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From: rte@elmo.lz.att.com (Ralph T. Edwards)
Subject: The story of /Z/ - was acquisition of phonemes from ...
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Date: Thu, 5 Oct 1995 19:00:23 GMT
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There has been some discussion of how English acquired the sound /Z/ as in
vision, measure, and rouge.  Some have suggested borrowing from French,
while I have suggested it first arose natively in words like the first two and
only then could be borrowed.

The data:

Origins of the English Language Joseph M. Williams 1975 p351

Spellings like picchure and isshu for picture and issue appear in the 15th
century.  Spellings like vishion and pleshar for vision and pleasure
appear in the 17th century.  He speculates that the later appearance of
the pronunciation spellings for the /Z/ words may be because there is no
good way to represent the pronunciation.  In any case, the shift has
appeared by the 17th century (the examples are around 1650).

The Oxford Dictinary of English Etymology.

Mirage is 19th century, Rouge is 18th century, Garage is 20th century.
________
Also from OotEL
French is the source of the voiced/voicless
contrast in the spirants, through s/z and f/v contrasts.  Indirectly this
may have opened up holes in the phonological system that made the T/D and
S/Z contrasts possible.

So the sequence is:

1. 11-14th century Engish acquires /z/ and /v/ from French where previously
[s] and [z] were allophones of /s/ and [f] and [v] were allophones of /f/.

2. 14th-17th century through loss of endings and /zj/->/Z/ shift, English
acquires contrasting T/D and S/Z. (/S/ was previously acquired from /sk/)

3. 18th and later English borrows /Z/ in postions other than intervocalically.

The defense rests.

-- 
R.T.Edwards rte@elmo.att.com 908 576-3031
