Final answer:
The statement that a combining vowel is used between a prefix and a word root to ease pronunciation is true, and this technique is common in medical terminology. The combining vowel, such as 'o' in 'osteopathy', helps in pronouncing compound words smoothly. Additionally, twinning of consonants occurs in medical spelling when adding suffixes after CVC pattern word roots. The correct answer is option A .
Step-by-step explanation:
The statement that combining vowel is used between a prefix and a word root to ease pronunciation is true. In the study of medical terminology, which is a part of health sciences education, the combining vowel, often 'o', is indeed used to connect word roots with prefixes and sometimes suffixes if the resulting combination would be difficult to pronounce otherwise. For example, in the word 'osteopathy', 'oste' is the word root for bone, and the combining vowel 'o' eases the transition to the suffix 'pathy', which means disease.
Understanding how to construct and deconstruct medical terms is essential for healthcare professionals. Medical language often involves combining word roots, prefixes, and suffixes that derive from Latin and Greek languages. When two word parts come together that may result in a complex or awkward pronunciation, a combining vowel is introduced to facilitate smoother speech. This helps in making the terms more standardized and easier to communicate among professionals. Additionally, palatalization can affect spelling changes in medical terms, where the pronunciation of a consonant changes due to the influence of nearby sounds, as seen in the transformation of 't' to [ch] in some medical terms.
Twinning the final consonant is also a useful concept in medical spelling, especially when adding a suffix starting with a vowel to a base word that ends in a consonant-vowel-consonant (CVC) pattern. The final consonant is doubled to maintain the short vowel sound. For example, when adding the suffix '-ing' to the word 'script' to form 'scripting', the final 't' is doubled, so we write 'scripting' with two 't's.