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However, similar types of brain damage overwhelmingly lead to similar outcomes. Parkinsons disease disrupts signing at the phonetic level, left hemisphere damage disrupts it at grammatical levels, and right hemisphere damage disrupts it at the discourse level.
See also: Aphasia Syndromes; Sign Language: Interpreting; Sign Language: Overview.

Bibliography
Brentari D & Poizner H (1994). A phonological analysis of a deaf Parkinsonian signer. Language and Cognitive Processes 9, 69100. Brentari D, Poizner H & Kegl J (1995). Aphasic and Parkinsonian signing: differences in phonological disruption. Brain and Language 48, 69105. Corina D P (1998). Aphasia in users of signed language. In Coppens P, Lebrun Y & Basso A (eds.) Aphasia in atypical populations. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. 261310. Corina D P (1999). Neural disorders of language and movement: evidence from American Sign Language. In Messing L S & Campbell R (eds.) Gesture, speech, and sign. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2743. Corina D P, Bellugi U & Reilly J (1999). Neuropsychological studies of linguistic and affective facial expressions in deaf signers. Language and Speech 42, 307331. Corina D P, Kritchevsky M & Bellugi U (1996). Visual language processing and unilateral neglect: evidence from American Sign Language. Cognitive Neuropsychology 13, 321351. Corina D P, Poizner H, Feinberg T et al. (1992). Dissociation between linguistic and non-linguistic gestural

systems: a case for compositionality. Brain and Language 43, 414447. Emmorey K (1996). The confluence of space and language in signed languages. In Bloom P, Peterson M, Nadel L et al. (eds.) Language and space. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. 171209. Hickok G, Bellugi U & Klima E S (1998a). The neural organization of language: evidence from sign language aphasia. Trends in Cognitive Sciences 2, 129136. Hickok G, Bellugi U & Klima E S (1998b). Whats right about the neural organization of sign language? A perspective on recent neuroimaging results. Trends in Cognitive Sciences 2, 465468. Hickok G, Wilson M, Clark K et al. (1999). Discourse deficits following right hemisphere damage in deaf signers. Brain and Language 66, 233248. Kegl J & Poizner H (1997). Crosslinguistic/crossmodal syntactic consequences of left hemisphere damage: evidence from an aphasic signer and his identical twin. Aphasiology 11, 137. Neville H J, Bavelier D, Corina D P et al. (1998). Cerebral organization for language in deaf and hearing subjects: biological constraints and effects of experience. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 95, 922929. Newman A J, Bavelier D, Corina D P et al. (2002). A critical period for right hemisphere recruitment in American Sign Language processing. Nature Neuroscience 5, 7680. Poizner H & Kegl J (1992). Neural basis of language and motor behavior: perspectives from American Sign Language. Aphasiology 6, 219256. Poizner H, Klima E S & Bellugi U (1987). What the hands reveal about the brain. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Dissimilation
t Graz, Graz, Austria B Hurch, Universita
2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Definition, Exemplification, and Terminology

The concept of dissimilation entered the study of grammar in the second half of the 19th century, probably from rhetoric, where it had been well established for the description of variation, i.e., the avoidance of repetition of the expression of grammatical form, the change of foot structure in the verse, etc. The term dissimilation was formed in opposition to its apparent counterpart assimilation as a learned derivation. It refers to the change in which

one of two phonological elements (phoneme, prosodic element) that are equal in at least one crucial feature and that are contained in a larger domain (word, stem, accent group) changes at least this one crucial feature under the influence of the second element in order to render the two elements unequal. A dissimilating feature must be contrastive in a given language (Grammont, 1895, 1933; Kiparsky, 2003). A stock example comes from the Romance languages: Lat. peregrinus undergoes dissimilation of the two liquids, changing the first into a lateral in Fr. pe ` lerin and Ital. pellegrino (cf. also Engl. pilgrim and Ger. Pilger), but keeping the two rhotics in Span. peregrino. The well-known sound-law-like example for dissimilation is Grassmanns Law in Ancient Greek and Sanskrit where a word

720 Dissimilation

containing two aspirated consonants dissimilates the first of them to its unaspirated counterpart: cf. AGr. thr k-s hair, NOMSG vs. trikh-o s hair, GENSG. These two examples differ in some important respects: the Romance liquid dissimilation affects equal sounds and is sporadic and a diachronic change, whereas Grassmanns Law expresses a synchronic limitation, is regular and, moreover, affects different sounds and dissimilates them with respect to one apparently important characteristic, namely, aspiration. Dissimilation is frequently opposed to assimilation, but as will be shown throughout the remainder of this article, these two phenomena differ in nearly all respects, and the only force keeping them together is the opposite directionality of the change.

Types of Dissimilation and Terminology

Dissimilation proper should be kept apart from dissimilatory forces in the broader sense, although the former may be the result of a more constrained application of the latter. In the phonological structuring of language, we find antagonistic structural principles at nearly all levels of analysis (consonant vowel sequences, syllable structure, foot structure, etc.). They are paradigmatically the result of opposite tendencies, creating a dissimilate order with maximally alternating perceptual cues in the sequencing of elements. Most of the centrifugal changes strengthen the auditory differences between elements and are thus dissimilatory in a broad sense. But the term dissimilation is better reserved for the systematic alternation type as described above. Kiparsky (2003: 331) lists dissimilation among the minor sound changes. Like these, dissimilation (again in contrast to assimilation) is usually quantal (nongradual) and sporadic. The quantal character can be derived from the already mentioned phonemic change implied by the contrastiveness of the dissimilating features. It has sometimes been claimed that the sporadic character of dissimilations like the Romance r/l dissimilations goes back to older regularity, but there is no positive evidence for it, either in early Romance or in Latin. The frequently cited example aulam extarem (dissimilated from extalem) from Plautus is too isolated to serve as the basis for a different analysis. On the other hand, dissimilation can be regular when it responds to paradigmatic constraints (Grassmanns Law) but not necessarily so, cf. the irregularity governing the Latin -alis/-aris affixation (cf. Hurch, 1991). The sporadic character is also illustrated by isolated examples such as Lat. quinque five, which loses the labialization of the first consonant in Proto-Romance (cf. Fr. cinq, It.

cinque, Span. cinco, etc.) probably due to the presence of the second labiovelar. So-called preventive dissimilation is more properly viewed as a morphophonemically governed selection device of competing allomorphs or morphemes in word formation, than as a change creating synchronic alternation. Under this heading, we have to subsume various types of alternating affixations ranging from the situation in which the selectable affixes differ only with respect to a dissimilating property and are otherwise equal, to the simple banning of specific affixes due to the clash of their sound structure in combination with a basis. The former has been postulated for Lat. flore-alis with a rhotic in the stem, selecting the lateral variant of the affix, and sol-aris with the lateral in the stem correspondingly selecting the rhotic variant of the affix (This constraint is far from holding without exceptions. There are counterexamples in both directions, as can also be testified by numerous examples in the Latinate lexicon of English (lethal, legal, fluvial, etc.), which question the strength of the dissimilatory force as a (morpho-)phonological factor). For the latter, see the Engl. derivative -ish for the formation of adjectives, which is banned from the combining with nouns ending in /S/, e.g., *fish-ish. Bloomfield (1933: 390) also quotes a series of English words with uncertain internal structure, but which obviously avoid the combination of undissimilated liquids such as crackle, rattle, but clatter, blubber, etc. A specific case of dissimilation is dissimilatory loss, i.e., the complete elimination of a segment as the consequence of identity: Lat. clavicula > Fr. cheville, It. Federico from Germanic initial Fr-, Lat. proprius  propius (vgl. Schopf, 1919: 149166); cf. also the colloquial English forms such as libary and Febuary for library and February (G. Nathan, personal communication). Brugmann (1909: 147) proposes a wider concept of dissimilatory loss by including all those items where some element (feature) is deleted instead of positively being replaced by a dissimilated feature; so he calls into play examples such as the above-mentioned Lat. quinque where Romance languages lose the first labialization, i.e., labiovelars become plain velars. The concept of privative features had obviously been unknown in Brugmanns time. Haplology, another type of loss, namely, the eliminatory reduction of two identical sound sequences to one (e.g., Lat. nutri-trix > nutrix nurse), is generally interpreted as syllabic dissimilation (Wurzel, 1976). It has sometimes been claimed that reduplication is a procedure opposed to haplology (Pott, 18331836). The directionality of dissimilation is best captured by the traditional terms regressive and progressive. The former refers to the change x1x2 > yx2, the

Dissimilation 721

latter to x1x2 > x1y (Schopf, 1919). The indices x1 and x2 only mean to indicate succession, not differentiation of x. In the traditional terminology, dissimilate is a transitive verb and denotes the action x2 exerts on x1 in the former example so that x1 > y. In other words: x2 dissimilates x1 to y. We also find a type of preventive dissimilation in systems of reduplication with fixed segmentism, i.e., instances where the base itself begins with the regular fixed segment (Keane, 2005). Bengali ak bald, ak phak bald etc., Hindi viinaa lute viinaa giinaa lutes and such like. The sound form of the dissimilatum stands in no (morpho-)phonologically comprehensible relation with the sound form of the dissimilans and thus deviates from the concept of dissimilation as presented above. Positively, the sequencing of dissimilans and dissimilatum is an indicator for the identification of the base and the reduplicant, thus they represent the directionality of reduplication. Brugmann quotes examples of dissimilatory loss in reduplication from Ancient Indian such as pa-spas e u stand, 1,3SG where the see, 1,3SGMED, ta-stha sibilant of the reduplicant is claimed to be dissimilated in order to avoid two successive identical sCsyllable onsets; moreover the latter examples also show the application of Grassmanns Law. It seems more reasonable today to consider these apparent dissimilations in a different light: the specific reduplication type itself selects CV- from the base, initial clusters are reduced to a single consonant.

vowels, which are sometimes analyzed as a dissimilatory enhancement of differences between two subsequent morae within a single vowel, do not fall into the domain of dissimilation. Such processes, although having an output that is prima facie more dissimilar than the input, are better described as independently improving prosodic structure such as the syllable.
Directionality

Although we do find both regressive and progressive dissimilation, the regressive action seems to be the preferred option. Locality and directionality nicely demonstrate that dissimilation, in contrast to assimilation, is not the result of an immediate action of one sound upon another, but rather takes place at the level of cognitive planning of a word.
Quality and Quantity of Change

Properties and Preferences

Synchrony and Diachrony

Whereas assimilatory processes, as lenitions in general, may be allophonic or phonemic, dissimilations are always phonemic. An explicit formulation of this observation dates as far back as the early days of phonology (Grammont, 1895). This corresponds to the centripetal character enhancing the perceptual reliability of the segmental structure. Moreover, it has always been assumed that whereas gradualness is a characteristic of assimilation, dissimilation is quantal. Assimilations usually are realized to a varying degree with a theoretical endpoint in fusion, whereas dissimilations work categorically. This probably depends on the fact that similarity is a matter of graduality; dissimilarity is not.
Affected Segments and Features

Dissimilation proper is more easily encountered as a diachronic change than in synchronic alternation. As was already pointed out by Meringer (1897), dissimilation originates in contexts such as speech errors. This accounts for the sporadic character of the alternation and for the lack of a sound law-like behavior.
Locality

Posner (1961: 4) distinguishes dissimilation of consonants in contact (which she also calls differentiation) from dissimilation of consonants not in contact Ferndissimilation, dissimilation harmonique. As opposed to assimilation, dissimilation proper works at a distance within a bigger, usually morphologically defined domain. Underspecification Theory in the late 1980s tried to define locality in terms of tiers, which means that segments separated by other segments must be adjacent on the tier of the relevant dissimilating features in order to develop their triggering force. Processes like diphthongization of long

It has long been recognized that not all sounds and features are equally subject to dissimilatory tendencies. Schuchardt (1909: 474) objects to the interpretation of Ital.Dial. u ppumento as resulting through a dissimilation from un momento on the grounds that the dissimilatory result of m is b, but not p. The knowledge of phonological proximity dominates the selection devices for dissimilated consonants. The high number of liquid dissimilations has always suggested that this sound class is specifically subject to this type of change. The most detailed claim with respect to preferences of segments and/or features undergoing dissimilation is to be found in Ohala (2003). Dissimilation should occur primarily on features whose acoustic-perceptual cues are known to spread over relatively long time intervals beyond the immediate hold of the segment they are distinctive on. This includes aspiration, glottalization, retroflexion,

722 Dissimilation

palatalization, pharyngealization, labialization, etc. These are most likely to color adjacent segments and require the listener to undo their effects. When the same feature occurs distinctively on two sites within a word, their long-distance diffusion creates maximal ambiguity for the listener. Segments whose distinctive features do not migrate substantially in time should not be subject to dissimilation. This includes the features that cue stops, affricates, and voicing.

Bibliography
Brugmann K (1909). Das Wesen der lautlichen Dissimilationen. In Abhandlungen der Ko chsischen niglich Sa Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften Bd.57. Leipzig: Teubner. 139178. Grammont M (1895). La dissimilation consonantique dans les langues indo-europe ennes et dans les langues romanes. Dijon: Darantie ` re. Grammont M (1933). Traite de phone tique. Paris: Delagrave. Hurch B (1991). On adjacency and related concepts. In Bertinetto P M, Kenstowicz M & Loporcaro (eds.) Certamen Phonologicum II. Turin: Rosenberg & Sellier. 4363. Keane E (2005). Phrasal reduplication and dual description. In Hurch B (ed.) Studies on reduplication. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. 239261. Kiparsky P (2003). The phonological basis of sound change. In Joseph B & Janda R (eds.) The handbook of historical linguistics. Malden: Blackwell. 313342. Meringer R (1897). [Review of] Grammont M. La dissimilation . . .. Anzeiger fu r indogermanische Sprach- und Altertumskunde. Beiblatt zu den Indogermanischen Forschungen 12, 814. Meringer R (1908). Aus dem Leben der Sprache. Berlin: Behr. Ohala J (2003). Phonetics and historical phonology. In Joseph B D & Janda R D (eds.) The Handbook of historical linguistics. Malden: Blackwell. 669686. Passy P (1891). Etude sur les changements phone tiques et leurs caracte ` res ge ne raux. Ph.D. diss. Paris: Firmin-Didot. Posner R R (1961). Publications of the Philological Society XIX. Consonantal dissimilation in the Romance Languages. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Pott A F (18331836). Etymologische Forschungen auf dem Gebiete der indogermanischen Sprachen. Lemgo & Detmold: Meyersche Hofbuchhandlung. Schopf E (1919). Forschungen zur griechischen und lateinischen Grammatik 5. Die konsonantischen Fernwirkungen: Fern-Dissimilation, Fern-Assimilation und Metathesis. Go ttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. Schuchardt H (1909). Zur Dissimilation. Zeitschrift fu r romanische Philologie 33, 474475. ` Vendrye ` s J (1921). Le langage. Introduction linguistique a lhistoire. Paris: La renaissance du livre. Wurzel W U (1976). Zur Haplologie. Linguistische Berichte 41, 5057.

Contexts and Domains

An interesting restriction on dissimilation is that its context cannot sufficiently be specified in phonological or prosodic terms. Thus, not every two segments within a reasonable distance relation are able to develop a dissimilatory force, but only if they are contained within a specific domain, namely, the morphological word. Word boundaries do actively block dissimilations; morpheme boundaries, for example, do not.

Foundations
Most authors (Grammont, 1895; Passy, 1891) agree that the goal of dissimilation is to enhance a contrast by improving the auditory distance between the dissimilans and the dissimilatum and thus facilitate perception (Kiparsky, 2003). According to Grammont (1895), dissimilation is an expression of the loi du plus fort: the consonant in the accented syllable usually dissimilates the one either in unstressed or in the weaker syllabic position. Brugmann (1909) calls into play the horror aequi as the driving force of dissimilation. The main purpose for claiming this principle is that it aims at explaining those instances of preventive dissimilation, in which the equality exists in underlying representations only. In the same vein, but in modern terminology, Ohala (2003: 680) attributes dissimilation to what he calls parsing errors. Only very few scholars (Vendrye ` s, 1921) advocate an articulatory teleology. Interaction and parallels with other types of sporadic changes (metathesis) still favor Meringers (1908) hypothesis, which connects the origin of dissimilation to paradigmatic factors such as speech errors.
See also: Assimilation; Morphophonemics; Sound Laws.