Hungarian Phonology - Assimilation

Assimilation

The overall characteristics of the consonant assimilation in Hungarian are the following:

• Assimilation types are typically regressive, that is the last element of the cluster determines the change.
• In most cases, it works across word boundaries if the sequence of words form an "accentual unity", that is there is no phonetic break between them (and they bear a common phase stress). Typical accentual unities are:
  • attributes and qualified nouns, e.g. hideg tél 'cold winter';
  • adverbs and qualified attributes, e.g. nagyon káros ~ 'very harmful';
  • verbs and their complements, e.g. nagyot dob 's/he throws long toss', vesz belőle 'take some (of it)'.
• There are obligatory, optional and stigmatized types of assimilation.
• The palatal affricates behave like stops in assimilation processes. Therefore they will be treated as stops in this section, including IPA notations and .