- Assibilation
In
linguistics , assibilation is the term for asound change resulting in asibilant consonant. It is commonly the final phase ofpalatalization .The word "assibilation" itself contains an example of the phenomenon, being pronounced IPA|/əsɪbɪleɪʃən/. The classical Latin "tio" was pronounced as IPA|/tio/ (for example, "assibilatio" was prounounced IPA|/asːibilatio/ and "attentio" IPA|/atːentio/). However, in
Vulgar Latin it assibilated to IPA|/tsio/, and this can still be seen in Italian: "attenzione". In Frenchlenition gave IPA|/sjə/, which in English then palatalized to the IPA|/ʃə/.For another example, in the history of Finnish, IPA|/ti/ changed to IPA|/si/. The alternation can be seen in dialectal and inflected word-forms: "kielti" vs. "kielsi" "s/he denied"; "vesi" "water", "vetenä" "as water".
Assibilation can also occur outside of palatalization. One example is the replacement of "th" with "s" or "z" characterizing a
French accent of English.ee also
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Assimilation (linguistics)
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