Exercise 6.5 Transcribe this passage doing as many elisions as you can and including

all the processes that we have seen in the previous lessons too (weak forms, sandhi r,

syllabicity).

When the men appeared at the door brandishing a warrant to search her house, she

didn't think to check that it was a genuine one. It was because she was still half

asleep and couldn't react properly. She had only got back yesterday after a holiday

abroad. The long flight home had been very tiring and she went to bed as soon as she

had organised some of her stuff. She decided to leave most things in the suitcases till

the next day. Then shortly after seven in the morning the doorbell rang, followed by

loud knocking. The men wore dark suits and told Linda thatthey were police detec-

tives, narcotics division. Everything was so unreal. She kept wondering if it was a

dream, a nightmare or some kind of practical joke. But the idea of it being a

game soon left her mind when the ,detectives got to work. They went straight up

to her bedroom and she could hear loud noises as drawers were emptied and

dropped carelessly. One of them remained downstairs and examined her desk. He

said that it wouldn't take them long. She needn't worry. They must be trying to

find drugs if they were in narcotics, but why in her ,house? She'd never dealt with

that kind of stuff, not even as a user, let alone as a dealer. She asked the detective,

but got no coherent answer out of him. 'We have a warrant,' was all shemanaged to

understand once again. She heard a voice upstairs asking the others if they had

checked the suitcases. Linda realised that there must have been some mistake.

Maybe they got the wrong address. She picked the phone up to call the police station

nearest to the house. The detective stopped what he was doing, walked towards her

and grabbed the receiver from her hand, whilst cutting off the call with his other

hand. 'I'm sure you don't need to phone anybody,' he said. It was then that she

became suspicious. Why shouldn't she use the phone? She only meant to call the

station to clarify the situation. He wouldn't let her see the warrant again when

she asked him. They had already shown it to her, hadn't they? How many times

did she want to see it? The man said she should sit down and try to be patient for

a bit longer. Linda did as she was told, whilst an idea dawned on her. This must

be linked to yesterday's mess up with the luggage. She had picked the wrong bag

up, but fortunately she'd noticed before leaving the airport. She'd gone back and

explained to one of the ground staff. They were very relieved to see her. The

owner of the bag had been there before her. He was extremely angry and had

filed his complaint against the airline in rather strong terms. She apologised for

her blunder and since her own luggage was right there, she put it on a trolley and

walked towards the taxi rank. She had been slightly concerned that her foolishness

had upset a fellow passenger so much, but as soon as she arrived back home, she

forgot the whole episode until now. Whose bag had she mistakenly yanked from

the luggage belt? What had it contained that these so-called detectives were looking

for in such a thorough manner? And who were they anyway? Surely not who they

pretended to be.

Lesson 7

,Assimilation is a process by which two (or more) sounds become more similar to each

other. This similarity is achieved by one of the sounds taking characteristics from the

other one. Assimilations may be classified according to the direction in which the

borrowing of characteristics is effected. Thus, for two adjacent sounds, if a sound

takes features from the sound following it we talk about regressive or anticipatory

assimilation since the features 'move' backwards or are anticipated, as it were:

A

<-

B. When a sound takes features from the sound preceding it, we talk about

progressive or perseverative assimilation since the features move forward A ~ B, they

persevere into the following sound.

There is a related process known as coalescence which is often described as a type of

assimilation. In coalescence two sounds merge into one sound which shares character-

istics from the two original ones. In this sense it is a kind ofbi-directional assimilation

(see Coalesence below). . .

Assimilations may also be classified according to the type of feature whIch IS

borrowed. In English most connected speech assimilations involve place of articulation

features, although there are also a few cases of voice assimilations (see Voice as.simila-

lion below).

Place assimilation in English involves alveolar stops which change their place of

articulation to bilabial or velar depending on the surrounding sounds, or alveolar

fricatives which may' change their place of articulation to post-alveolar when followed

by a post-alveolar or palatal consonant. We will study three different types of

place assimilation in English which are classified according to the type of soun~s

which undergo the process: alveolar stops, alveolar fricatives and alveolar syllabiC

nasals.

The alveolar stops

It

d

nl

may become bilabial when followed by bilabial consonants

(fp b

mj)

or they may become velar stops when followed by velars

Uk

gO

without