“kinda”, “sorta”, “coulda”, “shoulda”, “lotta”, “oughta”, “betcha”, "tseasy" etc. What are these?

Question

In linguistics, is there a term describing this phenomenon, i.e., when the syllables of two words are slurred together in the spoken language? **They are not contractions.** While contractions are acceptable in any register, this combination of words is very informal and hardly ever found in formal writing. > kinda (kind of) > sorta (sort of) >coulda (could have) >shoulda (should have) >lotta (lot of) >oughta (ought to) >betcha (bet you) > lemme (let me) >tseasy (it's easy) > willya (will you) Inasmuch as English Language speakers (just like the speakers of any natural language) have a tendency to join word sounds in speech, examples abound and a complete list would be hard to produce . **I’m looking for a word or phrase describing this linguistic phenomenon as it occurs in speech.**

Answer 1

We refer to the pronunciation of these words as relaxed pronunciation. Because kinda, coulda, etc. are not actual words, they will not be accepted in formal writing but are accepted in informal speech. Here is the Wikipedia introduction to relaxed pronunciation:

Relaxed pronunciation (also called condensed pronunciation or word slurs) is a phenomenon that happens when the syllables of common words are slurred together. It is almost always present in normal speech, in all natural languages. 

Answer 2

In Linguistics, this phenomenon is called Reduction. There's stress reduction and vowel reduction. While reduction technically isn't informal as it is naturally occurring in speech (compare saying "I don't know if I'm going to the store because I kind of want to stay home" with reduced forms of the words versus how the words would sound like if you pronounced every sound), it would not be used in formal, academic writing. Of course in informal settings, such as texting, these words in their reduced forms will appear, but as noted they are not found in formal writing. Reductions are also referred to as relaxed speech, and falls under the topic of Connected Speech.