Probal Dasgupta

I begin the story in medias res, with a May 27th Facebook comment by Probal Dasgupta on a posting of mine: — PB > AZ: Speaking of the way one pronounces the acronym “AZ”, I’ve been puzzled by the fact that some function words that end in orthographic s in English (as, is, has) use a /z/ while others (us, this) use an /s/. I’ve failed to find a specialist who is generous with their time to tell me the diachronic sequence that led to this … My puzzlement originated in the fact that a friend of mine, in her Indian English, says “us” with a final /z/, definitely not in keeping with what most speakers of Indian English do. With the help of Elizabeth Closs Traugott — nether of us experts in the phonological history of English or the development of spelling conventions, neither of us able to find an authoritative text or an actual living expert, but both willing to take a shot at some possibly useful speculation — I gave PB some tentative responses. And then came the news from his family…