intervocalic voicing of fricatives

[Donald M Lance]

on 6/25/02 1:45 PM, Laurence Horn at laurence.horn at YALE.EDU wrote:

> At 1:29 PM -0500 6/25/02, Donald M Lance wrote:
>> on 6/25/02 12:49 PM, James A. Landau at JJJRLandau at AOL.COM wrote:
>>
>>> In a message dated 6/25/02 8:43:45 AM Eastern Daylight Time,
>>> charles at FREUDE.COM writes:
>>>
>>>> My observation is that in the USA the [second] s in "San Jose" is
>>> essentially always
>>>> voiced, and the s in "El Paso" and names containing "mesa" is never voiced.
>>>> This is probably not related to the placement of the stress, as your
>>>> examples indicate.
>>>
>>> I have a suggestion specific to "Jose/".  In English there are very few
>>> common words that have /os/ (that's supposed to be a long "o" as in "home").
>>> The only ones that come to mind are "gross", "close" (adjective only, the
>>> verb is /kloz/), and "dosido".  "Explosive" (and the phonetician's variant
>>> "plosive") can have either /s/ or /z/.  On the other hand, for /oz/ there is
>>> "bows", "blows", "cozy", "closing", "crows", and so on alphabetically.  Do
>>> you find it surpri/z/ing that "Jose" gets a /z/?
>>>
>> Verner's Law 'mesa' and 'jose' have different stress patterns.  Press W's
>> phonology doesn't follow the penultimate sentence.
>>
>> But Verner's Law doesn't explain the Jeruzalem items in the original query.
>> Some lexicalization involved too.
>>
> Right, but it should be noted that there are MANY speakers who have
> always said "Jo[z]e" but have never said "Jeru[z]alem", so I think
> the stress difference is relevant here for a lot of us (e.g. me).
>
> larry
>
If I use four syllables, it's Je ru sa lem, but if three it's Je ruz lem.

DMLance