Assibilation
| Sound change and alternation |
|---|
| Fortition |
| Dissimilation |
In linguistics, assibilation is a sound change resulting in a sibilant consonant. It is a form of spirantization, as well as commonly the final phase of palatalization.
Romance languages
The word "assibilation" itself contains an example of the phenomenon, being pronounced /əsɪbɪleɪʃən/. The classical Latin tio was pronounced /tio/ (for example, assibilatio was pronounced /asːibilatio/ and attentio /atːentio/). However, in Vulgar Latin it assibilated to /tsio/, and this can still be seen in Italian: attenzione. In French, lenition gave /sjə/, which in English then palatalized to the /ʃə/.
High German consonant shift
In the High German consonant shift, voiceless stops /p, t, k/ spirantized to /f, s, x/ at the end of a syllable. The shift of /t/ to /s/ (as in English water, German Wasser) is assibilation.
Greek
Proto-Indo-European *t and *dʰ (Greek th) before *y shifted to Proto-Greek /s/.[1]
- *tot-yos -> Homeric tóssos > Attic tósos "this much" (Latin tot)
- *medʰ-yos > Homeric méssos > Attic mésos "middle" (Latin medius)
*ti shifted to /si/ finally in Attic and Ionic,[2] but not in Doric.[3]
- Doric títhēti – Attic-Ionic títhēsi "he/she places"
Finnic languages
In the history of the Finnic languages (Finnish, Estonian and their closest relatives), *ti changed to /si/. The alternation can be seen in dialectal and inflected word-forms: e.g. Finnish kieltää "to deny" → kielti ~ kielsi "s/he denied"; vesi "water" vs. vete-nä "as water".
An intermediate stage /ts/ is preserved in the South Estonian language in certain cases, e.g. tsiga "pig", vs. Finnish sika, Standard (North) Estonian siga.
Arabic
It is characteristic of Mashreqi varieties of Arabic (particularly Levantine and Egyptian) to assibilate the interdental consonants of Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) in certain contexts (mostly defined culturally rather than phonotactically). Thus ṯāʾ, pronounced [θ] in MSA, becomes [s] (as MSA /θaqaːfah/ → Levantine /saqaːfeh/ "culture"); ḏāl, pronounced [ð] in MSA, becomes [z] (as MSA /ðanb/ → Levantine /zamb/ "guilt"); and ẓāʾ', pronounced [ðˤ] in MSA, becomes [zˤ] (as MSA /maħðˤuːðˤ/ → Levantine /maħzˤuːzˤ/ "lucky").
Diachronically, the phoneme represented by the letter ǧīm has in some dialects experienced assibilation as well. The ancestral pronunciation in Classical Arabic is reconstructed to have been [ɡʲ] or [ɟ] (or perhaps both dialectically); it is cognate to [ɡ] in most other Semitic languages, and is understood to be derived from that sound in Proto-Semitic. It has experienced extensive change in pronunciation over the centuries, and is pronounced at least six different ways across the assorted varieties of Arabic. Of these, a common one is [ʒ], the end result of a process of palatalization starting with Proto-West Semitic [ɡ], then [ɡʲ] or [ɟ], then [d͡ʒ] (a pronunciation still current), and finally [ʒ] (in Levantine and non-Algerian Maghrebi). This pronunciation is considered acceptable for use in Modern Standard Arabic, along with [ɡ] and [d͡ʒ].
Regional accents of English
Assibilation can also occur outside of palatalization. For some speakers of African American Vernacular English, /θ/ is alveolarized to /s/ when it occurs at the end of a syllable and within a word before another consonant, leading to such pronunciations as the following.[4]
| bathroom | - /ˈbæs.ruːm/ |
| birthday | - /ˈbɝs.deɪ/ |
See also
References
- ↑ Herbert Weir Smyth. Greek Grammar. par. 113: ty, thy > s, ss
- ↑ Smyth. par. 115: -ti > -si.
- ↑ Smyth. note 115: Doric -ti.
- ↑ Phonological Features of African American Vernacular English