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coarticulation
This term is a specialized technical expression used primarily in linguistics and phonetics. It describes the physical reality of speech where the vocal apparatus does not move in discrete, isolated steps, but rather in fluid, overlapping motions. This results in a sound being shaped by its neighbors, such as the way the tongue begins moving toward the position of a following consonant while the current vowel is still being produced.
In academic writing, it is used to explain why the same phoneme can have different allophones depending on its environment. It is distinct from assimilation, which refers to the resulting change in sound; coarticulation refers to the actual physiological process of overlapping articulation.
Meanings
The phenomenon in speech production where the articulation of one sound is influenced by the preceding or following sounds, resulting in the overlapping of phonetic gestures.
The vowel in the word 'ten' is coarticulated with the nasal 'n', causing the vowel to sound slightly different than it would in isolation.