----- Original Message -----
From: Juozas Rimas
To: phoNet@egroups.com
Sent: Sunday, April 16, 2000 10:31 AM
Subject: [phoNet] Assimilation of English consonants
 
Thereis no inconsistency here, just different preferences. Different languages permit different kinds of assimilation. English has no (or very little) voicing assimilation, which is obligatory in Lithuanian, Russian or Polish (I have ryba 'fish' with [b], but rybka 'little fish' with [p], as well as devoicing before a pause). This is why speakers of these language have to deliberately practise the pronunciation of English words like anecdote /kd/, phases like backbone /k#b/ "minimal pairs" like dog : dock, etc., until they "unlearn" their native habits while speaking English.
 
On the other hand, English consonants (especially the alveolar ones, articulated with the tip of the tongue) easily assimilate to the PLACE of articulation of the following consonant. The pronunciation of bad boy as "bab boy" or good girl as "goog girl" can frequently be heard in casual speech. This assimilation is facilitated by the fact that English stops are normally unreleased (there is no "puff" of breath) before another stop, so the acoustic contrast between them is weakened in this position. A speaker of British English will typically pronounce the /n/ in one thirty as a dental nasal, assimilating it to the following dental fricative [θ], but in one reason the same /n/ will be postalveolar (with the tip of the tongue retracted or curled back), assimilating to the following /r/, which is pronounced as a postalveolar liquid.
 
The palatalisation of alveolar stops and fricatives before "y" /j/, "sh" /ʃ/, "ch"/ʧ/, "j" /ʤ/ (palatal or palato-alveolar consonants) is one of the most widespread kinds of assimilation in English; it affects /s, z, t, d/, which change into /ʃ, ʒ, ʧ, ʤ/ respectively:
 
this year > "thish year" [ðɪʃ'jɪə] or [ðɪ'ʃɪə]
horse-shoe > "horsh-shoe" or even "horshoe"
would you like > ['wʊʤə'laɪk]
nice journey > ['naɪʃ'ʤɜnɪ]
is George
> [ɪʒ'ʤɔ:ʤ]
without your help
> [wɪð'aʊʧɔ:'help] or [wɪð'aʊʧə'help]
 
Sometimes American and British English have different preferences with regard to palatal assimilation, e.g. Parisian usually has [zj] in RP (the standard British accent) but [ʒ] in General American.
 
In its early history Lithuanian also had palatal assimilations affecting combinations of consonants with /j/; these palatalisations have become "fossilised" as morphological alternations though they are no longer active phonetic processes:
 
pavydėti 'to envy' : pavydžiu (1 sg.), with [ʤ] < Proto-Baltic dj
 
Piotr
 

 
Juozas wrote:
 
I haven't devoted much time to English phonetics and it seems pretty
inconsistent to me, at least in the assimilation field. For example,
the "g" sound in "dogpile" doesn't seem to turn into "k" ("dokpile"),
whereas "it was just him" turns into "it wazh just him", so the whole
thing is quite confusing. In Lithuanian there are such pairs of
consonants:

b - p
d - t
g - k
z - s
zh - sh
j (the one in "John") - ch

The pairs mean, say, if "b" stands before any voiceless consonant it
becomes "p" and vice versa. Where I could find the list of similar
English consonant pairs? And it's not pure theory: if someone's
ignoring consonant assimilation while speaking Lithuanian, it's
clearly heard and unnatural (possibly same with English?).

Juozas Rimas