Date: Wed, 11 Sep 1996 17:04:52 -0400

From: "Bethany K. Dumas" dumasb[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]UTK.EDU

Subject: Re: Greasy et al.



On Wed, 11 Sep 1996, Michael Montgomery asked:



We were talking about the "greasy line" the other day in class and the

questions came up of whether the same /s/ vs. /z/ contrast occurs medially

in other words and whether this might be regionally patterned as for

_greasy_. The following words were suggested as possibilities:



visa/Visa. I tend to hear the voiced fricative here in South

Carolina; is the voiceless alternative common in the North? Does

the Romance pronunciation with s influence its English pronunciation

anywhere?



So far as I remember, I have never said or heard the voiced fricative.



Syracuse. Many folks I knew growing up (in Tennessee) and other

Southerners used the voiced fricate here. Network sportscasters

seem all to use the s.



I say /z/.



breezy. I wouldn't have thought there was any variation here, but

I've noticed the pronunciation with s on national weather forecases,

as on the Weather Channel. Is this pronounced with s in the North,

perhaps by analogy with _greasy_?



As a good southerner, I always say /z/.



Good question!



Bethany K. Dumas, J.D., Ph.D. Applied Linguistics, Language & Law

Department of English EMAIL: dumasb[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]utk.edu

415 McClung Tower (423) 974-6965, (423) 974-6926 (FAX)

University of Tennessee Editor, Language in the Judicial Process

Knoxville, TN 37996-0430 USA http://ljp.la.utk.edu