Renormalization in softness assimilation

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

Softness assimilation was once a faithfully kept phonological rule in Russian, but now it is losing its effect due to various linguistic and extra-linguistic factors and has become difficult to be strictly regulated. Softness assimilation is a regressive assimilation that spreads [+palatal] feature of following consonant to preceding consonant in a cluster, which appeared after the loss of reduced vowel. This rule was followed well from Old Russian to the beginning of 19C, with an exception to some consonants. However, softness assimilation is becoming less valid due to an increase in importance of consonant and contact with foreign language. Because of this phenomenon of decreasing softness assimilation, it is classified as an exceptional phonological rule that is difficult to be explained linguistically in modern Russian.
However, softness assimilation is a phonological rule that well reflects the change of phonological tendency from Old Russian to Contemporary Russian. In other words, in Old Russian, in which the feature of preceding consonant was dependent on following vowel, softness or hardness of a consonant was not an inherent feature but a feature decided by following vowel. And even after the loss of reduced vowel, softness or hardness of preceding segment was decided by that of following segment when two consonants were combined. However, as Russian became consonant-oriented, feature of consonant no longer depends on its position, and inherent feature of underlying form is surfaced. Such a change can be explained with the difference between rankings of constraints in each period in Optimality theory.
Before Literary Russian, in which the sharing of feature between segments was important, the constraint IDENT[palatal] was most important. As such, the softness assimilation, which spreads [palatal] feature of following consonant to preceding, was productive. However, as Literary Russian changed from vowel-oriented to consonant-oriented, the inherent feature of consonant became important. Thus, the identical place of articulation came to decide whether the softness assimilation will happen. Therefore, in this period, IDENTC’[place] was the most significant constraint for softness assimilation. Assimilation often occurred only within the clusters consisted of consonants of the same place so that they would not involve any other movements. Later in Contemporary Russian, the inherent feature of consonant is surfaced remarkably, regardless of the environment. Consonants, except for dental, show a tendency to maintain underlying [palatal] feature in surface form. The exception of dental results from the specificities of dental that include an easy movement of tongue, which allows the tongue to approach palatal with ease. Thus, in Contemporary Russian, the constraint IDENTIO that keeps the feature input in output is considered the most important.
These factors are surely not the only ones that influence the softness assimilation. Linguistic factors, such as the manner of articulation of consonants and frontness/non-frontness of preceding/following vowel, and extra-linguistic factors, such as age, level of education or region of speakers can also have huge influence. This is why in Contemporary Russian, the softness assimilation is realized as a phonological rule with many exceptions, not as a coherent one.

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