Chung, Chin-Wan. (2015). An Aspect of Pali Assimilation. The Linguistic Association of Korea Journal, 23(1), 1-21. This paper observes assimilation patterns in the Pali language and provides an alternative constraint-based analysis of them. The dominant pattern of assimilation in place and manner features is regressive but this pattern is sometimes overridden when an onset consonant is higher than a coda consonant in sonority. The other case is that the result of leftward assimilation creates a coda element that is not preferred in Pali. The leftward assimilation is triggered by a segment with a dorsal, labial, or coronal place of assimilation. This implies that assimilation follows from constraints based on the concepts of positional faithfulness but not based on the asymmetry between morphological constituents such as stems and affixes. It is revealed that the assimilation pattern in Pali provides support for an argument that the place markedness hierarchy is not fixed but is rather only a strong tendency.
