On place assimilation in sibilant sequences—Comparing French and English

Two parallel acoustic analyses were performed for French and English sibilant sequences, based on comparably structured read-speech corpora. They comprised all sequences of voiced and voiceless alveolar and postalveolar sibilants that can occur across word boundaries in the two languages, as well as the individual alveolar and postalveolar sibilants, combined with preceding or following labial consonants across word boundaries. The individual sibilants provide references in order to determine type and degree of place assimilation in the sequences. Based on duration and centre-of-gravity measurements that were taken for each sibilant and sibilant sequence, we found clear evidence for place assimilation not only for English, but also for French. In both languages the assimilation manifested itself gradually in the time as well as in the frequency domain. However, while in English assimilation occurred strictly regressively and primarily towards postalveolar, French assimilation was solely towards postalveolar, but in both regressive and progressive directions. Apart from these basic differences, the degree of assimilation in French and English was independent of simultaneous voice assimilation but varied considerably between the individual speakers. Overall, the context-dependent and speaker-specific assimilation patterns match well with previous findings.

► Place assimilations exist in French sibilant sequences beyond “je suis” and “je sais”. ► Like in English, they are overall gradual and include complete assimilations. ► Unlike the regressive English assimilations, they are both regressive and progressive in French. ► However, they are stronger into the regressive than into the progressive direction. ► They occur independently of simultaneous voice assimilations, which were also found for English.