22 - The influence of syntactic structure on [s] to [∫] assimilation

Summary

Introduction

This paper is about the phonetic facts of assimilation, its phonological modeling, and the effects of syntactic structure on its occurrence. The emphasis is on the first two. In some respects the paper leads on from an earlier paper (Nolan, 1992) and the commentaries on it by Browman, Hayes, and Ohala. Section 22.2 will review some of the points in that paper, which dealt with place of articulation (POA) assimilation in stops. Section 22.3 will then take up some suggestions which arose in the commentaries; and this will lead in to the main part (section 22.4) of the current paper, which will present new work on POA assimilation, this time in fricatives rather than stops.

Place of articulation assimilation in stops

The work reported in Nolan (1992) starts from the question: “Does articulation mirror the discrete change implied by phonetic and phonological representations of assimilation?” For instance, in red car, does the /d/ at the end of red “change into” a /g/ as a phonemic, or even phonetic, transcription would imply? The experiments used pairs of sentences, such as:

1. (a) They di [dg] ardens for rich people.

2. (b) They di [gg]ardens for rich people.

where (a) provides a potential POA assimilation site at a word boundary -specifically an alveolar before a velar; and (b) provides a velar-velar control context. The basic instrumental tool used was electropalatography (EPG).