English
English no longer has a productive process of voicing stem-final fricatives when forming noun-verb pairs or plural nouns.
- belief - believe
- life - live
- proof - prove
- strife - strive
- thief - thieve
- ba - bae
- brea - breae
- mou (n.) - mou (vb.)
- shea - sheae
- wrea - wreae
- houe (n.) - houe (vb.)
- ue (n.) - ue (vb.)
Synchronically, the assimilation at morpheme boundaries is still productive, such as in:
- cat + s > cats
- dog + s > do
- miss + ed > mi
- whizz + ed > whi
The voicing alternation found in plural formation is losing ground in the modern language,, and of the alternations listed below many speakers retain only the pattern, which is supported by the orthography. This voicing is a relic of Old English, the unvoiced consonants between voiced vowels were 'colored' with voicing. As the language became more analytic and less inflectional, final vowels/syllables stopped being pronounced. For example, modern knives is a one syllable word instead of a two syllable word, with the vowel 'e' not being pronounced. However, the voicing alternation between and still occurs.
- knife - knives
- leaf - leaves
- wife - wives
- wolf - wolves
The following mutations are optional:
- ba - bas
- mou - mous
- oa - oas
- pa - pas
- you - yous
- houe - houes
Sonorants (/l r w j/) following aspirated fortis plosives (that is, /p t k/ in the onsets of stressed syllables unless preceded by /s/) are devoiced such as in please, crack, twin, and pewter.
Read more about this topic: Consonant Voicing And Devoicing
Famous quotes containing the word english:
“You might sooner get lightning out of incense smoke than true action or passion out of your modern English religion.”
—John Ruskin (1819–1900)
“A blind man will not thank you for a looking-glass.”
—Eighteenth-century English proverb. Collected in Thomas Fuller, Gnomologia (1732)
“The English language is like a broad river on whose bank a few patient anglers are sitting, while, higher up, the stream is being polluted by a string of refuse-barges tipping out their muck.”
—Cyril Connolly (1903–1974)