intervocalic voicing of fricatives

[Mark A Mandel]

On Tue, 25 Jun 2002, Dale Coye wrote:

#I think I commented a few years ago that Joseph is going the other way-- it
#was always /z/ in the old days, but many young people here in NJ and I've
#heard it from Californians too, now have /s/.   I think Jerusalem may have
#been /z/ too according to some older dictionaries (100 years ago).

I've heard Jeru/z/alem for a long time; I guess I'm used to it as an
alternate. Like Roly, I've noticed Ka/Z/mir appearing more often in the
news reports in recent... hm, months but the past several years as well,
ISTM.

However, I noticed /Z/ many decades ago, if memory serves, in the
eponymous "cashmere" -- maybe even in my grandmother's speech (b. NYC
approx. 1889) -- and remarked on it to myself.

#        I also reported in an AS article a while back on a very complicated
#regional pattern for 'houses'--the noun plural, which can show either /s/ or
#/z/ for both final and medial fricative all over the US.

How does the distribution of the final /s/ in this plural compare with
general final plural /s/?

-- Mark A. Mandel
   Linguist at Large