Linguistic Lingo and Lyric Diction VI-Assimilation

(ProQuest: ... denotes formulae omitted.)(ProQuest: ... denotes non-USASCII text omitted.)HUMANITY CONCURS MORE OR LESS UNIVERSALLY, regardless of language, that speech involves a succession of discrete articulations that fall consecutively upon one another in the course of any meaningful utterance. This intuition has a strong basis in reality, and reflects our shared instinct for categorization. The IPA does nothing to discourage this approach to our understanding of how language operates. Its dissection of the continuity of speech into segments through symbols disguises a much more complex reality, by implying that changes in articulation are instantaneous and absolute, and by isolating a few salient phonetic features to the exclusion of many others. IPA symbols imply a succession of static articulative moments, shifting suddenly from one articulation to the next, like a slide show. As Ball/Rahilly state, Speech is a dynamic process, but phonetic symbolization treats it as if it were static.1 This simplification of reality appears to be a necessity in any attempt at linguistic analysis, and ironically may reflect the limitations of language itself. Generative phonologies, which address the feature limits of traditional vowel and consonant charts and expand them, also resort to a binary (plus/minus) organization of its features. Attempts have been made in recent decades to bridge the phonetic silos created by segmental analysis, through the use of diagrams that demonstrate the behavior of parameters other than those implicit in IPA symbols themselves. In such charts, the behavior of the velum, palate, tongue, and lips can be traced through the time continuum. In doing so, the multilayered influences, or accommodations, that an articulation makes upon those it surrounds can be more readily seen.2 However, the more fully such charts reflect the dynamic process of speech, the more cumbersome they become.Colloquial speech typically involves a flow of articulations at a rate of between 10 and 20 per second. The familiarity of the process is so well entrenched in our reflex speech habits that we are unaware of its complexity. Some articulations are not able to be reiterated at rates faster than 4 or 5 per second, and others are intrinsically difficult at a fast rate-tongue-twisters are evidence of this.3 It is therefore not surprising that speakers find shortcuts, or paths of least resistance, when proceeding from one articulation to the next. Frequently, a segment will not have the opportunity to arrive fully at the target position (or citation form, as it is called) of a vowel or consonant, as implied by its IPA symbol.4 The more fortis (requiring more energetic tensing) an articulation is, the more likely it is to accommodate itself to surrounding sounds. The degree to which an articulation may be altered is inversely proportional to its degree of probability of being confused with another phoneme, thereby confusing the intelligibility of the thought or changing the meaning of the word. For instance, Spanish /s/ readily varies from [s] to [∫] according to environment, because /∫/ does not exist as a separate phoneme in Spanish. Other languages that have both Is/ and /∫/ exhibit much less variation, because of such intelligibility limits. The marked tendency of Quebecois French to add a sibilant to onset consonants (du [d^sup z^y], petit Yvonne [pt^sup s^it^sup s^ivcn])-a process known as assibilation-was free to develop without loss of intelligibility, because there is no /d/-/d^sup z^/ or /t/-/t^sup s^/ contrast in French. Similarly, the centralization of /i/ and /u/ to [I] and [u] in some environments in Quebecois French (midi [mI.d^sup z^i]) is sometimes ascribed to the influence of English, but can also be defended on purely phonological grounds: there is no /i/-/I/ or /u/-/u/ contrast in French to muddy the waters.Of the various forms of accommodation in language, the most prevalent is that known as assimilation. …

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