Re: "Preservative" assimilation?

First off, please excuse the long post.

On May 15, 2008, at 2:31 AM, R A Brown wrote:

> Eric Christopherson wrote:
>> Is there such a thing as "preservative assimilation"? I noticed
>> today that a lot of articles on Wikipedia claim so, but IIRC the
>> term is "perseverative". I don't know for sure, though, so I'm not
>> fixing it yet.
>
> It would appear that 'preservative assimilation' or 'perseveratory
> assimilation' 'perservative assimilation' are alternative names for
> what I've always known as _progressive assimilation_, i.e. where
> the first sound influences the second sound. The assimilation
> progresses from 'left to right', so to speak. An obvious and common
> example of this type of assimilation is the English plural which is
> either [s] or [z] after a non-sibilant consonant; whether it is [s]
> or [z] depends upon the _preceding_ consonant.
Right...

>
> _Progressive assimilation_ may thus also be known as _left-to-right
> assimilation_ (on the assumption that the 'normal' way to write is
> from left to right) or 'lag assimilation'.
>
> The opposite, as for example Latin _in_ + 'purus' --> 'impurus',
> was traditionally (and still is by me) known as 'regressive
> assimilation.' Alternative names are 'right-to-left' or
> 'anticipatory.'
>
> It would seem that some people found it tricky to get their heads
> around the terms 'progressive' and 'regressive', understanding them
> with the opposite meanings! Hence alternative terminologies have
> evolved.
Right, I understand the existence of multiple sets of terminology...

>
> The alternative names 'left-to-right' and 'right-to-left' surely
> have the same signification as the older traditional terms. If one
> assumes writing fro left to right, then left-to-right is surely
> progressive and right-to-left is equally surely regressive. Or have
> I missed something here?
What you're missing (I think) is my original thesis - that the word
"preservative" is either a) a typo or b) a word which someone
selected, when they really *meant* another, similar word. (What would
you call that, anyway? It's kind of like the eggcorn phenomenon, but
not quite.)

I believe the semantics of the term are that features of the first
(leftmost) sound *persevere*; the idea of *preservation* doesn't seem
that relevant to me, although I suppose you could make a case that
lag assimilation "preserves" features of the first sound, whereas in
the more common (AFAIK) regressive assimilation, the first sound
loses some of its features. But I think that's a bit of a stretch.

I was hoping someone would check some linguistics literature for me,
so I could make sure. I did check Google Books, and only found three
hits for the phrase "preservative assimilation". Interestingly, two
of them deal with Indian languages. (I might want to get the one
called simply _Sound change_, because it treats sound change in
Indian languages, and that topic intrigues me; especially in the case
of Pali!)

By contrast, "perseverative assimilation" gets 60 hits, so I think
that is likely the correct term.

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