"fission" with -zh-?

[Wilson Gray]

On Tue, Mar 15, 2011 at 4:22 PM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu> wrote:
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> Sender: Â  Â  Â  American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster: Â  Â  Â  Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
> Subject: Â  Â  Â Re: "fission" with -zh-?
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> At 12:11 PM -0700 3/15/11, geoffrey nunberg wrote:
>>Listening to some nuclear energy experts talking about Japan on the
>>radio this morning, I was led to wonder whether  "fission" is the
>>only English word in which orthographic [Vssion] can be pronounced
>>with a voiced fricative. When I checked with my graduate students, I
>>was surprised to find that that's the pronunciation used by all but
>>one of them (and the one is from S. Africa). If so, it must be by
>>analogy with "fusion," right?
>>
>>Geoff
>>
>>
> So I've always assumed, as with the shift from penult to ult stress
> in "covert" on the model of "overt". Â Something there is that likes a
> minimal pair. Â (Then there's the pronunciation of "transition" to
> rhyme with "incision"...)
>
> LH
>
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Are speakers of BrE still under the impre[Z]ion that "equation" is
pronounced "equa[S]ion"?

--
-Wilson
-----
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"---a strange complaint
to come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
-Mark Twain

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