Re: 1. YAESR

Muke Tever wrote:

> Joe <joe@...> wrote:
>
>> Tim May wrote:
>>
>>> That was what I was thinking.  I don't see any better solution
>>> (although you clearly know more about Welsh than me).  You could cut
>>> down on <ss>s a bit by writing 's and plural -s as <s> even when
>>> they're phonetically [s]; e.g. <cats> rather than <catss>.  It's
>>> underlyingly /z/ anyway, IIRC.
>>
>>
>> Or possibly underlyingly /s/.  I can't imagine an [s] occuring after a
>> voiced consonant.
>
>
> But there *is* [s] after voiced consonants: e.g., |fence| (and vowels,
> |loss|).
> Given that:
>
> 1)  [s] can appear after voiced sounds (fence, loss)
> 2)  morpheme |s| is /z/ after voiced sounds (fens, laws)
> 3) [z] can't normally appear after unvoiced sounds (heat-zone et al.
> maybe)
> 4) morpheme |s| is /s/ after unvoiced sounds
>
> strongly suggests morpheme |s| to be /z/.

Fair enough., I think that the distinction arose from the mass borrowing
period of Middle English.