assibilation

Assibilation is the introduction of sibilance to a sound, to produce a sibilant consonant.

For example, there is a sound change currently in progress in Finnish, where a word-final syllable /ti/ preceded by a liquid (or even a long vowel) changes to /si/: kielti → kielsi, or by some speakers sääti → sääsi.

The word "assibilation" itself contains an example of the phenomenon. The classical Latin tio was pronounced as /tio/ (for example, assibilatio was prounounced /asːibilatio/ and attentio /atːentio/). In English, it assibilated to /ʃə/ (i.e., assibilation became /əsɪbɪleɪʃən/) and in Italian to /tsio/ or /dʒio/, as in attenzione and reggio. The process describes a linguistic change in which a consonant followed by /i/ or /e/ becomes a sibilant or fricative with loss of the following /i/ or /e/ (for example, the modern Italian pronunciation of medio as /medʒo/ or /metso/.) The process is probably universal in human languages. There are other interesting, related phenomena--for example piacenza from classical Latin placentia (/plakentia/)--not only assibilation in the last two syllables (in the Italian form), but the replacement of a liquid for a semi-vowel in the first.

See also

• Assimilation (linguistics)
• Palatalization

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