intervocalic voicing of fricatives

[Dennis R. Preston]

And how can any of this account for the fact that W has got no final
voiced continuants - plurals (e.g., reaches), possessives (e.g., Bin
Laden's), 3rd person indicatives (e.g., begs) or plain old
monomorphemes (e.g., badge). Just listen.

dInIs



>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

--
Dennis R. Preston
Department of Linguistics and Languages
Michigan State University
East Lansing MI 48824-1027 USA
preston at pilot.msu.edu
Office: (517)353-0740
Fax: (517)432-2736