Dissimilation
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In
phonology Phonology (formerly also phonemics or phonematics: "phonemics ''n.'' 'obsolescent''1. Any procedure for identifying the phonemes of a language from a corpus of data. 2. (formerly also phonematics) A former synonym for phonology, often pre ...
, particularly within
historical linguistics Historical linguistics, also known as diachronic linguistics, is the scientific study of how languages change over time. It seeks to understand the nature and causes of linguistic change and to trace the evolution of languages. Historical li ...
, dissimilation is a phenomenon whereby similar
consonant In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract, except for the h sound, which is pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract. Examples are and pronou ...
s or
vowel A vowel is a speech sound pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract, forming the nucleus of a syllable. Vowels are one of the two principal classes of speech sounds, the other being the consonant. Vowels vary in quality, in loudness a ...
s in a
word A word is a basic element of language that carries semantics, meaning, can be used on its own, and is uninterruptible. Despite the fact that language speakers often have an intuitive grasp of what a word is, there is no consensus among linguist ...
become less similar or elided. In English, dissimilation is particularly common with
liquid consonants Liquid is a state of matter with a definite volume but no fixed shape. Liquids adapt to the shape of their container and are nearly compressibility, incompressible, maintaining their volume even under pressure. The density of a liquid is usual ...
such as and when they occur in a sequence. The phenomenon is often credited to '' horror aequi'', the principle that language users avoid repetition of identical linguistic structures.


Examples


Dropped initial /r/ in /r..r/ sequence (r-deletion)

When an sound occurs along with another in the middle of a word in rhotic dialects of English, the most weakly-stressed tends to drop out, as in "" for ''berserk,'' "" for ''surprise,'' "" for ''particular'', and "" for ''governor'' – this does not affect the pronunciation of ''government,'' which has only one , but English ''government'' tends to be pronounced "", dropping out the first ''n''. This phenomenon will also not affect the unstressed syllable in words like ''surfer'' or ''brother'' since they come at the end of the word. In English, ''r''-deletion occurs when a syllable is unstressed and may drop out altogether, as in "" for ''deteriorate'' and "" for ''temperature,'' a process called haplology. When the is found in , it may change to . (, ' → ''February,'' which has been explained by phonotactic factors or alternatively by morphological analogy with more common sequences such as ''January''. '' nucular'', which may have arisen through an analogous process) ''r''-deletion is not universally applied in regards to primary and tertiary stress. For example, ''forward'' is typically affected ('), but ''foreword'' and ''Harvard'' are not. While in the case of ''foreword'', its lack of ''r''-deletion may be due to its lower-frequency usage, this inconsistency may also indicate that the process is one still in flux and not yet fully established.


Dissimilation of /l..l/ to /r..l/

An example where a relatively old case of phonetic dissimilation has been artificially undone in the spelling is English ', whose standard pronunciation is (with the r sound) in North-American English, or in RP. It was formerly spelt ''coronel'' and is a borrowing from French , which arose as a result of dissimilation from Italian ."Pronunciation Note" a
Colonel @ Dictionary.Reference.com


Dissimilation of /r..r/ to /l..r/

* Latin > Old French (and the Italian and Sicilian ) which gave rise to the English '.


Causes

There are several hypotheses on the cause of dissimilation. According to John Ohala, listeners are confused by sounds with long-distance acoustic effects. In the case of English , rhoticization spreads across much of the word: in rapid speech, many of the vowels may sound as if they had an ''r''. It may be difficult to tell whether a word has one source of rhoticity or two. When there are two, a listener might wrongly interpret one as an acoustic effect of the other, and so mentally filter it out. This factoring out of coarticulatory effects has been experimentally replicated. For example, Greek () derives from an earlier *. When test subjects are asked to say the * form in casual speech, the aspiration from both consonants pervades both syllables, making the vowels breathy. Listeners hear a single effect, breathy voiced vowels, and attribute it to one rather than both of the consonants, as they assume the breathiness on the other syllable to be a long-distance coarticulatory effect, thus replicating the historical change in the Greek word. If Ohala is correct, one might expect to find dissimilation in other languages with other sounds that frequently cause long-distance effects, such as
nasalization In phonetics, nasalization (or nasalisation in British English) is the production of a sound while the velum is lowered, so that some air escapes through the nose during the production of the sound by the mouth. An archetypal nasal sound is . ...
and pharyngealization.


Types

Dissimilation, like assimilation, may involve a change in pronunciation relative to a segment that is adjacent to the affected segment or at a distance, and may involve a change relative to a preceding or a following segment. As with assimilation, dissimilation is much more common than dissimilation, but unlike assimilation, most dissimilation is triggered by non-contiguous segments. Also, while many kinds of assimilation have the character of a
sound law In historical linguistics, a sound change is a change in the pronunciation of a language. A sound change can involve the replacement of one speech sound (or, more generally, one phonetic feature value) by a different one (called phonetic cha ...
, few dissimilations do; most are in the nature of accidents that befall a particular lexical item.


Anticipatory dissimilation

Anticipatory dissimilation at a distance (by far the most common): *
Latin Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...
* (, i.e. "noon"; also "south") became . Latin "poison" > Italian . This category includes a rare example of a systematic sound law, the dissimilation of aspirates in
Greek Greek may refer to: Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor of all kno ...
and
Sanskrit Sanskrit (; stem form ; nominal singular , ,) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan languages, Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in northwest South Asia after its predecessor languages had Trans-cultural ...
known as
Grassmann's Law Grassmann's law, named after its discoverer Hermann Grassmann, is a dissimilatory phonological process in Ancient Greek and Sanskrit which states that if an Aspiration (phonetics), aspirated consonant is followed by another aspirated consonant ...
: *''thi-thē-mi'' (with a reduplicated prefix) > Greek (), *''phakhu'' > Greek (), *''sekhō'' > *''hekhō'' > Greek (; cf. future *''hekh-s-ō'' > ). Some apparent cases are problematic, as in English "eksetera" for '' etcetera'', which may rather be contamination from the numerous forms in ''eks-'' (or a combination of influences), though the common misspelling "ect." implies dissimilation. Anticipatory dissimilation from a contiguous segment (very rare): * The change from fricative to stop articulation in a sequence of fricatives may belong here: German (as evidenced by the spelling, the was previously a
fricative A fricative is a consonant produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two articulators close together. These may be the lower lip against the upper teeth, in the case of ; the back of the tongue against the soft palate in ...
). In Sanskrit in any original sequence of two
sibilants Sibilants (from 'hissing') are fricative and affricate consonants of higher amplitude and pitch, made by directing a stream of air with the tongue towards the teeth. Examples of sibilants are the consonants at the beginning of the English word ...
the first became a stop (often with further developments): root ''vas-'' , fut. ''vas-sya-'' > ''vatsya''-; *''wiś-s'' (nom.sg.) > *''viťś > *viṭṣ > viṭ'' (final clusters are simplified); *''wiś-su'' locative pl. > *''viṭṣu > vikṣu''. English ''amphitheater'' is very commonly pronounced "" (though this may be explained by
spelling pronunciation A spelling pronunciation is the pronunciation of a word according to its spelling when this differs from a longstanding standard or traditional pronunciation. Words that are spelled with letters that were never pronounced or that were not pronoun ...
). Russian is from Dutch .


Lag dissimilation

Lag dissimilation at a distance (fairly common): * English ''purple'' is in medieval English as ''purpul'' and ''purpure'' (in medieval French ) and comes from classical Latin with dissimilation of to . Latin > Italian . ''Cardamom'' is commonly pronounced ''cardamon''. In Middle English, in some words ending in ''-n'' preceded by a coronal consonant the ''-n'' changed to ''-m'': ''seldom, random, venom''. English ''marble'' is ultimately from Latin . Russian is from Latin . * In Spanish, interchanges between and are common; for a list, see . In Basque, dissimilation is frequent as well. Lag dissimilation from a contiguous segment (very rare): * Latin ("man", acc.) >
Old Spanish Old Spanish (, , ; ), also known as Old Castilian or Medieval Spanish, refers to the varieties of Ibero-Romance spoken predominantly in Castile and environs during the Middle Ages. The earliest, longest, and most famous literary composition in O ...
> ''omre'' > Spanish * Latin ("name", abl.) > ''nomre'' > Spanish * English ''chimney'' (standard) > ''chim(b)ley'' (dialectal) *
Proto-Slavic Proto-Slavic (abbreviated PSl., PS.; also called Common Slavic or Common Slavonic) is the unattested, reconstructed proto-language of all Slavic languages. It represents Slavic speech approximately from the 2nd millennium BC through the 6th ...
> Slovak (vs.
Czech Czech may refer to: * Anything from or related to the Czech Republic, a country in Europe ** Czech language ** Czechs, the people of the area ** Czech culture ** Czech cuisine * One of three mythical brothers, Lech, Czech, and Rus *Czech (surnam ...
) * In Irish, many dialects regularly change the sequence to


Paradigmatic dissimilation

When, through
sound change In historical linguistics, a sound change is a change in the pronunciation of a language. A sound change can involve the replacement of one speech sound (or, more generally, one phonetic feature value) by a different one (called phonetic chan ...
, elements of a grammatical paradigm start to conflate in a way that is not easily remedied through re-wording, the forms may dissimilate. For example, in modern Korean the vowels and are merging for many people in the capital Seoul, and concurrently the second-person pronoun is shifting to to avoid confusion with the first-person pronoun . Similarly, it appears that English '' she'', historically ''heo'', may have acquired its modern ''sh'' form through dissimilation from ''he'', though it is not clear whether the mechanism was idiosyncratic sound change ( palatalization) of ''heo'', or substitution of ''heo'' with the feminine
demonstrative pronoun Demonstratives ( abbreviated ) are words, such as ''this'' and ''that'', used to indicate which entities are being referred to and to distinguish those entities from others. They are typically deictic, their meaning depending on a particular fram ...
''seo''.


See also

*
Assimilation (linguistics) In phonology, assimilation is a sound change in which some phonemes (typically consonants or vowels) change to become more similar to other nearby sounds. This process is common across languages and can happen within a word or between words. Fo ...


References

{{reflist


Sources

* Crowley, Terry. (1997) ''An Introduction to Historical Linguistics.'' 3rd edition. Oxford University Press.
Dissimilation
(''International Encyclopedia of Linguistics'', 2nd ed.) Phonology Sound changes