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Assimilation can affect the work of the vocal cords and sounds become voiced
or devoiced under the influence of the neighbouring sounds. In particular, voiced
sounds become voiceless when followed by another voiceless sound, e.g.:
1. Devoicing/Voicing: is best manifested by the regressive assimilation in
such words as news paper (news [z] + paper); gooseberry (goose [s] + berry).
In casual informal speech voicing assimilation is often met, e.g. have to do it
['hxf tə'du:], five past two ['faif pa:st 'tu:]
2. Devoicing:
a) devoicing assimilation affects mostly grammatical items: [z] of “has”, “is”,
“does” changes to [s], and [v] of “of”,”have” becomes [f], e.g. She's five. Of course.
She has fine eyes. You've spoiled it.Does Pete like it?
b) the weak forms of the verbs “is” and “has” are also assimilated to the final
voiceless (fortis) consonants of the preceding word, thus the assimilation is
functioning in the progressive direction, e.g. Your aunt's coming.What’s your name?
(partial progressive assimilation)
c) English sonorants [m, n, r, 1, j, w] preceded by the fortis (voiceless)
consonants [p, t, k, s] are partially devoiced, e.g. smart, snake, tray, quick, twins,
play, pride (partial progressive assimilation).
ACCOMMODATION – the modification of a consonant under the influence of
the neighbouring vowel or vice versa.
Accommodation can involve in articulation the following:
▪ lip position and
▪ the position of the soft palate.
Accommodation can be of the following type:
1. Labialisation: when consonants are labiolized (rounded) under the influence of
the neighbouring rounded back vowels, e.g. pool, moon, rude, soon, who, cool, etc.
2. Spread lip position of consonants: consonants acquire spread lip position when
they are followed or preceded by front vowels [i:], [i], e.g. tea – beat; meet – team;
feat – leaf, keep – leak; sit – miss.
3. Nasalization: vowels are nasalized as the result of prolonged lowering of the
soft palate under the influence of the neighbouring sonants [m] and [n], e.g. and,
morning, men, come in.
Reduction is the weakening of articulation and shortening of the duration of
unstressed vowels. It results in quantitative and qualitative changes in the sounds. It
can be of three types:
• Quantitative when only the length of the vowel is changed without changing
the quality of the sound, e.g. How are you? [ju] - How are you? [ju:];
• Qualitive-quantitative when due to traditional alterations one sound is replaced
by another one, e.g. Do [dq] you have some [sm] sugar? Can [kqn ]you give me
some? [sAm].
Most vowels in unstressed positions are reduced to [q] but the long vowels [i:] and
[u:] are reduced to their short counterparts [i] and [υ]. Remember that the long vowel
[O:] is not reduced to the short vowel [P ], but to [q].
• Elision or zero reduction is an omission of a vowel.
e.g. John and Mary [nd]; I’m a teacher [m]. Let’s go there [s]. Emily [`emli]
I wouldn’t ‘v done this. (not have).
Reduction occurs in English in function words which are usually unstressed. They
are articles, particles, modal verbs, auxiliary verbs, prepositions, conjunctions. Also
pronouns are usually unstressed.
One should remember the exclusions when functional words are stressed and
don’t have reduction. It happens due to the tradition.
Traditional use of unreduced vowels.
It is necessary to remember that some vowels don’t undergo
reduction due to historically formed traditional use. They are:
1. Some structural words, e.g. which, what, where, on, in, with, then, when,
how.
2. Prepositions in the final position in the sentence,
e.g. Where are you from? [from] Where are they going to? [tu:]
4. Auxiliary and modal verbs in the initial and final position in the sentence,