A Study of the Assimilative Behavior of the Voiced Labio-Dental Fricative in American English

Gradation is one of the main features of colloquial speech. It implies the presence of certain phonological processes that ease the transition between phonemes with different articulatory features. For English, one of these implied processes is assimilation, which is when the articulation of a segment is modified into another one already existing in the system. Our study takes Gimson (1994)’s suggestion that /v/ assimilates into /m/ when it is followed by the bilabial nasal. After observing and describing different cases of assimilation, we suggest more possible explanations to this phenomenon and more assimilative behaviors of /v/. Therefore, we conduct an experiment with six American- English L1s where they evaluate sentences whose articulation includes our suggested proposals. The results show Gimson’s theory not to be as accurate as expected. Furthermore, we prove that /v/ can assimilate into /b/, /ɂ/ and /d/ when it is followed by bilabial, velar and alveolar phonemes.La gradación es una de las características más significativas del lenguaje coloquial. Esta implica la presencia de ciertos procesos fonológicos que facilitan la transición entre fonemas con distintas articulaciones. En el caso del inglés, uno de estos procesos es la asimilación, que consiste en cambiar la articulación de un segmento por la de otro existente en el sistema. Este estudio se basa en la propuesta de Gimson (1994), por la que /v/ se asimila a /m/ cuando le sigue la bilabial nasal. Tras observar y describir más casos de asimilación, nos planteamos distintos comportamientos asimilativos de /v/ en este y otros contextos, que fueron evaluados por medio de un experimento realizado a seis nativos de inglés-americano. Los resultados muestran que la teoría de Gimson no es tan apropiada como se esperaba. Además, concluimos que /v/ puede asimilar a /b/, /ɂ/ y /d/ cuando le siguen ciertos sonidos bilabiales, velares y alveolares.Grado en Estudios Inglese

Perceptual processing of partially and fully assimilated words in French

International audienceModels of speech perception attribute a different role to contextual information in the processing of assimilated speech. The present study examined perceptual processing of regressive voice assimilation in French. This phonological variation is asymmetric in that assimilation is partial for voiced stops and near-complete for voiceless stops. Two auditory- visual cross-modal form priming experiments were used to examine perceptual compensation for assimilation in French words with voiceless versus voiced stop offsets. The results show that, for the former segments, assimilating context enhances underlying form recovery, whereas it does not for the latter. These results suggest that two sources of information -- contextual information, and bottom-up information from the assimilated forms themselves -- are complementary and both come into play during the processing of fully or partially assimilated word forms

Compensation for assimilatory devoicing and prosodic structure in German fricative perception

An important source of phonetic variation in German fricatives is progressive voice assimilation: the lenis fricatives /v/ and /z/ are devoiced after /t/ across word boundaries. This process is gradient and moderated by prosodic structure: fricatives are more devoiced after smaller prosodic boundaries. We present three phoneme identification experiments, investigating how listeners deal with assimilatory devoicing and its prosodic conditioning. Fully voiced, partially devoiced and completely devoiced fricatives had to be identified as fortis or lenis in different segmental (assimilation versus non-assimilation context) and prosodic (after a word versus a phrase boundary) environments. Results indicate that 1. listeners compensate for assimilatory devoicing in judging partially devoiced fricatives more often as lenis in assimilation context than in non-assimilation context; 2. prosodic structure plays a role in compensation for assimilation: more devoiced fricatives are more often judged as lenis after word boundaries than after phrase boundaries in assimilation context, and 3. the influence of prosody is constrained by lexical effects: we found prosodic conditioning of compensation for the devoicing of /v/, contrasting with /f/, but not of /z/. These findings suggest that an on-line prosodic analysis of spoken language contributes to the resolution of lexical ambiguity arising from progressive voice assimilation.This research was supported by a grant from the Max-Planck- Gesellschaft zur Förderung der Wissenschaften, München, Germany.peer-reviewe

Between Veneration for the Text and Vernacularization of the Spoken Form in Quran Recitation

An argument is made in this paper attempting to show that the purportedly intended sanctification accorded to reciting the Quran by adherence to certain phonetic coarticulation operations goes against the noble intention itself. This principle of Tajweed rules requires that anticipatory (i.e., regressive) consonant assimilation (should) apply where its phonetic conditions obtain. The paper argues that this process results in making the oral product of such recitation come closer to vernacular speech than to standard speech. The argument of the paper extrapolates from the attested universal use of such coarticulation assimilation in vernacular or casual speech in languages of the world. Keywords: Quran, recitation, formal pronunciation, veneration, casual speech, vernacular, phonetic processes of connected speec

Effects of Place of Articulation Changes on Auditory Neural Activity: A Magnetoencephalography Study

In casual speech, phonemic segments often assimilate such that they adopt features from adjacent segments, a typical feature being their place of articulation within the vocal tract (e.g., labial, coronal, velar). Place assimilation (e.g., from coronal /n/ to labial /m/: rainbow→*raimbow) alters the surface form of words. Listeners' ability to perceptually compensate for such changes seems to depend on the phonemic context, on whether the adjacent segment (e.g., the /b/ in “rainbow”) invites the particular change. Also, some assimilations occur frequently (e.g., /n/→/m/), others are rare (e.g., /m/→/n/). We investigated the effects of place assimilation, its contextual dependency, and its frequency on the strength of auditory evoked mismatch negativity (MMN) responses, using pseudowords. Results from magnetoencephalography (MEG) revealed that the MMN was modulated both by the frequency and contextual appropriateness of assimilations

The role of perceptual integration in the recognition of assimilated word forms

We investigated how spoken words are recognized when they have been altered by phonological assimilation. Previous research has shown that there is a process of perceptual compensation for phonological assimilations. Three recently formulated proposals regarding the mechanisms for compensation for assimilation make different predictions with regard to the level at which compensation is supposed to occur as well as regarding the role of specific language experience. In the present study, Hungarian words and nonwords, in which a viable and an unviable liquid assimilation was applied, were presented to Hungarian and Dutch listeners in an identification task and a discrimination task. Results indicate that viably changed forms are difficult to distinguish from canonical forms independent of experience with the assimilation rule applied in the utterances. This reveals that auditory processing contributes to perceptual compensation for assimilation, while language experience has only a minor role to play when identification is required.peer-reviewe

Phonetically Motivated and Phonetically Unmotivated Assimilation in Quran Tajweed Rules

The recitation style of Quran known as "tajweed" follows certain age-old practice embodied in phonetic specifications. Over the past millennium, explications of the principles (or rules) of tajweed have been recycled again and again in literally hundreds of publications of varied length and detail. However, and probably out of obvious veneration for Quran, the phonetic rules of the tajweed enterprise have never been subjected to academically-based phonetic scrutiny, let alone critique. This has been the state despite the fact that tajweed تجويد , as a term does not occur in Quran itself or in the texts of the Prophet 's tradition ألحديث    . The term tarteel ترتيل (careful reading) and few other terms of similar meaning are used. The purpose of this essay is to problematize the need for such scrutiny. This article focuses only on one set of tajweed rules subsumed under idghaam ادغام (consonantal regressive assimilation). The study has culled relevant data and propositions of received wisdom from the sources and has also identified sub-types of assimilation which are not in consonance with current (twenty-first) phonetic scholarship. Keywords: Quran, Tajweed rules, phonetics, (un)motivated assimilation rule

Investigating the asymmetry of English sibilant assimilation: Acoustic and EPG data

We present tongue-palate contact (EPG) and acoustic data on English sibilant assimilation, with a particular focus on the asymmetry arising from the order of the sibilants. It is generally known that /s# / sequences may display varying degrees of regressive assimilation in fluent speech, yet for / #s/ it is widely assumed that no assimilation takes place, although the empirical content of this assumption has rarely been investigated nor a clear theoretical explanation proposed. We systematically compare the two sibilant orders in word-boundary clusters. Our data show that /s# / sequences assimilate frequently and this assimilation is strictly regressive. The assimilated sequence may be indistinguishable from a homorganic control sequence by our measures, or it can be characterized by measurement values intermediate to those typical for / / or /s/. / #s/ sequences may also show regressive assimilation, albeit less frequently and to a lesser degree. Assimilated / #s/ sequences are always distinguishable from /s#s/ sequences. In a few cases, we identify progressive assimilation for / #s/. We discuss how to account for the differences in degree of assimilation, and we propose that the order asymmetry may arise from the different articulatory control structures employed for the two sibilants in conjunction with phonotactic probability effects.casl2pub2269pub

Speech variation in German and Dutch and its consequences for underspecified representation

Die Realisierung schnell gesprochener Sprache kann bedeutend von der kanonischen Form einer Äußerung abweichen. Beispielsweise kann „Haben wir heute Mittwoch?“ als /hammaheub’mibwoch/ realisiert werden. Ein Modell, das die Regelhaftigkeit der beteiligten Prozesse zu erfassen versucht, ist die Theorie der Radikalen Unterspezifikation (Kiparsky, 1982). Eine für die Sprachverstehensforschung adaptierte Version des Modells versucht zu erklären, wie Hörer mit Abweichungen umgehen (FUL, Lahiri & Reetz, 2002). Diese Dissertation untersucht die Annahmen des Modells in Sprachproduktions- und Sprachwahrnehmungsexperimenten anhand von Assimilation des Artikulationsortes und der Stimmhaftigkeit. Die Ergebnisse beider Experimentreihen werden durch Unterspezifikation nicht ausreichend erklärt. Die Sprachproduktionsexperimente zeigen zudem, dass die bisherige phonologische Beschreibung der Phänomene nicht hinreichend ist, um die tatsächliche Variation im Deutschen und Niederländischen abzubilden