Three cases of assimilation are reviewed

(assimilation being defined as what happens when one sound becomes

phonetically similar to an adjacent sound), along with a discussion of
the mechanical and biological causes of such processes: (i)
assimilation of voice, (ii) assimilation of place and (iii)
assimilation of manner. Having said that, Roach then moves away from
ideas that are traditionally associated with assimilation like phoneme
change or sounds influencing adjacent sounds, in favour of
coarticulation processes known to have anticipatory and perseverative
effects that expand much further than from just one segment to its
neighbour. Finally, with reference to laboratory findings, Roach
argues that elision is not a separate process from assimilation but
rather an extreme result of coarticulation whereby two sounds are
produced so closely in time to each other that in-between sounds are
inaudible but never completely lost nor deleted as far as production
is concerned. There is indeed strong empirical evidence supporting the
underlying presence of articulatory features pertaining to the
so-called ''missing segment''.
Assimilation is a common phonological process by which the phonetics of a
speech segment becomes more like that of another segment in a word (or at a
word boundary). ...