Perceptual and articulatory factors in German fricative assimilation

We present data from an EPG experiment on German fricative assimilation. It has been claimed that fricative sequences other than sibilant clusters do not assimilate due to perceptual constraints. We demonstrate that f#sibilant sequences show in principle the same kind of temporal overlap as sibilant clusters do, but due to the labial constriction dominating the acoustics, this temporal overlap is acoustically and perceptually less salient. Our data further reveal an order asymmetry: sibilant#f behave differently to f#sibilant clusters; there is no evidence in sibilant#f clusters for the labio-dental constriction overlapping the sibilant in our data. We consider perceptual and articulatory accounts of this asymmetry. We also investigate whether lexical stress affects assimilation patterns. To that effect we discuss a new statistical method for analyzing functional data with a mixed model allowing for multiple covariates and crossed randomeffects. We find that primarily stress of the word-final but not the word-initial syllable interacts with assimilation.