ASSIMILATION

Assimilation

In linguistics, assimilation is a common phonological process by which one sound becomes more like a nearby sound. This can occur either within a word or between words. In rapid speech, for example, "handbag" is often pronounced 1. As in this example, sound segments typically assimilate to a following sound, but they may also assimilate to a preceding one . While assimilation most commonly occurs between immediately adjacent sounds, it may occur between sounds separated by others .

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assimilation

Noun

  1. The act of assimilating or the state of being assimilated.
  2. The metabolic conversion of nutrients into tissue.
  3. The absorption of new ideas into an existing cognitive structure.
  4. A sound change process by which the phonetics of a speech segment becomes more like that of another segment in a word (or at a word boundary), so that a change of phoneme occurs.
  5. The adoption, by a minority group, of the customs and attitudes of the dominant culture.


The above text is a snippet from Wiktionary: assimilation
and as such is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

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