Which linguistic concept involves the convergence of sounds within a word to make them more similar?

The linguistic concept that involves the convergence of sounds within a word to make them more similar is assimilation. This phenomenon occurs when adjacent sounds influence each other, resulting in a change that makes them more alike. For example, in casual speech, the phrase "in Paris" might be pronounced more like "im Paris," where the nasal sound /n/ changes to /m/ to accommodate the following bilabial /p/. Assimilation helps streamline speech and make pronunciation easier by reducing the articulatory effort needed to produce sounds in sequence.

The other concepts mentioned do not describe this specific phenomenon. Backformation refers to the process of creating a new word by removing a suffix from an existing word. Inflection pertains to the modification of a word to express different grammatical categories such as tense, mood, number, or case. Dissociation, while used in some contexts, typically refers to a psychological term rather than a linguistic concept concerning sound changes.