Assimilation in English.

There are some remarkable differences between the pronunciation of a word in isolation and of the same word in a block of connected speech. These changes are mostly quite regular and predictable. The modification of a consonant under the influence of the adjoining consonant in the flow of speech is known as assimilation. The term accommodation is often used to denote the interchanges of “vowel + consonant” type or “consonant + vowel” type. Assimilation may affect the work of the lips, tongue, soft palate walls of the pharynx. Consonants may be modified according to the place of obstruction, to the manner of articulation, to the lip position, the position of the soft palate. According to the direction of assimilation, it may be regressive and progressive. Regressive a. is most common in both languages: English and Russian. According to the degree a. may be complete, incomplete. Assimilation may be also historical, in cases when its process is already fixed in present-day English and living, when it acts in living speech of speakers of to-day. Some cases of a. are considered to be obligatory, functioning according to the accepted norm of the language, used by the educated people, while the other are met only in the speech of the illiterate part of the population of the country.

Assimilation is the likening of two adjoining sounds. The adaptive modification of a consonant by a neighbouring consonant in the speech chain is known as assimilation. Assimilation may affect all the features of the articulation of a consonant phoneme or only some of them. Assimilation may affect: 1) the place of obstruction ( in them, all that, his thoughts-alveolars are replaced by dentals); 2) the active speech organ (congress, concrete, conquest-the alveolar sonorant |n| is replaced by the back-lingual sonorant; ) ; 3) the work of the vocal cords (goose and berry- gooseberry |guzberi|) 4) the position of the lips (quick, twenty, language) -labialized variants of the phonemes |k|,|g|,|t| are used under the influence of the bilabial sonorant |w|. The term accommodation is often used by linguists to denote the interchanges of “vowel + consonant type” or “consonant + vowel type.(too, loose-an unrounded variant of |t| is replaced by a rounded |t| under the influence of a rounded sound |u|. One of the wide-spread sound changes is vowel reduction. Elision or complete loss of sounds, both vowels and consonants, is often observed in English.( knight, talk, walk, column, dumb, whistle, garden, all right |orait|).Vowel elision is very frequent in informal conversational style. It often goes with other processes involving assimilation and elision of consonants. Elided neutral sound |e| is very common in the unstressed syllables of polysyllabic words, like : COLLECTIVE, DIFFERENT, POLLITICAL-|klektiv|,|difrent|,|plitikl|. The manner of articulation is also changed as a result of assimilation, which may be illustrated as follows: 1. Loss of plosion. 2. Lateral plosion. 3. Nasal plosion. According to the direction of assimilation it may be of two kinds: progressive and regressive.( gooseberry, newspaper), (twins, pride). According to the degree of assimilation it may be complete or incomplete (horse-shoe, London bridge). Assimilation may be historical and living.The historical assimilation took place in the historical development of the language while living assimilation acts at a present period.(DOES SHE but DOES IT; DID YOU). Assimilation is recognized as obligatory or established when it follows the phonetic laws of the language acquired by the educated population. Non-obligatory or accidental assimilation is met in uneducated speech of population (LONDON|m| BRIDGE; WOULD|b| BE-regressive assimilation)