Syllable and Consonant Assimilation in English

Abstract

The goal of this paper is a straightforward one. That is to demonstrate and give evidence to the proposal that nasal and voicing assimilations and their cognate processes are regulated by syllable structures of the concerned sequences. This approach turns out to be plausible in some respects. First, in the case of nasal assimilation it is possible to describe it in terms of a single rule schema and cope with the difficulties derived from the previous foot-based analyses. Second, for the explanation of voicing agreement, we can offer a phonological account, rejecting the morphological accounts of Mascaró (1987) and others. In this case it proves that reduction parameter is positive in earlier lexical levels to provide a coherent description of voicing assimilation in English