Abstract

Assimilation as a morpho-phonemic process is a product of fast speech. It is productively used by the Yoruba native speakers (just like in every human language) in preference to the underlying forms of the words in the language since native speakers hardly speak in the underlying form. Unlike in the literature where attention is on the assimilation of segments within word boundaries (where segments contiguously occur together), this research paper accounts for cross border assimilation where two vowel segments copy features across an intermediate consonant segment. This research paper is motivated by the fact that the cross-border assimilation is as common as the contiguous assimilation in the speech of the native speakers of the language. This paper, therefore, accounts for the internal structure, the computation, the motivation and the status of the assimilation across segments in Yoruba. The paper establishes that, this type of assimilation is restricted to the environment of the two high vowel sounds in the language. The paper concludes that, the language permits the transference of features between two vowel sounds that are separated by a consonant sound in the Yoruba language.