Article Summary Alina Semyonova
The article by John J. McCarthy and Norval Smith "Phonologicl processes:asimilation" (https://bit.ly/2IMSrc1) is dedicated to description of different types of assimilaion.
First, the authors introduce the term "assimilation", which is defined as the process during which one sound acquires some features of its neighboring sound. After that they speak about main types of assimilation, which are local assimilation and long-distance assimilation, which is also called harmony. The local assimilation is a process in which resembling sounds are adjacent, and when the long-distance assimilation takes place, resembling sounds can ne far from each other. Then they begin to analyse both types, starting with the local assimilation. The authors describe the whole process giving examples and state that the local assimilation is believed to be a counterpart of coarticulation in phonetics.
Further, McCarhy and Smith speak about the long-distance assimilation, or harmony. They say that there are two types of harmony: vowel harmony and consonant harmony. After that they describe the first type, the vowel harmony: it involves languages in which vowels are divided into two systems, and only vowels of the same system can be presented in a word.
Then the description of the consonant harmoy is introduced. The consonant harmony involves only sonorants and changes the sounds from set A to the sounds of set B.
After describing harmony McCarthy and Smith tell readers about dominance, which is a significant factor which should be taken into account when studying harmony. They briefly describe types of dominance. The authors explain that segmental dominance is characterized by presence in a word of a special segment which starts harmony, prosodic dominance takes place when a particular segment, being in a strong position, initiates harmony, and morphological dominance occurs when a special segment in a particular group of morpheme provokes harmony.
Futher they mention neutral segments which do not participate in the process of harmony. The also note that neutral segments can be of three types: opaque, transparent and slippable.
After that the scholars speak about the theory of Autosegmental Phonology which states that assimilation involves speading of relevant features. Moreover, assimilation is said to involve one or more additional segments. also they mention another approach, describing "marked" value of a characteristics which is believed to be harmonic value.
There is also the third approach according to which feature values of elements that are not influenced by harmony are filled in by a component of a lower level.
At the end the authors note that there is a controversy among these approaches concerning types of neutral segments.
Questions:
1. How many additional elements assimilaation can be spread over?
2.Doesvowel harmony take place in English?
First, the authors introduce the term "assimilation", which is defined as the process during which one sound acquires some features of its neighboring sound. After that they speak about main types of assimilation, which are local assimilation and long-distance assimilation, which is also called harmony. The local assimilation is a process in which resembling sounds are adjacent, and when the long-distance assimilation takes place, resembling sounds can ne far from each other. Then they begin to analyse both types, starting with the local assimilation. The authors describe the whole process giving examples and state that the local assimilation is believed to be a counterpart of coarticulation in phonetics.
Further, McCarhy and Smith speak about the long-distance assimilation, or harmony. They say that there are two types of harmony: vowel harmony and consonant harmony. After that they describe the first type, the vowel harmony: it involves languages in which vowels are divided into two systems, and only vowels of the same system can be presented in a word.
Then the description of the consonant harmoy is introduced. The consonant harmony involves only sonorants and changes the sounds from set A to the sounds of set B.
After describing harmony McCarthy and Smith tell readers about dominance, which is a significant factor which should be taken into account when studying harmony. They briefly describe types of dominance. The authors explain that segmental dominance is characterized by presence in a word of a special segment which starts harmony, prosodic dominance takes place when a particular segment, being in a strong position, initiates harmony, and morphological dominance occurs when a special segment in a particular group of morpheme provokes harmony.
Futher they mention neutral segments which do not participate in the process of harmony. The also note that neutral segments can be of three types: opaque, transparent and slippable.
After that the scholars speak about the theory of Autosegmental Phonology which states that assimilation involves speading of relevant features. Moreover, assimilation is said to involve one or more additional segments. also they mention another approach, describing "marked" value of a characteristics which is believed to be harmonic value.
There is also the third approach according to which feature values of elements that are not influenced by harmony are filled in by a component of a lower level.
At the end the authors note that there is a controversy among these approaches concerning types of neutral segments.
Questions:
1. How many additional elements assimilaation can be spread over?
2.Doesvowel harmony take place in English?
ОтветитьУдалитьHello Alina,
thanks for sharing this article's summary and explaining its main points. I found it really well written both from the point of view of its content and how clearly the ideas are communicated. Both questions you have come up with are very interesting. Are you interested in investigating one of them further? If yes, I'm inviting you to do it.