英语语音同化现象分析.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 文英语语音同化现象分析On Assimilation Of Speech Sounds In English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5月二一一年五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: Assimilation of speech sounds is a common phenomenon in pronunciation of most languages especially when in a rapid speech. It occurs mainly for saving effort and smooth pronunciation, but English phonological assimilation is difficult for Chinese EFL learners to grasp. As there are many similarities between Chinese and English phonological assimilations and Chinese phonological assimilation is easier for learners to grasp, the author first briefly discusses Chinese phonological assimilation, then introduces English phonological assimilation by analyzing its definition and probing into the types from the perspective of direction, result, feature and place of articulation in detail. Understanding assimilation of speech sounds in English can improve the fluency of their spoken English and enhance their ability in listening comprehension.Key words: assimilation; speech sounds; English pronunciation摘要：语音同化在大多数语言的发音中都普遍存在，特别在语速较快时更容易发生,主要是为了省力或发音顺畅，但英语语音同化对英语学习者来说比较难掌握。因为英汉语音同化存在相似处，而汉语语音同化对中国人来说更容易掌握,所以作者先简单论述了汉语语音同化，由此来导入英语中的语音同化现象，然后首先分析了英语语音同化的定义，再分别从同化方向、同化结果、发音特点、发音部位等方面详细探讨了英语语音同化的类型。理解英语语音同化现象有助于提高个人口语流利程度和听力水平。关键词：同化；语音；英语发音CONTENTS1. Introduction.12. Literature Review.12.1 Different Concepts of Assimilation 2.2 Research on Assimilation in Linguistics3. Assimilation of Speech Sounds in Chinese.33.1 Basic Information3.2 Using Chinese Phonological Assimilation to Serve for English4. Assimilation of Speech Sounds in English.54.1 Definition4.2 Types 4.2.1 Types Classified According to Direction4.2.2 Types Classified According to Result4.2.3 Types Classified According to Feature4.2.4 Types Classified According to Place of Articulation5. Significance of Analyzing Assimilation of Speech Sounds in English.106. Conclusion.10Bibliography.12Acknowledgements13On Assimilation of Speech Sounds in English 1. IntroductionConcerning assimilation, different answers are got by scholars of different sciences: From a biologist, its a kind of conversion by the processes of digestion and absorption; according to a sociologist, its the blending or fusing of minority groups into the dominant society; a psychologist may say it is the incorporation of new concepts into existing schemes, and a linguistician will explain its a phonological process by which a sound becomes similar to an adjacent sound (Hu Zhuanglin, 2006). The range of this thesis is limited to assimilation in linguistics. Investigating assimilation of speech sounds in English is helpful for Chinese-speaking students to have a better mastery of English pronunciation, 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. Assimilation in Chinese Putonghua is common, for example, you pronounce 难免 nam mian (not 难免 nan mian) by nature, because the end phone /n/ in nan is assimilated to labial consonant /m/ by the adjacent labial consonant /m/ in mian, so it becomes nam mian. In English, a typical example of assimilation would be dont be (the /n/ and /t/ in dont are assimilated to /m/ and /p/ by the following labial consonant /b/) which said naturally in many accents and discourse styles will become domp be.The structure of this thesis is as follows: Section 1 gives a brief introduction to the research topic and the outline of the whole thesis. Section 2 offers a literature review about different concepts of assimilation in diffferent sciences and research of assimilation in linguistics. Section 3 is discussion of assimilation of speech sounds in Chinese. Section 4 is the central part which analyzes the definition and types of English phonological assimilation in detail. Section 5 tells the significance of analyzing assimilation of speech sounds in English. Last part draws a conclusion to the whole thesis mainly about aims, significance and limitations of the research.2. Literature Review2.1 Different Concepts of Assimilation In terms of assimilation alone, there are many different kinds in different sciences which have been briefly referred to in the introduction. Assimilation of speech sounds is only one kind which is used in linguistics; besides, the most common assimilation may be biological assimilation, cultural assimilation, psychological assimilation and so on. Biological assimilation is well-known to students. As early as in the middle school, they may have learned it in biology books. According to the web encyclopedia Wikipedia, biological assimilation means the combination of two processes to supply animal cells with nutrients. The first process is 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 is also very familiar, and it belongs to sociology in which its a process by which members of an ethnic minority group lose cultural characteristics that distinguish them from the dominant cultural group or take on the cultural characteristics of another group (Mosby, 2009). 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. As Wikipedia said, “Constructivism 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.2.2 Research on Assimilation in LinguisticsStudies of English phonological assimilation are not new. Experts and scholars have done a lot of relevant researches in the definition and types of assimilation of speech sounds in English.From the beginning of early 20th century, there have been an increasing number of western scholars investigating the topic. It is defined by many western phoneticians such as Shane, Ladefoged (2006), Roach (2001), Langacker (1973) 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 of sounds 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. In 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 person p:sn, good girl gug:l; but progressive assimilation happens when the final consonant becomes like the preceding consonant in some way as in voicing, for example, cats kts, dogs dogz. Assimilation in English is also categorized by place, voice and manner, by place such as: smile, snow ; by voice such as: caps kps, cars k:z, liked laikt, opened opnd; by manner such as: lemon (light /l/), well(dark /l/).Domestic scholars also talked about assimilation of speech sounds in English for most time when writing their linguistic books, though some may refer to foreign scholars work. Dai Weidong defines assimilation rule 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) points out that assimilation is a process by which one sound takes on some or all the characteristics of a neighboring sound, then he sorts 2 main types of assimilation: If a following sound is influencing a preceding sound, we call it regressive assimilation, and if a preceding sound is influencing a following sound, we call it progressive assimilation.Thus it can be seen that many people have investigated English phonological assimilation and have got great achievements which were very valuable and helpful for the following generations, but they may in vast majority analyze from the aspect of English phonological assimilation alone. In this paper, analyzing assimilation of speech sounds in English by the way of using Chinese phonological assimilation to introduce English phonological assimilation is used, this may be a good way for Chinese EFL learners to better understand assimilation of speech sounds in English. 3. Assimilation of Speech Sounds in Chinese3.1 Basic InformationThough assimilation of speech sounds in Chinese is not as common as in English, there are many similarities between them, understanding Chinese phonological assimilation is helpful for you to more easily accept knowledge of assimilation of speech sounds in English. When a Chinese is asked what is assimilation of speech sounds, he may not know, but he may use it by nature, for example, he will say the words申明 shem ming instead of shen ming, and say面包 miam bao instead of mian bao especially when in a rapid, casual speech. 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. Assimilation phenomenon exists in both vowels and consonants of Mandarin Chinese. As for consonants, a good case is that when consonant n acts as the ending of a speech sound, 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 bao. Vowels in Mandarin Chinese can also be assimilated, for example, when the central, low vowel A is preceding of the front vowel I or consonant n, it may be assimilated to front vowel a, such as ai, an; When it is preceding of the back vowel u or consonant , it may be assimilated to back vowel a, such as au, a.There are still many other assimilation phenomenons. 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.Generally, assimilation in Chinese can be classified into types according to direction and result.According to direction, it can be mainly classified into two 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).From above, Chinese EFL learners may basically know what is phonological assimilation or assimilation of speech sounds, we can say it is a speech sound changing and becoming more like another sound which follows it or precedes it. 3.2 Using Chinese Phonological Assimilation to Serve for EnglishThe similarities of phonological assimilation between Chinese (native language) and English (target language) can lead to positive tranfer, or we can say learning Chinese phonological assimilation is helpful for students to learn English phonological assimilation. To Chinese EFL learners, Chinese is no doubt the intimatest and most familiar language. If we use some Chinese pronunciation rules to introduce English phonological assimilation, it will be easier for learners to accept; speech sounds is a basic requirement for students to learn English well, but assimilation of speech sounds in English is harder and more abstract in comparison to assimilation in Chinese, students may not easily understand what is assimilation of speech sounds. So firstly using some typical cases of Chinese phonological assimilation and letting students have some basic knowledge of assimilation then drawing into English phonological assimilation may cause students interests and may let them learn English phonological assimilation more quickly. By comparing Chinese phonological assimilation with English phonological assimilation, it is easily to be found that some Chinese phonological assimilation rules can be also applied to English. For example, in Chinese Putonghua, when the alveolar nasal consonant n is affected by the following bilabial sounds p, b and m, the alveolar nasal n may become bilabial nasal m, this rule is similar to cases in English. 4. Assimilation of Speech Sounds in EnglishAnyway, English learners may have a preliminary knowledge of assimilation of speech sounds or phonological assimilation from section 3. In this chapter, assimilation of speech sounds in English is to be discussed, the definition and types of English phonological assimilation is detailedly analyzed.4.1 DefinitionAccording to The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, assimilation in Linguistics is defined as the process by which a sound is modified so that it becomes similar or identical to an adjacent or nearby sound (Morris, 2000). We can take an example, the prefix in- becomes im- in impossible by assimilation to the labial p of possible. Wikipedia describes 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 wrote 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 n sound is assimilated to m. For the same reason, the negative forms of plausible, legal, regular are impausible, illegal, and irregular. Many other people such as Li Mei (2000), Wang Shaojie (2003) state that it is 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 and happens when a speech sound changes, and becomes more like another sound which follows it or precedes it. A process related to assimilation in linguistics is coarticulation. For most time, it can be regarded as synonyms of assimilation. Wikipedia states that coarticulation in its general sense refers to a situation in which a conceptually isolated speech sound is influenced by, and becomes more like, a preceding or following speech sound, and it can be divided into two kinds, if the sound becomes more like the following sound, it is anticipatory coarticulation and equals regressive assimilation, such as the case of lamp lmp, the vowel is labialized by the following labial consonantm; if the sound displays the influence of the preceding sound, it is carryover or perseverative coarticulation and similar to progressive assimilation, such as the case of map mp, the vowel is labialized by the preceding labial consonant m.In English, there are many assimilation rules, Grove Hudson (2005) has concluded four important and common assim