Many English pairs of words have an alternation of voiced and voiceless fricatives. In many cases the words have the same form but belong to different categories. The words with voiceless fricatives are nouns, and those with voiced fricatives are verbs. Here are examples:
advice advise
bath bathe
choice choose
excuse excuse
grief grieve
house house
mouth mouth
relief relieve
strife strive
use use
In the examples the fricatives are the alveolar, the interdental and the labiodental. Two pairs exhibit a vowel alternation: bath/bathe and choice/choose. The vowel before the voiced fricative has a longer duration than the vowel before the voiceless one.
A number of English words can be grouped into pairs with voiced and voiceless fricatives. The fricatives are +anterior. The words with voiced fricatives are the result of stem-final fricative voicing.
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