[EDLING:250] Re: phonology question

[sicola at DOLPHIN.UPENN.EDU]

Glad to provide "fun" to someone's day!

The thing with words like Persian and Fusion is that the voicing happens when
the spelling is with SI, not actually the letters TI.  That's what seems to
make it so unique... and befuddling!

Laura


Quoting JED <jedewsua at yahoo.com>:

>     A professor and I had fun working the recently posted question over at
> lunch the other day and we couldn't come up with anything concrete.  Although
> there are plenty
> of voiced "ti"s: Persian, fusion, etc and of course voiceless ones with
> the same vowel as "equation": station, nation. We eventually just said that
> it probably has something to do with the lexical phonology, i.e. the
> derivational morpheme structure.
> That's our thoughts anyway -- thanks for the thinking material!
>
>          Jed Dews
>
> Department of English
>
> University of Alabama
>
>
> sicola at dolphin.upenn.edu wrote:
>
>
> WHY is the 'ti' in "equation" pronounced as a voiced alveopalatal
> fricative, and every other 'tion' I can think of is pronounced as a
> voiceless one? - relation to an odd verb? (equate-equation, but relate-
> relation) Syllable containing [wey] before the 'tion?" I can't think of
> another word with that vowel structure. Historical changes? Other?
>
>
> --
>
>
> 		
> ---------------------------------
> Do you Yahoo!?
> New and Improved Yahoo! Mail - 100MB free storage!


--