Dissimilation
Encyclopedia : D : DI : DIS : Dissimilation
Dissimilation, in the context of phonology, is a phenomenon whereby similar consonant sounds in a word have a tendency to become different over time, so as to ease pronunciation.
Examples
- English
- */j/ preceded by an alveolar consonant (/t/ or /d/) and followed by /u:/, rather than being pronounced as itself, often has the effect of palatalising the preceding consonant, effectively turning it into the associated affricate. For example, tune /tju:n/ and dune /dju:n/ are realised as [tʃu:n] and [dʒu:n] respectively. This phenomenon is called yod-coalescence''.
- Latin
- *medidies ("noon", "middle of the day") gradually changed into meridies.
- *The suffix -alis also switched to -aris when the root word contained an /l/.
- German
- *What is written "chs" and pronounced [ks] in modern German was originally a sequence of two fricatives (/xs/) that dissimilated. The original pronunciation is found in derived words: sechs ("six") is [zɛks], but sechzehn ("sixteen") is [zɛxʦen]
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