//ese//, Suffixe du Francais Contemporain

In this article it will be argued that in contemporary French an underlying suffix //ese// has to be admitted in order to account for the surface (lexical) representations /-ess/ and /-so/ (cf. /delikatese/ delicatesse "delicacy" and /obeisase/ obeissance "obedience"). Several arguments will be put forward to make the claim plausible, most important of which are the distributional argument (/ese/ and /se/ do not occur in the same environment) and the phonological argument (/ess/ and /so/ can both be derived from //ese// by otherwise well established rules).