# Final "s" in English



## Testing1234567

Why is the "s" in "us" pronounced as /s/ but in "as" pronounced as /z/?


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## Nino83

I'm not sure of what I'm saying (so wait for some expert in etymology and history of the English language).

_Us_ derives from the Old English _us_ while _as_ from the Old English _alswa_, so probably (?) that /s/ was just pronounced /z/ (but the word _also < eallswa_ is pronounced with an /s/ so this explanation is not convincing).
Another possible explanation is that in English personal pronouns are always at the end of a prosodic unit, while the word _as_ is often placed before personal pronouns, that in English (except _he/she_) begin with vowel or voiced consonant, or before the definite and indefinite articles.
These are only speculations.


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## merquiades

/s/ bus, cuss, fuss, Gus, puss
/z/ does
/s/ ass, bass, gas, mass, pass
/z/ as, has
/s/ kiss, miss
/z/ is, his

Having gone through the mental list, it seems to me that words with "meaning" are with /s/, those that are purely grammatical (conjuctions, auxiliary verbs) have /z/.


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## Testing1234567

merquiades said:


> /s/ bus, cuss, fuss, Gus, puss
> /z/ does
> /s/ ass, bass, gas, mass, pass
> /z/ as, has
> 
> Having gone through the mental list, it seems to me that words with "meaning" are with /s/, those that are purely grammatical (conjuctions, auxiliary verbs) have /z/.


It seems to me instead that "ss" is pronounced as /s/ while "s" is pronounced as /z/, in the word-final position.


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## merquiades

Testing1234567 said:


> It seems to me instead that "ss" is pronounced as /s/ while "s" is pronounced as /z/, in the word-final position.


I have learned never to rely on spelling in English just sound.  Anything is possible in written English.  Otherwise the s, ss would be logical:  buss, uss.  But there are so many instances when it is just the opposite.  Desert, dessert, etc.


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## bearded

merquiades said:


> Having gone through the mental list, it seems to me that words with "meaning" are with /s/, those that are purely grammatical (conjuctions, auxiliary verbs) have /z/.


Do you only refer to monosyllables?  Otherwise, how do you pronounce the final s  in _houses..?_


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## Testing1234567

bearded man said:


> Do you only refer to monosyllables?  Otherwise, how do you pronounce the final s  in _houses..?_


Unequivocally the plural suffix -(e)s and the third-person-singular-present suffix -(e)s are pronounced /z/, including "is" /iz/.


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## Nino83

Testing1234567 said:


> It seems to me instead that "ss" is pronounced as /s/ while "s" is pronounced as /z/, in the word-final position.



But _gas_ and _bus_ are spelled with a single /s/.

Probably because grammatical words are in unstressed position while meaning words are at the end of prosodic unit, so after them there is a pause.

_I got on the bu*s*_ | _a*s* you know_ | _but I forgot _|_ to punch the ticket_ |
_Really?_ | _How i_*s*_ it possible?_ |



bearded man said:


> Do you only refer to monosyllables?  Otherwise, how do you pronounce the final s  in _houses..?_



When the /s/ comes after a voiced consonant of after a vowel, it is pronounced /z/, after unvoiced consonants it is pronounced /s/.
_works, loves, catches_ > wɜːk*s* lʌv*z* kæʧ*ɨz*, so in _houses_ it is pronounced /ɨz/.


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## bearded

Nino83 said:


> When the /s/ comes after a voiced consonant of after a vowel, it is pronounced /z/, after unvoiced consonants it is pronounced /s/.
> _works, loves, catches_ > wɜːk*s* lʌv*z* kæʧ*ɨz*, so in _houses_ it is pronounced /ɨz/.


Yes, I know that rule.  I was only objecting to merquiades' statement ''words with meaning are with /s/''.


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## Nino83

bearded man said:


> Yes, I know that rule.  I was only objecting to merquiades' statement ''words with meaning are with /s/''.



Ah, ok. 
It seems that merquiades (correct me if I misunderstood) was referring to those nouns ending with an /s/ in the singular.


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## merquiades

bearded man said:


> Do you only refer to monosyllables?  Otherwise, how do you pronounce the final s  in _houses..?_


I was referring to one syllable words with short vowels ending in /s/ or /z/.
Not multisyllabic plurals in /z/


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## Nino83

About _us_, it is used in a similar position, i.e after the verb.  

_He gave u_*s* | _the book_ is placed at the end of the prosodic unit while _He ha*s* got | a new car_ is placed in an unstressed pretonic position, inside the prosodic unit, so, probably, the /s/ assimilates partially with the following consonant/vowel.


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## merquiades

Nino83 said:


> About _us_, it is used in a similar position, i.e after the verb.
> 
> _He gave u_*s* | _the book_ is placed at the end of the prosodic unit while _He ha*s* got | a new car_ is placed in an unstressed pretonic position, inside the prosodic unit, so, probably, the /s/ assimilates partially with the following consonant/vowel.


Good point.  The final -s in _us_ seems to assimilate back and forth depending on what is following, and can even have an intermediate pronunciation.  "Give uz the book" "He gave ussa book" "GIVE it to us/uz!"  "Give it to USS!"  Perhaps native speakers pay little attention to the pronunciation of the final -s which is why it was never standardized.


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## Sobakus

I remember reading that during the Early Middle English period the voiceless and voiced fricatives split (ostensibly under French influence), wherein all grammatical monosyllables had their fricatives voiced. It's not just /s-z/, it's /θ-ð/ and /f-v/ (with the necessary exception of _off)_ as well. This looks like simple untstressed lenition, same goes for the plural and 3p.sg. markers (a later development).


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## berndf

This doesn't explain why it is both _of_ and _off_ and not _*ov_ and _off_ and why _us_ is unvoiced and _is_ voiced.


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## Scholiast

Greetings

I fear there is no single or simple explanation for the inconsistency here, and at the risk (no, in the certainty) of complicating things further:

(1) In some English dialects (Highland Scots, some Welsh and Irish accents) one hears "as", "is" and "has" with an unvoiced /s/. And in emphatic contexts ("He _has_ to do this"), even RP speakers will sometimes pronounce "has" this way too.

(2) Some words, mediated from Latin by Norman French ("cousin" > _consanguineus_, "cause" > _causa_), have an intervocalic voiced /z/ presumably because the French did already (and with the last example, so does Italian, _cosa_).

(3) There are other monosyllabic written forms which show equal inconsistency: "hose", "pose" "rose", (with /z/), but "dose", "close" [adj.] (with /s/), "rouse" (/z/) but "louse" and "mouse" (/s/), "ease" (/z/) but "lease" (/s/) and these examples could surely be multiplied.

(4) Then there are words such as "use", which are homographic, but whose function (in this instance, noun or verb) is determined by whether /z/ or /s/ is pronounced.

No doubt some of these oddities can be explained by the words' individual lexical histories. But if there is a general rule, it must be one with so many exceptions as to be hardly useful.

Σ


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## berndf

Scholiast said:


> No doubt some of these oddities can be explained by the words' individual lexical histories. But if there is a general rule, it must be one with so many exceptions as to be hardly useful.


That's how I see it as well. To make things worse, since the phonological development happened before fixing of the spelling, modern spellings are not always etymologically correct. E.g. the noun _life _and the adjective _live _appear similar in form but only the adjective had originally an intervocalic /f/: The noun is from the OE nominative _lif _(i.e. the modern _-e_ is unetymological) whereas the adjective is derived from the OE dative of the noun (_on life > alive > live_).


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## Scholiast

Greetings again

Thanks, berndf, for your learned ("learnèd", that is!) agreement. After posting #16 I thought also of "lose" (vb. - /z/) and "loose" (vb. & adj. - /s/), cognate from PIE _*leu-_ (Gk λύειν), differentiated of course both in orthography and pronunciation, but in writing it is, irrationally, the doubled -_oo_- that indicates the difference.

Σ

Edit: and another oddity: "mousy" (/s/) but "lousy" (/z/); whereas "house" (vb)/"house" (noun) corresponds with "use" (vb)/"use" (noun) in its differentiation.


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## Nino83

Hi, Scholiast, Bernd.
You're speaking of intervocalic /s/ within a single word, while it seems to me that testing was asking why the final written /s/ in some monosyllabic words is pronounced /s/ and in other ones it is pronounced /z/.


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## Scholiast

Ciao Nino83


Nino83 said:


> Hi, Scholiast, Bernd.
> You're speaking of intervocalic /s/ within a single words, while it seems to me that testing was asking why the final /s/ in some monosyllabic words is pronounced /s/ and in other ones it is pronounced /z/.


Take out (2) from the list...


Scholiast said:


> (1) In some English dialects (Highland Scots, some Welsh and Irish accents) one hears "as", "is" and "has" with an unvoiced /s/. And in emphatic contexts ("He _has_ to do this"), even RP speakers will sometimes pronounce "has" this way too.
> 
> *(2) Some words, mediated from Latin by Norman French ("cousin" > consanguineus, "cause" > causa), have an intervocalic voiced /z/ presumably because the French did already (and with the last example, so does Italian, cosa). *
> 
> (3) There are other monosyllabic written forms which show equal inconsistency: "hose", "pose" "rose", (with /z/), but "dose", "close" [adj.] (with /s/), "rouse" (/z/) but "louse" and "mouse" (/s/), "ease" (/z/) but "lease" (/s/) and these examples could surely be multiplied.
> 
> (4) Then there are words such as "use", which are homographic, but whose function (in this instance, noun or verb) is determined by whether /z/ or /s/ is pronounced.



...and the point stands. Cf. also my later #18.

Σ


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## berndf

Nino83 said:


> Hi, Scholiast, Bernd.
> You're speaking of intervocalic /s/ within a single word, while it seems to me that testing was asking why the final written /s/ in some monosyllabic words is pronounced /s/ and in other ones it is pronounced /z/.


Final voiced fricatives are non-native in English. The standard explanation for their existence is a lost vowel, usually indicated in writing by a mute <e>. We are concentrating on "exceptions", i.e. on cases where this general heuristic fails.


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## gburtonio

Scholiast said:


> (1) In some English dialects (Highland Scots, some Welsh and Irish accents) one hears "as", "is" and "has" with an unvoiced /s/. And in emphatic contexts ("He _has_ to do this"), even RP speakers will sometimes pronounce "has" this way too.



I'm not convinced this is significant. I (RP speaker) pronounce 'has' with a final /s/ before 'to do this', but I do this in any context, not just an emphatic one. It seems to me to be a case of assimilation – the fortis plosive /t/ in 'to' influencing the final /z/ in 'has', so that it becomes /s/ . Conversely, I don't think an RP speaker would pronounce 'has' with /s/ in the emphatic phrases 'He _has_ been there before' or 'It _has_ started to rain' – it would remain /z/. Also, in the short answer form 'Yes, he has' (e.g. in response to the question 'Has he been there before') would always be with /z/.


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## Scholiast

Greetings


gburtonio said:


> ...I (RP speaker) pronounce 'has' with a final /s/ before 'to do this', but I do this in any context, not just an emphatic one. It seems to me to be a case of assimilation – the fortis plosive /t/ in 'to' influencing the final /z/ in 'has', so that it becomes /s/ . Conversely, I don't think an RP speaker would pronounce 'has' with /s/ in the emphatic phrases 'He _has_ been there before' or 'It _has_ started to rain' – it would remain /z/. Also, in the short answer form 'Yes, he has' (e.g. in response to the question 'Has he been there before') would always be with /z/.


Granted. I was premature. "He _has _been there..." (emphatic) elicits /z/, even before most unvoiced consonants. "He _has_ posted the letter".
Perhaps "He _has_ to..." is then just another of the innumerable "exceptions" which prove that there is no satisfactory rule.
Σ

Edit: But "It's started to rain" would always be "It'/s/ started to rain", would it not?


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## Sobakus

berndf said:


> This doesn't explain why it is both _of_ and _off_ and not _*ov_ and _off_ and why _us_ is unvoiced and _is_ voiced.


Erm, the difference between NE _of_ and _off_ is in the voicing – the second one in all likeliness had double /f/ at the time of the split, which remained voiceless in lenis position. The reason for all the cases of voiced in verbs/voiceless in nouns and adjectives (*Scholiasts*'s #3,4) is no secret – verbal endings had caused the voicing, while the spelling is unetymological and simply indicates vowel length. _Lease_ comes from French _laisser_, so, again, the double consonant didn't voice. Neither _mouse_ nor _louse_ had an ending since PGmc. – the reason for the current spelling is unclear. For _us_, one explanation I can come up with is the Norse _oss_ – and seeing as ON pronouns were outright borrowed into English, this seems quite plausible. Another possibility is pronouns being more often stressed than prepositions – but I can't say if they are and by how much without statistics.


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## berndf

Sobakus said:


> Erm, the difference between NE _of_ and _off_ is in the voicing


The question was: Why isn't _of _systematically voiced (as one would expect, if you explanation were sufficient) and not only in assimilations (i.e. in the sequence _of the_). It is undisputed that _off_ is always unvoiced because the _f_ was originally long.


Sobakus said:


> _Lease_ comes from French _laisser_, so, again, the double consonant didn't voice.


That is obviously irrelevant. _Lease _follows the same paradigm as many other pairs: _s_ is voiced in the verb but not in the noun. (see below)


Sobakus said:


> Neither _mouse_ nor _louse_ had an ending since PGmc.


Exactly. Therefore one would expect the singular to be unvoiced and the plural to be voiced (as it is in German). But why is it exactly the other way round in English?


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## Scholiast

Greetings all round


berndf said:


> _Lease _follows the same paradigm as many other pairs: _s_ is voiced in the verb but not in the noun.


Sorry, berndf, not this time: both noun and verb "lease" have an unvoiced /s/.

And as a footnote to my posts ## 18 and 23, in emphatic contexts, the v in "they _have_ to" may be unvoiced as well.

Σ


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## berndf

Scholiast said:


> Sorry, berndf, not this time: both noun and verb "lease" have an unvoiced /s/.


Oops, right.  _To lease _[li:z] (=_to glean_) is a different verb with a different etymology. My bad.


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## Sobakus

berndf said:


> The question was: Why isn't _of _systematically voiced (as one would expect, if you explanation were sufficient) and not only in assimilations (i.e. in the sequence _of the_). It is undisputed that _off_ is always unvoiced because the _f_ was originally long.


_Of_ is systematically voiced in English, berndf. The only context where it's fully devoiced I can think of is before another [f] and possibly [θ] and  in some accents – it stays partially voiced before voiceless stops in careful speech. Likewise, _off_ is never voiced. Both facts are fundamental for their distinction.


> Exactly. Therefore one would expect the singular to be unvoiced and the plural to be voiced (as it is in German). But why is it exactly the other way round in English?


It's not. It's /s/ in both singular and plural of both words. The plural is unvoiced because the vowel in it had been lost well before the split.

If you aren't willing to take my word for it, check any dictionary.


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## berndf

@Sobakus: You are of course right on both counts. Dunno what I was thinking at the time.... Sorry.


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