Assimilation and voice reduction in  Phonology

Assimilation and voice reduction in  Phonology

Farhad Uddin  Ahmed Bhuiyan

Vowel reduction is a phonological process in English and other stress-timed
languages that occurs when vowels are not stressed. It involves changes in the
acoustic quality of vowels, such as a lower pitch, shorter duration, and reduced
vowel quality. Vowels in unstressed syllables of lexical words or function words
are usually reduced. For example, in the word "about", the letter "a" is reduced to
"ə", resulting in the pronunciation "əˈbaʊt". Word stress is closely related to
vowel reduction.
Reduction involves the simplification or weakening of sounds in connected
speech. In unstressed syllables, vowels are usually reduced because they lack
stress. For example, in the word "postman", the vowel of the unstressed part is
reduced.
In vowel reduction, the vowel sound is pronounced as [ə] or [ɪ] instead of another
full vowel. For example, in the word "about", the letter <a> is not pronounced [ɑ]
as it is in the word "father".
The most common reduced vowel is schwa [ə]. Schwa [ə] is the only vowel form
that can not occur in stressed syllables in English.

Assimilation
Assimilation is an important part of connected speech. Assimilation is a phonetic
process where a speech sound becomes similar or identical to a neighboring
sound. The term comes from the Latin word meaning "make similar
to". Assimilation can be partial or total. Assimilation is when a sound at the end of
a word is modified due to the influence of the first sound in the next word.
Assimilation occurs when a phoneme (sound) in one word causes a change in a
sound of a neighbouring word.
Basically, assimilation is changing a sound, due to the influence of neighboring
sounds. Assimilation is very common and popular among the world’s spoken
languages.
Examples of assimilation:

In the words “This shoe” S → SH: "This shoe" becomes "ðɪʃʃuː" (thish-shoe)
In the word "hand bag" /ˈhæn(d)bæg/, the alveolar nasal /n/ becomes a bilabial
nasal /m/ and pronounced as /ˈhæmbæg/.
In the words “Could you” ,  /d/ sound in “could” and the /y/ sound in “you”
combined to make a /dʒ/ sound and pronounced as (“Coujoo”).
Assimilation can divide into three type; progressive assimilation, regressive
assimilation, and reciprocal assimilation.

Elision
Elision is the omission of a sound. It means omitting one or more sounds from a
word or phrase. It arises from the collapse of a vowel in a syllable or the lenition
and disappearance of a consonant. In some cases, it arises from strong stress
patterns that left unstressed syllables relatively weak. Elision is the loss of a
phoneme, most commonly the last phoneme of a word, and most commonly
the /t/ and /d/ sounds. In each case, the last phoneme of the first word is elided
(lost). Elision is a part of connected speech that involves dropping sounds,
syllables, or words in speech to make it easier and faster to say
Elision is used in casual or informal speech. It is easier to pronounce. When “t”
and “d” comes between two consonants at the end of the syllable, it gets elided.
An example would be the omission of /d/ in the word “friendly” so that it sounds
like frenly:
He's very friendly –> /hiz 'veri 'frenli/.
‘Comfortable’ /ˈkʌmfɚˌtəbɫ̩/ pronounced in some accents as /ˈkʌmftəbɫ̩/.
The second syllable has elided. Similarly, friendship has elided and
pronounced as –> “frienship”, handsome–> “hansome” , hand bag–> “hanbag,
"Next door" –> "Nexdoor", "Dad take" –> "Datake", "Most common" –>
"Moscommon", "Used to" –> "Useto" and so on.