英语专业学士学位论文.doc

分 类 号：学校代码：11460学 号：07201201南 京 晓 庄 学 院本 科 生 学 士 学 位 论 文英汉语音中的同化现象分析On Assimilation Of Sounds In English And Chinese所在院（系）： 行 知 学 院学 生： 马辉指 导 老 师： 赵霞研究起止日期：2010年9月至2011年4月二一一年四月学位论文独创性声明本人郑重声明：本论文是本人在导师指导下独立从事研究所取得的成果。文中除以参引或注释形式标明出处者外，不含任何其他个人或机构已发表或未发表的著述或研究结果。对本文的研究做出贡献的个人和机构，均已在“致谢”中加以说明。本人完全了解，违反上述声明所引起的一切法律责任将由本人承担。本人签名_年 月 日Abstract and Key Words Abstract: Phonological assimilation is a common phenomenon in pronunciation of almost every language, it occurs for least effort and smooth pronunciation. Learning assimilation phenomenon in Chinese can improve students understanding assimilation in English, so this thesis firstly discusses the phonological assimilation in Chinese , then detailedly investigates the definition and the common types and cases of the assimilations in English; to do so students can have a better mastery of phonological assimilation and pronunciation especially in English and can also improve the fluency of their spoken English and enhance their ability in listening comprehension.Key words: Assimilation;linguistics;English ;Chinese 摘要：语音同化基本在任何一种语言发音中都是一种很普遍的现象，其发生的原因是为了省力或发音顺畅。本文着重分析英汉语音中的同化现象，因为英汉语音同化存在着许多相似处，所以本文先从大家较熟悉的汉语入手，重点分析了汉语语音同化现象的概念及一些主要类型，然后再分别从语音同化定义、类型、例子等方面论述了英语中语音同化现象，这样做有助于同学们更好地理解英语中的语音同化现象，此外了解语音同化现象还有助于提高个人的口语和听力水平。关键词：语音同化；语言学；英语；汉语CONTENTS1. Introduction12. Literature Review2.1 Different Concept of Assimilation 2.2 Research of Assimilation in Linguistics3. Assimilation of Sounds in Chinese.43.1 Basic Information 3.2 Types 4. Assimilation of Sounds in English.54.1 Definition of Assimilation of Sounds4.2 Types 4.2.1 Types Classified According to Direction4.2.2 Types Classified According to Feature4.2.3 Types Classified According to Result4.2.4 Types Classified According to Boundary4.3 Some typical Cases of Assimilation in English4.4 Important Assimilation Rules in English4.5 Synonyms of Assimilation in Linguistics5. Conclusion10Bibliography.11Acknowledgements.12On Assimilation of Sounds in English and Chinese1. IntroductionTo speak about assimilation,you may get different answers by scholars of different science: a biologist will say its the conversion of nutrient into the fluid or solid substance of the body by the processes of digestion and absorption; a sociologist may say its the blending or fusing of minority groups into the dominant society; a psychologist will say: “ it is the incorporation of new concepts into existing schemes.” A linguistist says its a phonological process by which a sound becomes similar to an adjacent sound. What this thesis discusses is assimilation in linguistics or assimilation of sounds, learning assimilation of sounds is helpful for Chinese students to have a better mastery of English pronunciation and can improve the fluency of their spoken English and enhance their ability in listening comprehension.As mentioned above, assimilation in linguistics is a phonological process where a phone becomes similar to a nearby phone, it is probably the most common phonological process in all languages you will see it over and over as you analyze different languages, because using it people can get the effect of saving effort or making the pronunciation of the two dissimilar consonants easier by taking short cuts. In this thesis, Assimilation of sounds in English and Chinese is presented and focused. A common example of assimilation in English would be dont be where the /n/ and /t/ in dont are assimilated to /m/ and /p/ by the following /b/, where said naturally in many accents and discourse styles (domp be ). Assimilation in Chinese Putonghua is also used very often, for example, 难免nanmian becomes 难免nammian: when nan is in front of mian，the consonant /n/ will be assimilated into /m/ by the labial consonant /m/ in mian following, so becoming nammian. The structure of this thesis is as follows: the first part is the introduction which gives a brief explanation of the choice of the research topic and the outline of the whole paper. The second part offers a literature review that provides theoretical support for this paper. In the third part of this paper, assimilation of Sounds in Chinese is discussed. In the fourth part of this paper, assimilation of Sounds in English is discussed, the definition and types will be analyzed in detail. Last part draws a conclusion to the whole thesis.2. Literature Review 2.1 Different Concept of Assimilation Assimilation as a professional term in different subject has different concept. The most common and most early used assimilation is biological assimilation which belongs to subject of biology, and other assimilations like cultural assimilation, psychological assimilation, assimilation of sounds in linguistics are also used vey often.Biological assimilation is the combination of two processes to supply animal cells with nutrients. The first is the process of absorbing vitamins, minerals, and other chemicals from food within the gastrointestinal tract. The second process is the chemical alteration of substances in the bloodstream by the liver or cellular secretions. Cultural assimilation belongs to subject of sociology, it is a socio-political response to demographic multi-ethnicity that supports or promotes the assimilation of ethnic minorities into the dominant culture. Cultural assimilation is opposed to affirmative philosophy which recognizes and works to maintain differences, and it is often used with regard to immigrants and various ethnic groups who have settled in a new land. Assimilation in psychology is also called Constructivism, it is the incorporation of new concepts into existing schemes. According to Wikipedia, “it is a theory of knowledge that argues that humans generate knowledge and meaning from an interaction between their experiences and their ideas”. During infancy, it is an interaction between their experiences and their reflexes or behavior-patterns.Assimilation of sounds in linguistics is this thesiss central topic which means a common phonological process by which the phonetics of a speech segment becomes more like that of another segment in a word or at a word boundary. In the following section, it will be detailedly discussed.2.2 Research of Assimilation in LinguisticsAssimilation of sounds in Linguistics is a phonological process, many scholars have touched on it, but western linguisticians may research more deep and early than domestic Scholars. From beginning of the father of modern linguistics Saussure in the early 20th century, there have been an increasing number of western scholars investigating the topic. It is defined by many western phoneticians as Shane, Ladefoged (2006), Roach (2001), Langacker (1973) and many others as a phonological process where there is a change of one sound into another because of the neighbouring sounds. Firstly, Shane explains it is a process in which a segment takes on features from a neighbouring one. A consonant may pick up features from a vowel, a vowel may take on features from a consonant, one consonant may influence another, or one vowel may have an effect on another. This definition is asserted by Victoria Fromkin when she says that “assimilation is a kind of ease of articulation process in which one sound influences the pronunciation of another adjacent or nearby sound”(2004:301). Thus, according to Fromkin, assimilation processes are universal since they permit greater ease of articulation. Ladefoged (2006) says that anticipatory co-articulation is by far the commonest cause of assimilations in English. Anticipatory co-articulation means that a preceding sound takes the feature of the following one as /input/ to imput.On the light of this, assimilation in English is classified differently. Roach (2001), for instance, defines two kinds of assimilation: regressive and progressive. Regressive assimilation occurs when the final consonant changes to become like the initial consonant of the second word, for example:sit down sdaun, that personp:sn, good girlgug:l; but progressive assimilation happens when the final consonant becomes like the preceding consonant in some way as in voicing, for example, catskts, dogsdogz. Assimilation in English is also categorized by place, voice and manner, by place as: smile, snow; by voice as: caps kps,cars k:z,opened opnd; by manner as: lemon ,light /l/; well,dark /l/.Domestic scholars also briefly talked about assimilation when writing their linguistic books, the national famous professor Dai Weidong defines assimilation in his book A New Concise Course in Linguistics for Students of English as “assimilating one sound to another by copying a feature of a sequential phoneme, thus making the two phones similar”(2010:26). Hu Zhuanglin(2006) explains that assimilation is a process by which one sound takes on some or all the characteristics of a neighboring sound, then he mentiones the 2 main types of assimilation :1.Regressive assimilation: If a following sound is influencing a preceding sound, we call it regressive assimilation. 2.Progressive assimilation: If a preceding sound is influencing a following sound, we call it progressive assimilation.Above all, many people have investigated assimilation and get great achievements which are very valuable and helpful to the following generations to investigate, but they just research from a kind of language, paper investigating English sounds together with Chinese sounds is little. So in this thesis, assimilation in both Chinese sounds and English sounds will be discussed.3. Assimilation of Sounds in Chinese3.1 Basic InformationWhen a Chinese person is asked what is assimilation of sounds, he may dont know, but he may naturally use it every day. In Mandarin Chinese no matter vowels or consonants, assimilation phenomenon is very common; in a broad sense, its a kind of phonological rules which has the effect to make phones similar to neighboring phones. The cause of it is to save effort or make the pronunciation of the two dissimilar consonants easier by taking short cuts.In consonants, a good case is that when consonant n acts as“韵尾”, its often assimilated by the following sounds, for example: 申shen明ming申明shem ming人ren品pin 人品rem pin棉mian袍pao棉袍miam pao面mian包bao面包miam baoBesides, vowels in Mandarin Chinese can also be assimilated, for example, A is central, low vowels, when it is preceding of the front vowel I or consonant n, it may be assimilated into front vowel a, such as ai, an; When it is preceding of the back voweluor consonant, it may be assimilated into back vowel a, such as au, a.There is still many other assimilation phenomenon. Such as the change of pronunciation of 啊: 好啊hao a好啊hao wa; 海啊hai a海啊hai ya; 看啊kan a 看啊kan na; 唱啊chang a唱啊chang na; 跳啊tiao a跳啊tiao wa,etc.3.2 TypesAssimilation in Chinese can be classified according to direction, result and so on .According to direction, it can be classified into 2 types as regressive assimilation and progressive assimilation, if a following sound is influencing a preceding sound, it is called regressive assimilation, such as 关门guam men,人品rem pin, and if a preceding sound is influencing a following sound, it is called progressive assimilation, such as来啊lai ya,叫啊jiao wa.According to result, it can be classified into complete assimilation and partial assimilation, when two different phones become fully identical, it is complete assimilation, for example, 难免nam mian，任命rem ming; when one phone become alike or partly identical to anther phone, it is partial assimilation such as 电报diam bao，the consonantn is replaced by m because of the labial consonant b in the following.After reading the article above, everyone whose mother tongue is Chinese may basically know what is assimilation, that is in a word, a speech sound changes and becomes more like another sound which follows it or precedes it. 4. Assimilation of Sounds in English4.1 DefinitionAccording to The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, assimilation in Linguistics can be defined as “The process by which a sound is modified so that it becomes similar or identical to an adjacent or nearby sound. For example, the prefix in- becomes im- in impossible by assimilation to the labial p of possible”. Wikipedia defines assimilation as “a common phonological process by which the phonetics of a speech segment becomes more like that of another segment in a word or at a word boundary”. It also says assimilation can be synchronic being an active process in a language at a given point in time or diachronic being a historical sound change.Through history, many scholars have talked about assimilation, Grove Hudson says it is “the effect of many, and perhaps most, phonological rules is to make phones similar to neighboring phones”(2005:209). Dai Weidong(2010) explains assimilation rule is assimilating one sound to another by “copying”a feature of a sequential phoneme, thus making the two phones similar, he thinks the sound assimilation is actually reflected in the spelling in the most cases. For example, instead of inpossible, the negative form of possible is impossible, as the nsound is assimilated tom. For the same reason, the negative forms of plausible, legal, regular are impausible, illegal, and irregular. Many other persons as Li Mei(2000),Wang Shaojie(2003)define it as a phonological process where there is a change of one sound into another because of the neighbouring sounds. Thus, we can say assimilation refers to the process by which one sound takes on some or all the characteristics of a neighboring sound. It is a phonological term, When a speech sound changes, and becomes more like another sound which follows it or precedes it, this is assimilation. Lets take a look at the English prefix in-, it may have many negative forms such as imIm: impotent, imbalance, impossible, impractical, immature; inIn: indirect, independent, intolerance, insufferable, insufficient; inI: igratitude, iconsiderate, icorrect , icomplete, iconvenient. So we can get the nasal in the prefix in- has the same place of articulation as the following consonant: m before p, b, m; n before t, d, s; before k, g, or in other words: Im / _ bilabial consonants; I / _ velar consonants; In elsewhere. Above mentioned are typical rules on assimilation, there are more rules to be discussed in this paper.4.2 Types4.2.1 Types Classified According to DirectionAccording to direction, assimilation can be classified into 3 types namely regressive assimilation, progressive assimilation and reciprocal or double assimilation.Regressive assimilation: If a following sound is influencing a preceding sound or if a sound changes with reference to a following segment, it is traditionally called regressive assimilation; it is also known as right-to-left, leading, or anticipatory assimilation. Regressive assimilation is leftward assimilation; the phone assimilates to a preceding phone. For example, when news/njuz/ combines with paper/peip / as a word, /z/ is influenced by the voiceless consonant/ p/ in the following and becomes the corresponding voiceless consonant/s/, so pronounced /njuspeip /.Progressive assimilation: If a preceding sound is influencing a following sound or if a sound changes with reference to a preceding segment are traditionally, it is called progressive. It is also known as left-to-right or perseveratory or preservative, lagging or lag assimilation. This is rightward assimilation; the phone assimilation to a following phone. For example, in the abbreviation of it is , its is read /its/, and another example whats is read/wts/Many people find above 2 terms confusing, as they seem to mean the opposite of the intended meaning; a variety of alternative terms have arisen: regressive assimilation is also called right-to-left or leading or anticipatory assimilation, and progressive assimilation is also called left-to-right or perseveratory or preservative, lagging or lag assimilation, but not all of these terms can avoid the problem of the traditional terms.Reciprocal/ double assimilation: sometimes two sounds may influence one another in reciprocal assimilation. When such a change results in a single segment with some of the features of both components, it is known as coalescence or fusion. For example, did you is read /didu/.There are some more terms maybe we should know: sound that changes is called the assimilated sound or the target; sound that causes the change is called the conditioning sound or the trigger; two sounds that have the same place of articulation are called homorganic, so we can say progressive assimilation is composed of Conditioning Sound+Assimilated Sound, and regressive assimilation is composed of Assimilated Sound+Conditioning Sound.4.2.2 Types Classified According to FeatureAccording to features of pronunciation, assimilation can be mainly divided into 3 types: assimilation of place, assimilation of voice, assimilation of manner.Assimilation of place: in this type, successive movement of two different pairs articulators (passive and active) are replaced by one movement of one pair. This is the most familiar, and the more rapid the style of speech, the more frequent such assimilations are likely to be. They are in the majority of cases regressive. The pronunciation of one more /wm m:/,is she/ i/ come under thi