Jens:
>Just this thing for the minute: How frequent a phoneme is /z/ in English
>outside of endings where it is hyperfrequent?
Would it be rude to call this a dumb question?
Notice how the English plural is written /-s/. That's because the English
plural was historically pronounced [s] once. In other words, in the case
of the plural, just as in my new hybrid theory, [z] is an allophone of [s]
which still occurs in words "colts", "shops" and "monthes".
>And what about /th/ (thorn) which is the ending of ordinals (and used
>to mark the 3sg of the present)?
Irrelevant. Unlike [z], the fricative [T] is inarguably widespread in
English.
Eg: "thick", "thin", "month", "thistle", "thong", "math", "Athena"...
... et cetera ad nauseum ad infinitum.
>How well-founded is the principle that is being invoked here?
Very well, thank you.
>Now, as we go back in time, we have no knowledge for most of the
>individual occurrences of sibilants whether they were earlier voiceless or
>voiced.
Voiceless sibilants are more common than voiced ones and it is unheard
of for a language to have only voiced sibilants without voiceless ones or
to have MORE voiced sibilants than voiceless ones. Your objections are
without basis as usual.
- gLeN
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