Fricative voicing in houses

Tue May 9 19:59:21 UTC 2006

Among speakers of American Black English, the plural of the noun, "house,"
is "hou[z]es." Likewise, the verb, "(to) house," is "hou[z]e." I personally
did not become aware of the validity of the pronunciation of the plural as
"hou[s]es" till perhaps ten years ago. Before then, if ever I noticed that
anyone pronounced "houses" as "hou[s]es," either it didn't register or I
assumed that the speaker was working-class or lower, therefore not a speaker
of standard American White English whose pronunciation I needed to be able
to emulate in formal settings.

FWIW, I had the same problem with BE "through" vs. WE "done," as in BE, "I'm
_through_ VERBing," vs. WE, "I'm _done_ VERBing."

-Wilson

On 5/9/06, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu> wrote:
>
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: Fricative voicing in *houses*
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> >Michael Becker of MIT asked the following question, and I replied (on
> another
> >list I am on);  my reply is below his question.  I said I would
> cross-post the
> >question here.  As usual, if anyone can help Michael, would you please
> reply
> >both to him and to this list?  Thanks!
> >
> >Damien Hall
> >University of Pennsylvania
>
> Nothing on the isogloss for hou[s]es vs. hou[z]es--I'm pretty
> restricted to the latter group, except of course for the former
> pronounciation for "house's".  But something that always struck me
> was the speakers who distinguish "hou[s]ewife" from "hou[z]ewives",
> as a kind of assimilation at a distance.  The latter innovation has
> always struck me as a phonological analogue of its morphological
> counterpart in "sleptwalked".
>
> Larry
>
> >  > ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> >>  Date: Mon, 8 May 2006 09:21:29 -0400
> >  > From: Michael Becker <michael at linguist.umass.edu>
> >>  Subject: fricatives
> >>
> >>
> >>  Do you know anything about the socio distribution of the plural of
> "house",
> >>  i.e who says "hawsiz" and who says "hawziz" (vowel quality doesn't
> matter to
> >>  me)? Any other s-final nouns that do this? And has anybody looked at
> these
> >>  cases systematically?
> >>
> >>
> >>  ----------------------------------------------
> >>  Michael Becker
> >>  Department of Linguistics
> >>  UMass, Amherst
> >>  http://people.umass.edu/mbe/
> >
> >===============================
> >
> >My reply:
> >
> >Dear Michael, dear list,
> >
> >I haven't looked at this systematically, so I don't know literature
> >about anyone
> >who might have;  so (the first part of) what follows is strictly
> >anecdotal, but
> >maybe it will point you in a good direction when you're looking for
> >literature.
> >
> >It has been my impression since arriving here in the States (nearly
> >three years
> >ago) that "hausiz" ~ "hauziz" is one of the components of the difference
> >between  GenAmE (if that exists) and BrE.  Maybe this is a better
> >way around to
> >put it:  I am not aware of any speaker of Standard Southern BrE (my
> >dialect) who
> >says "hausiz" with a /s/.  There are clearly Americans who say it
> >with a /z/, as
> >I do, but I couldn't say where the difference lay.
> >
> >Introspecting about it just now, it seems to me that in my own
> >idiolect *house*
> >>  /hauzIz/ may in fact be a lexical exception.  For me, the plural of
> *mouse*
> >'computer peripheral' is *mouses* /mausIz/.  Clearly, other nouns ending
> in
> >/-Vs/ in the singular don't voice the /s/ in the plural: *face* >
> /feisIz/ not
> >*/feiziz/, etc.  Unfortunately, and equally obviously, the two non-20th-C
> >English words on the exact template of *house* (*louse* and *mouse*
> 'quadruped
> >mammal; vermin*, unless I am missing any) are removed from the equation
> by
> >having irregular plurals.
> >
> >Another direction you might look in is the more general voicing (or
> >not) of /s/
> >or /z/ intervocalically.  Or maybe I am thinking of another possible
> lexical
> >exception:  President Bush (at least;  and if you can take his English as
> an
> >authority) says *citizen* /sItIs at n/ (where /@/ = schwa).  I had
> >never heard that
> >fricative pronounced voiceless before I came to the States.  The *OED*
> lists
> >only /sItIz at n/ as a pronunciation, but notes that it is not certain where
> the
> >fricative in the word came from etymologically, since the history of the
> >English word seems to be
> >
> >Latin reconstructed (non-attested) *civita:ta:num
> >>  Old French citeain, citehain, citeen, citein, citien, citain >
> citeyen,
> >citoyen
> >>  Anglo-French citesein, citezein, sithezein
> >>  Middle Eng citesein, etc.
> >
> >Merriam-Webster notes the pronunciation of the word as
> >
> >/sIt at z@n/ also /-s at n/
> >
> >so presumably Pres. Bush isn't the only one to use that
> >pronunciation;  which is
> >useful, since that might mean it's a more general phenomenon that's
> actually
> >worth investigating!
> >
> >The *OED* notes the suggestion that the /z/ in *citizen* may have arisen
> by
> >analogy with the one in *denizen*, where it *is* etymological.
> >
> >------------------------------------------------------------
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>
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