, Oxford Concise Dictionary of Linguistics, 2nd ed. Oxford University Press, 2007)Old fond eyes, beweep this cause again.(King Lear in The Tragedy of King Lear, by William Shakespeare)