"fission" with -zh-?

[Geoffrey Nunberg]

Right -- I didn't think of 'rescission'.  My guess is that it was
influenced by the etymologically distinct noun "recision," which the
OED defines as "The action of rescinding, revoking, or retracting
something," whereas 'rescission' is defined as "The action of
revoking, annulling, or repealing a law, decision, agreement, etc."
Hard to believe that anybody could keep these distinct, given their
effective synonymy: Google Books turns up lots of hits for both
"recision of the contract" and "rescission of the contract," though
rather more for the former. The OED cross-references them but doesn't
list them as variants, appropriately.

There are no analogous equivalents in -cision for 'scission' and
'abscission', though you could speculate that given 'recision', they
too could have been reanalyzed as having the same stem and hence as
having a /Z/, following the in-for-a-penny principle of phonological
change. (Wasn't it Leskien who first said that speculations admit of
no exceptions?)

Geoff
>
> From: "Douglas G. Wilson" <douglas at NB.NET>
> Date: March 15, 2011 4:45:26 PM PDT
> Subject: Re: "fission" with -zh-?
> On 3/15/2011 3:11 PM, geoffrey nunberg wrote:
>> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
>> -----------------------
>> Sender:       American Dialect Society<ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>> Poster:       geoffrey nunberg<nunberg at ISCHOOL.BERKELEY.EDU>
>> Subject:      "fission" with -zh-?
>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> 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.
> --
>
> It's not.
>
> MW3 shows "fission", "scission", "abscission", "rescission" with both
> "-sh" and "-zh-" pronunciations. I guess some of these are in line
> with
> the usual pronunciation of "scissors".
>
> Going back to the good old days, the on-line Century dictionary shows
> _only_ "-sh-" pronunciations for "fission" and "scission", but _only_
> "-zh-" pronunciations for "abscission", "rescission" (!).
>
> In between, MW2 shows both for "scission", only "-zh-" for
> "abscission",
> "rescission", only "-sh-" for "fission".
>
> These data would be compatible with "abscission" and "rescission"
> leading "scission" astray with "fission" following later (I'm not
> asserting this must have happened). These are not all everyday words
> and
> I suppose a century ago "fission" may have been as esoteric as
> "scission"or nearly so.
>
> Why the "-z-" sound in "scissor", BTW?
>
> -- Doug Wilson

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