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Linguistics

Notes game’ kY+l lewm, green paper’ gri+m pe pwc , ‘fine thought’ fa nwI θ]+ , ‘ten girls’ teô lf+ lz .
t
However, the same is not true of the other alveolar consonants: s and z behave differently, the only
noticeable change being that s becomes ∫ , and z becomes ¥ when followed by ∫ or j, as in: ‘this shoe’
xw ∫ ∫ u+; ‘those years’ xc•¥ jwcz. It is important to note that the consonants that have undergone
assimilation have not disappeared; in the above examples, the duration of the consonants remains
more or less what one would expect for a two-consonant cluster. Assimilation of place is only noticeable
in this regressive assimilation of alveolar consonants; it is not something that foreign learners need to
learn to do.
Assimilation of manner is much less noticeable, and is only found in the most rapid and casual
speech; generally speaking, the tendency is again for regressive assimilation and the change in manner
is most likely to be towards an “easier” consonant - one which makes less obstruction to the airflow.
It is thus possible to find cases where a final plosive becomes a fricative or nasal (e.g. ‘that side’
xF ssaid, ‘good night’ l•n nawt), but most unlikely that a final fricative or nasal would become a
plosive. In one particular case we find progressive assimilation of manner, when a word-initial x
follows a plosive or nasal at the end of a preceding word: it is very common to find that the C i
f
becomes identical in manner to the C but with dental place of articulation. For example (the arrow
symbol means “becomes”):
‘in the’ in xc → w n I n I c
‘get them’ let xcm → le tI tI cm
‘read these’ ri+d xi+z → ri+ dI dI i+z
The x phoneme frequently occurs with no discernible friction noise.
Assimilation of voice is also found, but again only in a limited way. Only regressive assimilation of
voice is found across word boundaries, and then only of one type; since this matter is important for
f
i
foreign learners we will look at it in some detail. If C is a lenis (i.e. “voiced”) consonant and C is
fortis (“voiceless”) we often find that the lenis consonant has no voicing; for example in ‘I have to’ the
final v becomes voiceless f because of the following voiceless t in aw hfF tu, and in the same way the
z in ‘cheese’ ti z∫ + becomes more like s when it occurs in ‘cheesecake’ ti ske k∫ + w . This is not a very
noticeable case of assimilation, initial and final lenis consonants usually have little or no voicing
anyway; these devoiced consonants do not shorten preceding vowels as true fortis consonants do.
However, when C is fortis (“voiceless”) and C lenis (“voiced”), a context in which in many languages
i
f
f
C would become voiced, assimilation of voice never takes place; consider the following example: I
t
like that black dog’ aw lawk xF bl kF dZl. It is typical of many foreign learners of English that they
allow regressive assimilation of voicing to change the final k of ‘like’ to l, the final t of ‘that’ to d and
the final k of ‘black’ to l, giving aw lawl x F d bl F l dZl. This creates a strong impression of a foreign
accent.
Up to this point we have been looking at some fairly clear cases of assimilation across word boundaries.
However, similar effects are also observable across morpheme boundaries and to some extent also
within the morpheme. Sometimes in the latter case it seems that the assimilation is rather different
from the word-boundary examples; for example, if in a syllable-final consonant cluster a nasal
consonant precedes a plosive or a fricative in the same morpheme, then the place of articulation of
the nasal is always determined by the place of articulation of the other consonant; thus: ‘bump’
b• mp, ‘tenth’ te n θI , ‘hunt’ h• nt, ‘bank’ bF ô k . It could be said that this assimilation has become
fixed as part of the phonological structure of English syllables, since exceptions are almost non-
existent. A similar example of a type of assimilation that has become fixed is the progressive
assimilation of voice with the suffixes s, z; when a verb carries a third person singular ‘-s’ suffix, or a
noun carries an ‘-s’ plural suffix or an ‘-’s’ possessive suffix, that suffix will be pronounced as s if the
preceding consonant is fortis (“voiceless”) and as z if the preceding consonant is lenis (“voiced”).

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