[EDLING:254] Re: phonology question

[Martin Edwardes]

I found this in the Merriam Webster Online:

Main Entry: equa.tion
Pronunciation: i-'kwA-zh&n also -sh&n

I suspect, therefore it may be a dialect pronunciation which has somehow
become regularized. I call in my defence "fission", which sometimes gets
pronounced as "fizh&n", presumably because it keeps bad company with fusion.

Martin Edwardes
http://www.btinternet.com/~martin.edwardes/


-----Original Message-----
From: owner-edling at ccat.sas.upenn.edu
[mailto:owner-edling at ccat.sas.upenn.edu] On Behalf Of Leo VanLier
Sent: 15 July 2004 16:43
To: edling at ccat.sas.upenn.edu
Subject: [EDLING:251] Re: phonology question


edling at ccat.sas.upenn.edu writes:
>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!

A perfect excuse for procrastination (given that I am late with several
papers...)
Here is my guess - I am sure someone will be able to shoot holes in it.

If the verb ends in /d/ (ex.: include), it will always have a voiced
fricative in the derived noun. If the verb ends in /t/ (ex.: equate), the
fricative will be voiced if (and only if) the preceding syllable has
[+approximant/liquid] [+V] - as in [wei], [rei], [lei], or vice versa as in
[er]. Presumably, in syllabic structure terms, this combination is "heavy"
and thus triggers voicing in the following consonant, if that consonant is
the onset of a new syllable
(e-kwei-zjen) - I won't attempt to insert IPA symbols.
It works not only with [ei] but also with [I] as in deride - derision (of
course there is also a vocalic laxing rule in effect here: from [ai] to [I]
- is this the famous tri-syllabic laxing rule?), [u] as in allude-allusion
and [o] as in erode- erosion.

LvL