# Is /z/ really a phoneme in German?



## Meyer Wolfsheim

Hello everyone,

For the past few months I have been studying phonology in German and I came across a very interesting book called "The Phonology of German" by Richard Wiese in which the author (who is a native speaker) makes the claim that /z/ is actually an allophone of /s/ in German where the latter is derived by:

s --> +voice/_V (obviously much more simplified than the one he gives in his book, but nonetheless he argues /z/ really only appears before vowels)

He also argues away supposed minimal pairs like "reisen" and "reissen."

I am no scholar on German or any linguistic topic, but I am curious that if this is the case, then why is /z/ always placed on German consonant charts when it is most likely an allophone easily derivable?


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## Gernot Back

Just think of the minimal pair _
sechs _[zɛks] vs. _Sex _[sɛks]
or
_Muse _[ˈmuːzə] vs. _Muße _['muːsə]


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## Dan2

Alternations between [s ] and [z], as in _Preis _vs _Preise_, suggest that [s ] and [z] _might_ be allophones of the same phoneme, but minimal pairs like the one you cited, _reisen _vs _reissen,_ argue that there really are two separate phonemes (and that _Preis_ has a final [s ] only by the same devoicing process that explains _Rad _[t] vs _Räder _[d]). So it all comes down to how convincing is his "arguing away" of pairs like  _reisen/reissen.
_
(I assume you're talking about standard German German.  Austrian German could be different in this regard.)


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## Dan2

Gernot Back said:


> Just think of the minimal pair
> _sechs _[zɛks] vs. _Sex _[sɛks]


Anyone tempted to comment on whether _Sex_ has [s ] or [z], read this thread first.


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## Meyer Wolfsheim

Wiese states that Germans actually maintain the s --> z rule even in loanwords like "sex" (which he directly references in his claim) and says that the minimal pairs that might exist is

"voicing is unpredictable only in some morpheme-final positions as in reis+en vs reiss+en, where the voicing depends of course on the applicability of Final Devoicing"

which leads me to believe that the contrast is only allophonic largely which UG and typological observations support, as voiced obstruents are marked compared to their voiceless counterparts.  Of course this could be wrong, but are there any real native German words that have a phonological word initial onset of /s/...?


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## Dan2

Meyer Wolfsheim said:


> I am curious that  if this is the case, then why is /z/ always placed on German consonant  charts when it is most likely an allophone easily derivable?


Even if [s ] and [z] were allophones of  the same phoneme, for practical reasons you'd still want both sounds on the charts you usually see, which are used by learners and others wanting to know what sounds occur in the language.  For ex., there's no [z] in Swedish and Norwegian, and speakers of those language need to know how to produce this sound in order to speak standard German German correctly, even if [z] were not a _phoneme_ of the language.


Meyer Wolfsheim said:


> Wiese states that Germans actually maintain the s --> z rule even in loanwords like "sex"


See Gernot's comment above and the thread I referenced.  Many or most Germans do _not _apply the s -> z "rule" in "sex".


Meyer Wolfsheim said:


> and says that the minimal pairs that might exist is
> "voicing is unpredictable only in some morpheme-final positions as in reis+en vs reiss+en, where the voicing depends of course on the applicability of Final Devoicing"


So why does F.D. apply to "reissen" but not to "reisen"?  If that's unpredictable, then we're back to two phonemes.  Are you doing full justice to Wiese's reasoning?


Meyer Wolfsheim said:


> are there any real native German words that have a phonological word initial onset of /s/...?


You mean phonetic [s ]? I believe the claim is "no".  If you look at dialects (like the standard) in which "sechs" has [z], then the only words starting with [s ] are loan words.


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## Hutschi

Meyer Wolfsheim said:


> Wiese states that Germans actually maintain the s --> z rule even in loanwords like "sex" (which he directly references in his claim) ...



Hi, what exactly is this rule and when is it applied?
I do not know this rule.


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## Dan2

Hutschi said:


> Meyer Wolfsheim said:
> 
> 
> 
> Wiese states that Germans actually  maintain the s --> z rule even in loanwords like "sex" (which he  directly references in his claim) ...
> 
> 
> 
> Hi, what exactly is this rule and when is it applied?
> I do not know this rule.
Click to expand...

Perhaps because it doesn't exist.

Apparently, under some analyses of German, there is only an /s/ phoneme (no /z/),  and when speaking you apply a "rule" turning this /s/ into a [z] at the beginning of words.


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## Meyer Wolfsheim

Dan2 said:


> Perhaps because it doesn't exist.
> 
> Apparently, under some analyses of German, there is only an /s/ phoneme (no /z/), and when speaking you apply a "rule" turning this /s/ into a [z] at the beginning of words.


 
The rule does exist (the book and author can be easily found by googling Richard Wiese The Phonology of German), here it is in its full form:

page 176 Underspecification/Open Questions:

(37) s-voicing 

w[ / s/ [-consonantal]
the [+voice] feature of the [-consonantal] spreads to /s/, voicing it and turning it into /z/
w is a prosodic word

I feel this analysis has much more to gain than simply saying /z/ is a full blown phoneme, as it lends a window into UG and markedness, though I am only presenting the argument of another.


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## Dan2

Meyer Wolfsheim said:


> The rule does exist (the book and author  can be easily found by googling Richard Wiese The Phonology of German),  here it is in its full form:


I don't doubt that the rule exists on paper; the question is whether it exists in Hutschi's head. That is, somehow our language is represented in our brain, and there is a long-standing theory that the sound system is organized in terms of a small finite set of "phonemes", with "rules" that account for the much wider (or infinite) set of sounds we actually produce. When you and I say the word "man" we use a nasalized vowel, but it seems reasonable to say that we have no nasal-vowel _phoneme _(as French speakers may), but rather that an unnasalized /æ/ phoneme acquires nasalization when it stands in certain environments, for ex., that of /mæn/.

You are reporting on a theory that hypothesizes that German has no phoneme /z/, and that all spoken occurrences of [z] arise from a general rule.  Until you show us how that rule predicts _reisen _vs_ reißen _(note correct spelling) or the other minimal pairs mentioned by Gernot, we have to be skeptical.


Meyer Wolfsheim said:


> (37) s-voicing
> 
> w[ / s/ [-consonantal]
> the [+voice] feature of the [-consonantal] spreads to /s/, voicing it and turning it into /z/
> w is a prosodic word


As I understand it, this rule says /s/ becomes voiced (stimmhaft), and thus a [z], when it stands before a non-consonant, within a "prosodic word'.  That would account for "sechs", "reisen", "Preise", but what about "reißen", "wissen", "heiße", and thousands of other words of this form, and maybe also "Sex" (if said with [s ])?  (Perhaps the key is in the author's notion of "prosodic word", but you haven't explained to us how that accounts for both [s ]+vowel and [z]+vowel being so common within German words.)

This isn't an attack on Wiese, who may turn out to be right.  Rather you're asking us to accept something you haven't justified.


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## Meyer Wolfsheim

I will need to re-read Wiese's analysis then if I did a bad job in explaining as well as his definition of prosodic word.  However, barring loanwords, how would you explain the distribution of there being no word initial /s/ in German per your theory?


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## berndf

Meyer Wolfsheim said:


> However, barring loanwords, how would you explain the distribution of there being no word initial /s/ in German per your theory?


Historically, /z/ is without a shadow of a doubt an allophone of /s/ used word-initially and  intervocalically except when genimated (/s:/ never became /z:/). The problem is modern German is that "ß" is today pronounced identically to /s/, i.e. "er reißt" and "er reist" today sound the same. When /s/ split into a voiced and an unvoiced allophone, this was not yet the case.

To answer your question: the confusing distribution of [s ] and [z] in Modern German is caused by the merger of two sounds.


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## Hutschi

My problem with the rule was following:

If it is a rule it has to include a condition.
If there is no condition there is no rule.
The given text in your version only includes the process and not the condition as far as I see.

So the condition could be historical, or for special words.
Maybe "Prosodic word" is the condition, but this is a very general condition, I do not understand whether it is a condition at all, especially it seem to include a circle than.


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## Gernot Back

While a native speaker of Bairisch (Austrian + Bavarian dialect) would usually pronounce both original German and loan words from other languages starting with the grapheme <s> with a voiceless [ S], speakers of Franconian dialects are most likely to pronounce them both with a voiced [z]:

I remember my grandmother once asking my mother (both born and raised in Cologne) something like:
_Wat is denn Telefon-Sechs?
_​.. which made us all burst out in laughter.

At the latest when it comes to pronounce a word medial <s> I would consider it substandard not to distiguish phonetically between e.g.
_im Weißen Haus _/ _im weißen Haus_​and
_im Waisenhaus _("in the orphanage")​


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## berndf

Gernot Back said:


> At the latest when it comes to pronounce a word medial <s> I would consider it substandard not to distiguish phonetically between e.g._im Weißen Haus _/ _im weißen Haus_​and_im Waisenhaus _("in the orphanage")​


It should be added that speakers in the Upper-German area (Austria, German speaking part of Switzerland, and the larger part of the German states of Bayern and Baden-Württemberg) don't voice the "s" in "_Waisenhaus_" and usually do not frown upon it even in standard language.

The fact that this remains almost unnoticed by most other Germans, hints that /s/,/z/ are still best regarded as allophones.



Dan2 said:


> You are reporting on a theory that hypothesizes  that German has no phoneme /z/, and that all spoken occurrences of [z]  arise from a general rule.  Until you show us how that rule predicts _reisen _vs_ reißen _(note correct spelling) or the other minimal pairs mentioned by Gernot, we have to be skeptical.


This escaped my attention when I posted #12. I guess #12 answers your comment as well. _ Reisen _is from MHG _rîsen_ and _reißen_ from MHG _rîzen_. Equally, the unvoiced /s/ in _Muße_ originates from a MHG <z>: _muoze_. (The peculiarity of the word _Sex _has been discussed in detail in the thread you quoted in #4 and doesn't need to be explained again, I think.)


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## Dan2

Meyer Wolfsheim said:


> However, barring loanwords, how would you explain the distribution of there being no word initial /s/ in German ...?


As follows: it's simply not the case that every phoneme occurs in every position in a language.  doesn't occur in word-final position in English (and German), but that doesn't mean we have to conclude that /h/ isn't a phoneme and claim that where it _does_ appear it's the result of some _other_ phoneme.

Also, it's not clear that we _should_ bar loanwords, as you suggest.  Consider: In initial position, /p,t,k/ are aspirated in English and unaspirated in French, Spanish, and Italian.  When we borrow words from those languages we _always_ pronounce initial /p,t,k/ as aspirated (most English speakers aren't even capable of a true unaspirated initial /p,t,k/).  So when we see large numbers of "sechs"-with-[z] Germans pronouncing "Sex" with [s ], it suggests that they regard [s ] and [z] as corresponding to different phonemes.[/S]


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## Dan2

berndf said:


> Historically, /z/ *is *without a shadow of a  doubt an allophone of /s/ used word-initially and  intervocalically  except when genimated (/s:/ never became /z:/).


If I can get you to agree to change the "is" I made bold to "was", we will have no argument.
Voiced "th" was once an allophone of voiceless "th" in English; it surely isn't anymore.


berndf said:


> Dan2 said:
> 
> 
> 
> You are reporting on a theory that hypothesizes  that German has no phoneme /z/, and that all spoken occurrences of [z]  arise from a general rule.  Until you show us how that rule predicts _reisen _vs_ reißen _(note correct spelling) or the other minimal pairs mentioned by Gernot, we have to be skeptical.
> 
> 
> 
> This escaped my attention when I posted #12. I guess #12 answers your comment as well. _ Reisen _is from MHG _rîsen_ and _reißen_ from MHG _rîzen_. Equally, the unvoiced /s/ in _Muße_ originates from a MHG <z>: _muoze_.
Click to expand...

No, it explains only the _historical_ facts, which are unknown and irrelevant to most German speakers.  Meyer is clearly working in a framework which asks, how is a speaker's language organized in his/her brain, and more specifically, what is the set of phonemes and how do they map into the sounds actually spoken.  Illiterate Germans (if there are any) say "reißen" with [S ] and "reisen" with [z], knowing neither the history nor the spelling of these words.  Until we see a convincing alternative explanation, we have to assume that /s/ and /z/ are separate  phonemes.


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## berndf

OK, I can accept those rule of the game: Only synchronic arguments allowed.

The criterion of demarcation whether two sounds are allophones or distinct phonemes ultimately isn't the regularity of their distribution but whether or not exchange of the sounds leads to misunderstanding: I tend to view /s/,/z/ as "allophones with some irregularities" because about 1/3 of native speakers do not distinguish phonetically between _reisen _and _reißen _and not between _Masse _and _Maße _and not between between _sechs_ and _Sex_ and communication still doesn't break down; not only among themselves but /s/-/z/ confusions do not normally create misunderstandings between speakers of different regional varieties either. Interestingly, the particularity of accents lacking /z/ is seldom noticed by other speakers while accents lacking /s/ and only having /z/ stick out like a sore thumb.

Because of the <s>/<c>=/s/ merger in French, we have a similar situation in that language. But contrary to German, confusion of [ s ] and [z] usually does create misunderstandings. When we moved to France 20 odd years ago my wife often had to drive to Lausanne and at the Swiss border the border guard would ask her where she was going. As an Austrian she answered /losan/ instead of the correct /lozan/ and the officials regularly misunderstood her understanding _Lucerne _or _au CERN_ (CERN is a large physics lab located on the French-Swiss border). I don't think this mispronunciation could ever produce such drastic misunderstandings with German speakers.

Hence I tend to regard /s/ and /z/ as separate phonemes in French while in German only /s/ is a phoneme and [z] a mere realization variant.


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## Dan2

berndf said:


> The criterion of demarcation whether two sounds are allophones or distinct phonemes ultimately isn't the regularity of their distribution


Agreed.


berndf said:


> but whether or not exchange of the sounds leads to misunderstanding


Right, but I think traditionally the test is for words in isolation, without context.  If I say just "heißer" with [z] or "heiser" with [s ] (to give "reiß/sen" a rest), you will misunderstand me.


berndf said:


> I tend to view /s/,/z/ as "allophones with some irregularities" because about 1/3 of native
> speakers do not distinguish phonetically between _reisen _and _reißen _and not between _Masse _and _Maße _and not between between _sechs _and _Sex _and communication still doesn't break down; not only among themselves but /s/-/z/ confusions do not normally create misunderstandings between speakers of different regional varieties either.


(_Masse/Maße_ is length, not [ s]/[z], right?)  OK; it actually seems reasonable to me that you might want to suggest that some phonemic distinctions are "stronger" than others, and if so, yes, /s/-/z/ seems not to be a strong one in German.  But failure to "normally create misunderstandings" in conversation (i.e., with context) cannot be allowed to be the criterion for "phonemehood" or the whole system breaks down.  For ex., in languages like English and German, with large inventories of vowels, some non-natives never keep all of them phonemically distinct, and yet we are able to converse with them without problem. In the US, non-natives often merge /ʃ/, /θ/ and /ð/ with other phonemes but are understood in context.

With respect to [ s]/[z] again, compare the situation in Spanish.  It's often said that Spanish has an "s" but no "z" sound, but in many dialects [z] occurs in words like "desde". However there are simply no minimal pairs, and no reason to postulate a /z/ phoneme.

So perhaps we can agree on the following.  Spanish has only an /s/ phoneme.  English and French have full-fledged independent /s/ and /z/ phonemes.  Standard Hochdeutsch, by the traditional definitions, has separate /s/ and /z/ phonemes, but their independence is (for historical reasons) not as fully developed as is the case with most pairs of phonemes. And clouding the picture are the Austrian and southern German dialects that truly have only the /s/ phoneme.


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## Hutschi

I found one strange thing:
If I pronounce it "normally" I cannot distinguish between "reisen" and "reißen", but feel they are a little bit different.
But if I pronounce them emphasized, there is clearly a difference, and I can hear it.

I think this means they are stored differently in my brain, and in most cases, they are falling together when pronounced. But this is output, not storage. But if neccessary, I can pronounce them "exxagerated" without thinking about it.

I live in Dresden /Saxxony) but come from a Franconian area (with "itzgründisch" as background dialect).

Example:
Without more context:

  When I say "Ich meine 'reisen', nicht 'reißen'" the difference is reestablished.


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## Dan2

Hutschi said:


> I found one strange thing:
> If I pronounce it "normally" I cannot distinguish between "reisen" and "reißen", but feel they are a little bit different.
> But if I pronounce them emphasized, there is clearly a difference, and I can hear it.
> 
> I think this means they are stored differently in my brain, and in most cases, they are falling together when pronounced.


I don't know anything about your specific dialect, but this is a common situation.  You still have the distinction (in your brain), but if you tend not to make it in speaking, the next generation may not.


filologo111 said:


> 6 solch ein Schmarrn  (abscheuliche Chimäre: "solch ein"=gehobenes Deutsch=>des sag´n die Preissn; Schmarrn=süddeutsch=>des sag´n mia)


preisen/Preissn: Mia habm(?) noch a Minimalpaar!


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## berndf

Dan2 said:


> I don't know anything about your specific dialect,  but this is a common situation.  You still have the distinction (in your  brain), but if you tend not to make it in speaking, the next generation  may not.


In this case, it should rather be a phenomenon of a diglossia. In unaccented pronunciation he is more likely to pronounce it as in dialect and in stressed pronunciation as in standard language.


Dan2 said:


> So perhaps we can agree on the following.  Spanish has only an /s/ phoneme.  English and French have full-fledged independent /s/ and /z/ phonemes.  Standard Hochdeutsch, by the traditional definitions, has separate /s/ and /z/ phonemes, but their independence is (for historical reasons) not as fully developed as is the case with most pairs of phonemes. And clouding the picture are the Austrian and southern German dialects that truly have only the /s/ phoneme.


There is certainly no single, disputable answer but I still prefer to stick by my analysis. The fact that Upper German does not know [z] is in itself no problem for the two-phoneme-view: we could easily postulate two different phoneme systems for the Upper-German and Middle-German standards. What convinces me of the [z]-is-a-mere variant-view is that speaker of Middle or Northern German varieties don't even recognize that Upper German speakers pronounce "so" as [so] and not as [zo:] unless explicitly told to pay attention.

Of course, even phonemically relevant differences between varieties usually do not cause a breakdown of communication but they should be noticed at least. To take another example of an /s/-allophone which merged with another phoneme (/sç/) to form the phoneme /ʃ/: In same varieties /st/ and /sp/ did not become /ʃt/ and /ʃp/ as in standard German. According to your analogy with Spanish, this should even be less significant than the /s/-/z/ distinctions because there are no /st/-/ʃt/ or /sp/-/ʃp/ minimal pairs. Yet, this is a deviation no standard German speaker would ever fail to notice.


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## Resa Reader

I have only little time for the forum at the moment but I have been following this particular thread for some time now.
Without wanting to interfere with the scientific discussion of phonemes and allophones I simply have to make one or two observations myself.

First of all: I'm a 100% Bavarian (from Lower Bavaria originally).
Just three days ago I explained to someone in a PM that Austrians and Bavarians never voice an <s>, be it at the beginning or in the middle of a word. 

I've also followed your saying that we in the south would make no distinction between the word pairs 'reisen' - 'reißen' / 'heiser' and 'heißer' / 'im Waisenhaus' - 'im Weißen Haus'. I disagree.

With Hutschi (who originally is from Franconia as I've just learnt) I'd say that you hear a difference when you pronounce those words aloud.
I still do not voice the* <s>* in heiser/reisen/im Waisenhaus, but I do clearly pronounce the *<ß>* in heißer/reißen/.... differently. It's more like a 'hissing' sound there. It's not without reason that we call the <ß> *'scharfes <s>'* here.

In my French classes students who are from the north often tend to get the pronunciation of the initial <s> wrong and pronounce it as [z] (in words like sont/suis/..) I always tell them to pronounce it as a 'scharfes <s>' but maybe they do not always understand what I mean ....


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## berndf

Resa Reader said:


> I've also followed your saying that we in the south would make no distinction between the word pairs 'reisen' - 'reißen' / 'heiser' and 'heißer' / 'im Waisenhaus' - 'im Weißen Haus'. I disagree.
> 
> With Hutschi (who originally is from Franconia as I've just learnt) I'd say that you hear a difference when you pronounce those words aloud.
> I still do not voice the* <s>* in heiser/reisen/im Waisenhaus, but I do clearly pronounce the *<ß>* in heißer/reißen/.... differently. It's more like a 'hissing' sound there. It's not without reason that we call the <ß> *'scharfes <s>'* here.


Zu einer mögliche fortis/lenis-Opposition bei mittelbayrischem /s/, siehe auch diese Diskussion.


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## Resa Reader

Danke für den Hinweis auf den Thread. Auch wenn ich die sprachwissenschaftliche Diktion nicht mehr so drauf habe, mit der Fortis/Lenis - Unterscheidung könnte ich mich anfreunden.

Ich denke, dass ich die <s>-Laute in etwa so ausspreche wie Sokol.

Hier noch ein paar Beispiele "meiner" Aussprache:

_Preis/Greis/leise/weise/weiß/das Maß/sein/Sonne_/sechs/Sex  > immer
[ S] 

weiße/reißen/heißen/lassen/eine Maß Bier/etc. > immer *[ss]* (weiß nicht genau, wie ich den Laut in Lautschrift ausdrücken soll) 

Ein *[z]* gibt's bei mir nur, wenn ich englisch oder französisch spreche.


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## berndf

Bei Sokols Schreibweise heißt "ss" tatsächlich "langes s". Ich habe noch folgendes zu dem anderen Thread hinzugefügt:


berndf said:


> Noch einen Nachtrag zu Sokols Beschreibung eines  langen "s" im MB: Ich glaube nicht, dass es sich um einen  eigentlichen  Langkonsonanten handelt, so wie es sie beispielsweise im  Italienischen  oder Arabischen gibt. Ich habe einmal eine Beschreibung  gelesen, wonach  bei diesem "fortis s" der Laut abrupter einsetzt und  auch endet.  Dadurch ist das Plateau der Lautstärkekurve länger. Bei  dieser  Beschreibung wirkt der Konsonant schärfer und zugleich länger,  auch  wenn das gesamte Phonem nicht signifikant Länger ist als normales  "s".


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## noula

Meyer Wolfsheim said:


> Hello everyone,
> 
> For the past few months I have been studying phonology in German and I came across a very interesting book called "The Phonology of German" by Richard Wiese in which the author (who is a native speaker) makes the claim that /z/ is actually an allophone of /s/ in German where the latter is derived by:
> 
> s --> +voice/_V (obviously much more simplified than the one he gives in his book, but nonetheless he argues /z/ really only appears before vowels)
> 
> He also argues away supposed minimal pairs like "reisen" and "reissen."
> 
> I am no scholar on German or any linguistic topic, but I am curious that if this is the case, then why is /z/ always placed on German consonant charts when it is most likely an allophone easily derivable?


According to Behaghel 1911:216,


Meyer Wolfsheim said:


> Hello everyone,
> 
> For the past few months I have been studying phonology in German and I came across a very interesting book called "The Phonology of German" by Richard Wiese in which the author (who is a native speaker) makes the claim that /z/ is actually an allophone of /s/ in German where the latter is derived by:
> 
> s --> +voice/_V (obviously much more simplified than the one he gives in his book, but nonetheless he argues /z/ really only appears before vowels)
> 
> He also argues away supposed minimal pairs like "reisen" and "reissen."
> 
> I am no scholar on German or any linguistic topic, but I am curious that if this is the case, then why is /z/ always placed on German consonant charts when it is most likely an allophone easily derivable?





Meyer Wolfsheim said:


> Hello everyone,
> 
> For the past few months I have been studying phonology in German and I came across a very interesting book called "The Phonology of German" by Richard Wiese in which the author (who is a native speaker) makes the claim that /z/ is actually an allophone of /s/ in German where the latter is derived by:
> 
> s --> +voice/_V (obviously much more simplified than the one he gives in his book, but nonetheless he argues /z/ really only appears before vowels)
> 
> He also argues away supposed minimal pairs like "reisen" and "reissen."
> 
> I am no scholar on German or any linguistic topic, but I am curious that if this is the case, then why is /z/ always placed on German consonant charts when it is most likely an allophone easily derivable?


According to Behaghel 1911:217, in the language that is forming the starting point for the High German dialects from the historical period to today, /s/ appears as a spirant corresponding to the /s/ in Romance languages except in environments of another consonant. That would include /s/ in West Central German dialects where except for peripheral varieties no /s/ > /z/ rule ever existed. The rule must have evolved after Rhineland Jews migrated to Poland in the 13th century. Thus the /s/ > /z/ rule is a new development of of the colonial varieties of High German, such as East Central German, Eastern Yiddish and Standard German. What is interesting is that in Eastern Yiddish, the women’s language uses only [z] as an allophone of /s/ word initially whereas the men’s language distinguishes /s/ from /z/ for words from Hebrew that they learn after a life-long study of the Torah when they come of age at Bar Mitzvah.


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## Hutschi

Allophon – Wikipedia


> Abgrenzung zum Phonem​Allophone sind zwei oder mehrere freie oder stellungsbedingte Realisierungen ein und desselben Phonems. Sie berühren nicht den Status des Phonems als solches: Phoneme, die allophone Realisierungen haben, sind solchen ohne Realisierungsvarianten gleichgestellt. Die lautlichen Merkmale, durch welche sich Allophone voneinander unterscheiden, sind nicht bedeutungsunterscheidend, aber solchermaßen, dass sie nicht mehr als Koartikulationseffekte erklärt werden können. Was in der einen Sprache als subphoneme Variante gilt, kann in einer anderen Sprache ein eigenes Phonem sein.



Considering this, it depends:

1- at the* beginning of a word* it is an allophone, and it depends basically on region and context.

In my (more southern) region it is usually /s/ - but sometimes, it is /z/ - especially onomatopoetical: "Summ, summ, summ, Bienchen summ herum".
In the North, as far as I understand, it is mostly /z/  (Typo corrected), this is considered standard. summen – Wiktionary IPA: [ˈzʊmən]

But I do not know a single German word where it changes the meaning.

2. - at *the end of a word *

As far as I understand, due to "Auslautverhärtung"  /z/ does not occure. Exception might be some onomatopoetics.


3.* In the middle*

I know three realisations:
voiced s /z/
unvoiced s /s/
sharp s  =ß /s/

Usually the phonems are /z/ and /s/ - and this is standard usage and used in the North.

In the south
voiced s /z/ and unvoiced s /s/ are allophones, but
unvoiced s /s/ and sharp s /s/ are phonems with different meanings. Sharp s is written "ß", except in Switzerland and Liechtenstein where it is "ss".
 Reisen and reißen/reissen are different in the North.
In the South they often sound the same. But: if you speak extra clear, "ss"="ß" is spoken extra sharp to make the difference clear.


I do not know how to describe it exactly.

Note: "ss" is usually the same like a sharp ß.

In standard language_ ss _and _ß_ and_ s at the word end_ are allophones.

I do not know the status in Austria.

In German the /s/-/z/ contrast is considered as default. At the beginning and at the end of words they are allophones (I did not find exceptions, but there might be some).

In the middle of words they are not really allophones.

What is the name of different phonems with partly overlapping sounds?


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## berndf

noula said:


> According to Behaghel 1911:216,
> 
> 
> According to Behaghel 1911:217, in the language that is forming the starting point for the High German dialects from the historical period to today, /s/ appears as a spirant corresponding to the /s/ in Romance languages except in environments of another consonant. That would include /s/ in West Central German dialects where except for peripheral varieties no /s/ > /z/ rule ever existed. The rule must have evolved after Rhineland Jews migrated to Poland in the 13th century. Thus the /s/ > /z/ rule is a new development of of the colonial varieties of High German, such as East Central German, Eastern Yiddish and Standard German. What is interesting is that in Eastern Yiddish, the women’s language uses only [z] as an allophone of /s/ word initially whereas the men’s language distinguishes /s/ from /z/ for words from Hebrew that they learn after a life-long study of the Torah when they come of age at Bar Mitzvah.


Sorry, I have read the passage in _Otto Behaghel Geschichte der deutschen Sprache 1911_ and all he says about the development of the voiced allophone of /s/ is the following (p.218):
_Im Anlaut und im Inlaut zwischen Vokalen ist s zum Teil tönend geworden: Im größeren Teil des Niederdeutschen, nicht im ganzen; z.B. nicht im Westfälischen und großen Gebieten von Schleswig._​
On pp.216sq he mainly discusses the _s_-_ß_ merger where he describes _ß_ as corresponding to the modern_ s _and the original _s_ being closer to the modern_ sch_ (i.e. the English_ sh_). This corresponds to what I wrote 10 years ago.

What he said about the initial and intervocalic voicing is that the the split starting in the North. And that is plausible, especially because we also find it in Dutch but to this day it hasn't arrived in the south (Upper German dialects).


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## berndf

Hutschi said:


> Allophon – Wikipedia
> 
> 
> Considering this, it depends:
> 
> 1- at the* beginning of a word* it is an allophone, and it depends basically on region and context.
> 
> In my (more southern) region it is usually /s/ - but sometimes, it is /z/ - especially onomatopoetical: "Summ, summ, summ, Bienchen summ herum".
> In the North, as far as I understand, it is mostly /z/  (Typo corrected), this is considered standard. summen – Wiktionary IPA: [ˈzʊmən]
> 
> Bu I do not know a single German word where it changes the meaning.
> 
> 2. - at *the end of a word *
> 
> As fat as I understand, due to "Auslautverhärtung"  /z/ does not occure. Exception might be some onomatopoetics.
> 
> 
> 3.* In the middle*
> 
> I know three realisations:
> voiced s /z/
> unvoiced s /s/
> sharp s  =ß /s/
> 
> Usually the phonems are /z/ and /s/ - and this is standard usage and used in the North.
> 
> In the south
> voiced s /z/ and unvoiced s /s/ are allophones, but
> unvoiced s /s/ and sharp s /s/ are phonems with different meanings. Sharp s is written "ß", except in Switzerland and Liechtenstein where it is "ss".
> Reisen and reißen/reissen are different in the North.
> In the South they often sound the same. But: if you speak extra clear, "ss"="ß" is spoken extra sharp to make the .
> 
> 
> I do not know how to describe it exactly.
> 
> Note: "ss" is usually the same like a sharp ß.
> 
> In standard language_ ss _and _ß_ and_ s at the word end_ are allophones.
> 
> I do not know the status in Austria.
> 
> In German the /s/-/z/ contrast is considered as default. At the beginning and at the end of words they are allophones (I did not find exceptions, but there might be some).
> 
> In the middle of words they are not really allophones.
> 
> What is the name of different phonems with partly overlapping sounds?


In modern German, <ß> does not stand for a separate sound any more. It has become nothing more than a orthographic convention to mark a voiceless /s/ in places you would except <s> to be pronounced /z/ and where spelling it <ss> is impossible because a geminate consonant cannot follow a long vowel or diphthong.

Those are mainly words that originally had the deaffricated <z>, which the <ß> sign originally stood for before that sound merged with the sound of <s>. Basically, the original <s>, which was in between modern <s> and modern <sch>, merged into the sound of <ß> in some positions (like in _Hau_*s*, which in modern pronunciation rhymes with _aus_, which is derived from earlier _uz_) and with <sch> in other positions (like earlier _snel _becoming_ schnell_).

As the [s]-[z] split only applied to <s> and not to <ß>, we now have voiceless /s/ in positions where it is not expected according to the rules of that allophonic split and for this reason alone, <ß> is still needed in modern spelling. In places where the rules would predict a voiceless /s/ anyway, the modern spelling now has <s> or <ss>, as in _aus_ (from earlier _uz_) or _Wasser_ from earlier _wazzer_).


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## Hutschi

Hi Bernd, so you would say "reisen" and "reißen" are spoken actually the same, in the North, too?

I am in doubt.


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## berndf

Hutschi said:


> Hi Bernd, so you would say "reisen" and "reißen" are spoken actually the same, in the North, too?
> 
> I am in doubt.


No I said the opposite: _reisen_ has a voiced and _reißen_ an unvoiced _s_-sound. The reason the <ß> exists is to indicate a voiceless _s_ in _reißen_, where according to the allophonic distribution rules a voiced _s_ would have been expected.

BTW: In Low German the sign is unnecessary because the underlying shift /t/>/ts/>/s(:)/>/s/ never happened and _reißen_ is _riten._



Hutschi said:


> I do not know the status in Austria.


For the situation in Austria, here is an old thread in the German forum discussing this. Repeating this all here would go too far.


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## noula

berndf said:


> Sorry, I have read the passage in _Otto Behaghel Geschichte der deutschen Sprache 1911_ and all he says about the development of the voiced allophone of /s/ is the following (p.218):
> _Im Anlaut und im Inlaut zwischen Vokalen ist s zum Teil tönend geworden: Im größeren Teil des Niederdeutschen, nicht im ganzen; z.B. nicht im Westfälischen und großen Gebieten von Schleswig._​
> On pp.216sq he mainly discusses the _s_-_ß_ merger where he describes _ß_ as corresponding to the modern_ s _and the original _s_ being closer to the modern_ sch_ (i.e. the English_ sh_). This corresponds to what I wrote 10 years ago.
> 
> What he said about the initial and intervocalic voicing is that the the split starting in the North. And that is plausible, especially because we also find it in Dutch but to this day it hasn't arrived in the south (Upper German dialects).


I didn’t say Behaghel formulated the /s/ > /z/ rule on page 217. The passage on page 217 I’m referring to is: “6. Sonst erscheint, abgesehen von der Stellung in der Nachbarschaft von Konsonant, _s_ heute allgemein als ein Spirant, der dem romanischen _s_ entspricht.” Since the whole chapter IX on “Laute” (pp. 119-236) deals with what he calls his Urdeutsch, “d. h. die Sprache, die den Ausgangspunkt für die deutschen Mundarten der geschichtlichen Zeit bildet” (p. 120), Behaghel pinpoints here /s/ as the default in the High German dialects that prevailed before the emergence of the colonial varieties of the East (East Central German, Standard German, Eastern Yiddish) where the /s/ > /z/ rule came into existence. The North adopted the rule when they replaced their Low German varieties of speech with varieties calqued on Standard German.


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## berndf

noula said:


> Behaghel pinpoints here /s/ as the default in the High German dialects that prevailed before the emergence of the colonial varieties of the East (East Central German, Standard German, Eastern Yiddish) where the /s/ > /z/ rule came into existence.


No, he says absolutely nothing about "colonial" varieties and nothing about Yiddish playing any role in it nor did he say that /s/ in older High German dialects was the "default".

He explains that the original German _s_ is *not *like the modern _s_ and* not *like the Romance _s_. He explains that the original German _s_ represented a sound in between [s] and [ʃ]. As evidence for that he noted that the German _s_ is sometimes represented as _š_ (i.e. שׁ) in old Yiddish texts:
_Durch das Jüdisch-deutsche, in dem _ss _als _š _erscheint, vgl. M. H. Jillinek, AzfdA. XXIX, 269._​
This has nothing to do with the /s/-/z/ split. Please don't confuse the German letter z with /z/. They are completely different. In Middle High German, _z_ stood either for /ts/ as in _zit _or for _/s/ _as in _uȥ_ or _waȥȥer. (_ȥ_ is a modern scholarly variant of z to distinguish the two sound z _could stand for. _ȥ _corresponds etymologically to the modern _ß_.)

In Middle High German _hus_ (modern German _Haus_) and _uȥ_ (modern German _aus_) did *not* rhyme. They were both unvoiced but different. This difference does not exist any more and therefore are today both spelled with _s_. This is the merge he is talking about. The /s/-/z/ split has absolutely nothing to do with that. The short passage I quoted above is the only thing he writes about the /s/-/z/ merger. The two pages before are about the s-ȥ-merger, which he explains to have started in the South West, evidenced by texts from Basel and Zurich.


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## Linnets

berndf said:


> _ȥ_ is a modern scholarly variant of z to distinguish the two sound z could stand for. ȥ corresponds etymologically to the modern ß.


Is there a reliable reconstruction of the sound which is transcribed with that special grapheme?


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## berndf

We only know that it is somewhere between /s/ and /ʃ/ and the three-way distinction _s-ß-sch_ was apparently not maintainable and, after the shift of _sch_ from /sx/ via /sç/ to /ʃ/, _s_ merged with _ß_ in some contexts and with sch in others. The theory is that the /s/-/z/ split happened before that merger and that is why etymological inter-vocalic ȥ is not affected by the /s/-/z/ split (as in _reisen_ with /z/ but _reißen_ with /s/).

But it is probably a good idea to assume that the original /s/ was close to the Dutch, Iberian Spanish or Greek /s/, i.e. apical. This form of /s/ is frequent in languages that lack a /s/-/ʃ/ opposition. Especially the Dutch /s/ is a good bet as it split from German before the creation of /ʃ/ in German and the if you listen to Dutch realizations of _sch_, like in _Scheveningen_, some speakers palatalise /sx/ to [sç] and that sometimes sounds very close to [ʃ]. This may give us an idea what has probably happened in German.

In some text books, _s_ is transcribed as [ɕ] and I have also once seen ȥ being transcribed [ɕ] (which makes absolutely no sense). I guess that is only a notational convenience to distinguish the sounds rather than a serious attempt to reconstruct the production.


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## pollohispanizado

berndf said:


> But it is probably a good idea to assume that the original /s/ was close to the Dutch, Iberian Spanish or Greek /s/, i.e. apical. This form of /s/ is frequent in languages that lack a /s/-/ʃ/ opposition.


Not quite German related, but: Old Spanish also had a 3-way /ʃ/-/s̺/-/s/ distinction, but eventually the /ʃ/ backed to /x/ and the /s/ either fronted to /θ/ (in the North) or merged with /s̺/ (in the South and in America). Interestingly enough, Basque still makes this 3-way distinction.


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## Sobakus

Linnets said:


> Is there a reliable reconstruction of the sound which is transcribed with that special grapheme?


What berndf describes as "somewhere between /s/ and /ʃ/" is the sound transcribed with S, corresponding to modern S or SCH. There can be no doubt that it was the retracted S still found in Icelandic and Dutch (and Basque and Spanish), was the S of medieval French and Latin before that, evidently all the way to PIE.

Z~ß was an areal feature that was initially known as "the Gallic Tau", found in Gaulish and later spread through Latin. The strong variant was a very dental or interdental affricate (now German /ts/), the weak variant a very dental (like in French) or interdental fricative (now ß /s/). This exact distribution + variation is still found in some varieties of Sardinian; the variation alone in Venetian (it has no strong/geminate consonants).

The interdental affricate sounds something like this, but the very dental one is much more common. Here's an illustration of the contrast, lost by German, between the retracted and the dental sounds.


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## Red Arrow

berndf said:


> But it is probably a good idea to assume that the original /s/ was close to the Dutch, Iberian Spanish or Greek /s/, i.e. apical. This form of /s/ is frequent in languages that lack a /s/-/ʃ/ opposition. Especially the Dutch /s/ is a good bet as it split from German before the creation of /ʃ/ in German and the if you listen to Dutch realizations of _sch_, like in _Scheveningen_, some speakers palatalise /sx/ to [sç] and that sometimes sounds very close to [ʃ]. This may give us an idea what has probably happened in German.


Some people in the province of Antwerp pronounce sch as [ɕç] or [ʃç]. I can distinguish [ɕ] and [ʃ], but in this cluster, I find it impossible to tell which is which.


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