Word-final velar place assimilation in English

Abstract

In English, word-final alveolar consonants assimilate in place. Additionally, there is recent evidence that assimilation can occur in word-final nasals at all places of articulation (Coleman et al. 2016). Some anecdotal evidence exists that word-final velars can assimilate (Barry 1985), but this has not been substantiated. This study uses the Santa Barbara Corpus of American English (DuBois et al. 2000, 2005) to examine word-final velar consonant variation, which was measured by the F2 transitions in the preceding vowel. Given the present data, word-final velars do not seem to undergo categorical assimilation or gradient coarticulation processes.