Linguistics - Phonological Processes

Phonological Processes

During connected speech, certain phonological rules may occur so that the surface form of a word is quite different from its lexical representation. Phonemes come as Allophones by phonological processes (e.g., aspiration, devoicing, nasalization, etc.). Phonemes undergo systematic variationally depending on their context.

The Most Common Processes are the following: Dissimilation, Assimilation, Deletion, Insertion and Metathesis.

 

Assimilation :

Assimilation, from Latin Assimilation, meaning "to render similar“, is a linguistic process by which a sound becomes similarly to an adjacent sound. One sound changes to replace another sound, particularly a neighboring sound. In other words, two sounds becoming more alike. 

 Assimilation results from the influence of one segment on another. A sound becomes more like another nearby sound in terms of one or more of its phonetic characteristics When two phonemes occur in sequence and some aspect of one phoneme is copied or taken by the other, then we generally the process known as assimilation. 

  Assimilation is one of rule that makes neighboring sounds similar by spreading a phonetic property from one sound to another for ease of articulation. Feature of a segment shared by neighboring segment. A sound became more like a neighboring sound because to certain phonetic property.

 Assimilation maybe cause to co-articulation, or it may be language-specific, “arbitrary”: 

 A sound maybe change via copying / simulation feature of neighboring / sequential sound.

Example :

Impossible, irresistible, illegal [in-]

_ pan cake 

_ sun glasses 

_ five past seven 

_ has to 

Example : 

Voicing assimilation for English plural marker. 

– [kæts] “cats” [dagz] “dogs” , “miss you” :  /s/ [ʃ] / __ [ j ] . (the sound [s] in [mIs] is changed to [ʃ] by the assimilation of the following 

palatal glide [ j ].

Dissimilation :

Dissimilation is when a sound is modified to differ and become less like a neighboring sound in certain phonetic property, e.g. to make a sequence of sounds easier to articulate and distinguish.

 Dissimilation rules change feature values to make two phonemes in a string more dissimilar. Dissimilation is rarer than assimilation. 

Examples : 

fifths, sixths 

Fifths: [f I f θ s] [f I f t s] 

Three_fricatives_fricative+stop+fricative