"fission" with -zh-?

[Joel S. Berson]

At 3/16/2011 12:12 AM, Laurence Horn wrote:
>At 10:34 PM -0400 3/15/11, Barbara Need wrote:
>>And is identical with fishin'?
>>
>>I remember learning fission and fishin' as a minimal pair in some
>>early linguistics class.
>>
>>Barbara
>
>Based on the contrast between [@] in the former
>and [I] or barred-i in the latter, as in "Rosa's"
>vs. "roses" (from Gleason's Intro to Descriptive
>Linguistics)?  My problem was that I could never
>really believe in contrasts resulting from the
>difference between two unstressed vowels.

I, pretentious moi, believe.  fish-un (mission)
vs. fish-in.  Same for Rosa's vs. roses.  And
thanks for the title -- it's the book I've been
trying for decades to remember, ever since a
graduate school course, to look again at his
minimal pairs.  "light-house keeper" and "light house-keeper", etc.

Joel

Joel


>LH
>
>>Barbara Need
>>Etna, NY
>>
>>On 15 Mar 2011, at 9:37 PM, Joel S. Berson wrote:
>>
>>>Yes, we few but happy and pretentious few.  For
>>>me "fission" is "mission", not "vision", so that
>>>"fusion" ['fyuZn] is two pairs away from "fission".
>>>
>>>Joel
>>>
>>>At 3/15/2011 08:25 PM, Laurence Horn wrote:
>>>>At 4:05 PM -0400 3/15/11, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
>>>>>"Fizhion" is what they've been saying on the news for years and
>>>>>years. I
>>>>>suppose some still say "fission," but they must be a real minority.
>>>>>
>>>>>JL
>>>>
>>>>We're a proud minority, we happy few.  Besides,
>>>>we can pun on "Gone Fission", which those fizhion
>>>>folks can't.
>>>>
>>>>LH
>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>On Tue, Mar 15, 2011 at 3:58 PM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com>
>>>>>wrote:
>>>>>>On Tue, Mar 15, 2011 at 4:22 PM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu
>>>>>>wrote:
>>>>>>>At 12:11 PM -0700 3/15/11, geoffrey nunberg wrote:
>>>>>>>>Listening to some nuclear energy experts talking about Japan on
>>>>>>>>the
>>>>>>>>radio this morning, I was led to wonder whether  "fission" is
>>>>>>>>the
>>>>>>>>only English word in which orthographic [Vssion] can be
>>>>>>>>pronounced
>>>>>>>>with a voiced fricative. When I checked with my graduate
>>>>>>>>students, I
>>>>>>>>was surprised to find that that's the pronunciation used by all
>>>>>>>>but
>>>>>>>>one of them (and the one is from S. Africa). If so, it must be by
>>>>>>>>analogy with "fusion," right?
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>Geoff
>>>>>>>So I've always assumed, as with the shift from penult to ult
>>>>>>>stress
>>>>>>>in "covert" on the model of "overt". Â Something there is that
>>>>>>>likes a
>>>>>>>minimal pair. Â (Then there's the pronunciation of "transition" to
>>>>>>>rhyme with "incision"...)
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>LH
>>>>>>
>>>>>>Are speakers of BrE still under the impre[Z]ion that "equation" is
>>>>>>pronounced "equa[S]ion"?
>>
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>
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