17. What are the different types of assimilation? Give examples and explain where assimilation takes place.

Assimilation is defined as the process of replacing a sound by another sound under the influence of a third sound which is near to it in the word or sentence. There are two kinds:

• Historical assimilation - assimilation which has taken place in the course of development of a language, and by which a word which was once pronounced in a certain way came to be pronounced subsequently in another

• Contextual assimilation - words are juxtaposed in a sentence, or in the formation of compounds, and by a word comes to have a pronunciation different from that which it has when said by itself

Assimilation is said to be progressive when a sound influences a following sound, or regressive when a sound influences one which precedes it. The most familiar case of progressive assimilation is English is that of alveolar consonants(./t,d,s,z,n/) when followed by non-alveolar consonants: assimilation results in a change of place of articulation from alveolar to different place. Examples: football (where foot /fʊt/ and ball /bɔ:l/ combine to produce /fʊpbɔ:l/ and fruitcake (/fr u:t/ + /keik/ = /fru:kkeik/). Regressive assimilation is exemplified by the behaviour of the s plural ending in English, which is pronounced with a voiced /z/ after voiced consonants (e.g dogz) but with a voiceless /s/ after a voiceless consonant (cats)

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