"fission" with -zh-?

[Barbara Need]

I make a distinction in the final vowels of Rosa's and roses, but not
the final vowels of fisson and fishin' (of course, I also use [Z] in
the former).

Barbara

On 16 Mar 2011, at 1:43 AM, Joel S. Berson wrote:

> At 3/16/2011 12:12 AM, Laurence Horn wrote:
>> At 10:34 PM -0400 3/15/11, Barbara Need wrote:
>>> And is identical with fishin'?
>>>
>>> I remember learning fission and fishin' as a minimal pair in some
>>> early linguistics class.
>>>
>>> Barbara
>>
>> Based on the contrast between [@] in the former
>> and [I] or barred-i in the latter, as in "Rosa's"
>> vs. "roses" (from Gleason's Intro to Descriptive
>> Linguistics)?  My problem was that I could never
>> really believe in contrasts resulting from the
>> difference between two unstressed vowels.
>
> I, pretentious moi, believe.  fish-un (mission)
> vs. fish-in.  Same for Rosa's vs. roses.  And
> thanks for the title -- it's the book I've been
> trying for decades to remember, ever since a
> graduate school course, to look again at his
> minimal pairs.  "light-house keeper" and "light house-keeper", etc.
>
> Joel
>
> Joel
>
>
>> LH
>>
>>> Barbara Need
>>> Etna, NY
>>>
>>> On 15 Mar 2011, at 9:37 PM, Joel S. Berson wrote:
>>>
>>>> Yes, we few but happy and pretentious few.  For
>>>> me "fission" is "mission", not "vision", so that
>>>> "fusion" ['fyuZn] is two pairs away from "fission".
>>>>
>>>> Joel
>>>>
>>>> At 3/15/2011 08:25 PM, Laurence Horn wrote:
>>>>> At 4:05 PM -0400 3/15/11, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
>>>>>> "Fizhion" is what they've been saying on the news for years and
>>>>>> years. I
>>>>>> suppose some still say "fission," but they must be a real
>>>>>> minority.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> JL
>>>>>
>>>>> We're a proud minority, we happy few.  Besides,
>>>>> we can pun on "Gone Fission", which those fizhion
>>>>> folks can't.
>>>>>
>>>>> LH
>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> On Tue, Mar 15, 2011 at 3:58 PM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com>
>>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>>> On Tue, Mar 15, 2011 at 4:22 PM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu
>>>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>>>> 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
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Are speakers of BrE still under the impre[Z]ion that
>>>>>>> "equation" is
>>>>>>> pronounced "equa[S]ion"?

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