"ese" suffix

[Dennis R. Preston]

>When Dubya is in his best rhetorical mode, all his final voiced
>continuants become voiceless.

dInIs (happy to be voiceless in his final segment from birth)





>I have been wondering from afar if there is a tendency for final
>devoicing of voiced obstruents in American English - or at least of
>final -s.
>
>Certainly plurals and genitives seem to do this in some cases with
>some speakers: so McDonald's is sometimes /-ts/, with retrogressive
>assimilation of (de-)voicing. It may be morphologically conditioned:
>I have heard Chinese as /-s/, but not cheese as /-s/.
>
>Roly Sussex
>
>
>--
>
>Roly Sussex
>Professor of Applied Language Studies
>Department of French, German, Russian, Spanish and Applied Linguistics
>School of Languages and Comparative Cultural Studies
>The University of Queensland
>Brisbane
>Queensland 4072
>AUSTRALIA
>
>Office: Greenwood 434 (Building 32)
>Phone:  +61 7 3365 6896
>Fax:    +61 7 3365 6799
>Email:  sussex at uq.edu.au
>Web:    http://www.arts.uq.edu.au/slccs/profiles/sussex.html
>School's website:
>        http://www.arts.uq.edu.au/slccs/
>Applied linguistics website:
>        http://www.uq.edu.au/slccs/AppliedLing/
>
>Language Talkback ABC radio:
>Web:    http://www.cltr.uq.edu.au/languagetalkback/
>Audio:  from    http://www.abc.net.au/darwin/
>                http://www.abc.net.au/adelaide/
>                http://www.abc.net.au/hobart/
>
>**********************************************************

--
Dennis R. Preston
Professor of Linguistics
Department of Linguistics & Germanic, Slavic,
      Asian & African Languages
Michigan State University
East Lansing, MI 48824-1027
e-mail: preston at msu.edu
phone: (517) 353-9290