Diapositiva 1

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Assimilation Assimilation is a process whereby
adjacent consonants become more similar to each
other in manner or place of articulation in order
to facilitate pronunciation. It can work in both
directions, but the anticipatory (or regressive)
type is usually assumed to be more common than
the perseverative (or progressive) type. In the
former, the first consonant becomes more similar
to the following one, while in the latter, it is
exactly the other way round..
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Anticipatory Assimilation As the name implies, in
this type of assimilation a consonant changes so
as to prepare for/facilitate the pronunciation of
the following one. This change may be either in
its manner or place of articulation. The
following table gives some examples of this type
of assimilation, first showing some of intra-word
assimilation and then of inter-word assimilation
in common combinations of words.
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word/combination no assimilation assimilation type of change trigger
apprenticeship ?p??nt?s??p ?p??nt????p alveolar fricative ? palato-alveolar fricativ palato-alveolar fricative



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good bye g?dba? g?bba? alveolar plosive ? bilabial plosive bilabial plosive
good point g?dp??nt g?bp??nt alveolar plosive ? bilabial plosive bilabial plosive


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Ten points t?np??nts t?mp??nts alveolar nasal bilabial nasal bilabial plosive thin coat ??nk??t ???k??t alveolar nasal velar nasal velar plosive
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give me g?vmi g?mm? labio-dental fricative ? bilabial nasal bilabial nasal
The final example in the table above shows fairly
clearly how certain types of assimilation may
also become reflected in spelling, i.e. that
ltgive megt is represented as ltgimmegt.
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Perseverative Assimilation Assimilation that
goes in the other direction, i.e. perseverative
assimilation, is often said to be rarer than the
anticipatory type. However, I am not aware of any
study that has actually ever tried to quantify
this exactly and the assumption may simply be
based on the misleading fact that there are more
opportunities for different consonants to
assimilate in an anticipatory manner, i.e. that
we have a fairly large number of potential types
of similar processes.
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However, since perseverative assimilation tends
to occur with certain highly frequent grammatical
features or combinations of function words, we
may have a smaller number of types, but actually
a very high number of incidences (tokens).
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Grammatical Perseverative Assimilation The
classic examples for this type of assimilation
are the different shapes of the plural
morpheme s, e.g. dogs d?gz vs. docks d?ks
(vs. horses hos?z), the reduced form of the
third person singular form of be, e.g. hes
hiz vs. its ?ts the possessive marker,
e.g. Johns d??nz vs. Jacks d?aks (vs.
Chris k??s?z), the past tense ed-form, e.g.
carved k?vd vs. worked w?kt (vs. planted
pl?nt?d).
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th-Dropping Another type of perseverative
assimilation occurs with high frequency function
words, generally determiners, that start with a
weak fricative /ð/. As you can see in the table
below, this type of assimilation occurs
predominantly in a nasal environment, i.e. when
the preceding (trigger) consonant is a nasal,
although non-nasal consonants may also be
involved. The main difference here seems to be
that nasal consonants seem to favour a kind of
persistent assimilation that causes a
gemination of the nasal consonant, whereas a
non-nasal trigger often only provides a
temporary basis for later elision of the
geminated consonant.
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combination no assimilation assimilation change trigger
it wasn't there ?tw?zntð?? ?tw?znn?? dental fricative ? alveolar nasal alveolar nasal


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in that case ?nðatke?s ?nnakke?s dental fricative ? alveolar nasal alveolar nasal
in this way ?nð?swe? ?nn?swe? dental fricative ? alveolar nasal alveolar nasal


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give them g?vð?m g?vv?m dental fricative ? labio-dental fricative labio-dental fricative
tell them t??ð?m t????m dental fricative ? alveolar lateral alveolar lateral
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