"ese" suffix

[Prof. R. Sussex]

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


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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

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