intrusive schwa

[Laurence Horn]

At 9:21 AM +1000 10/5/99, Prof. Roly Sussex wrote:
>The Irish schwa between /l/ and /m/ is also well known in
>Australia - we have a big Irish population. What is more
>interesting, though, is a tendency for "thrown" to become
>"throwen", similarly "blown" and other verb forms, but
>apparently not "throne". Is this phenomenon known in the
>US, and does anyone have any comments on it? In Australia
>it's clearly non-standard, but it's creeping into use
>in the media.
>
The evidence from "throne" vs. "thrown" suggests that the intrusive schwa
here isn't phonological (the way it would be in fil-um and jew(e)l-uh-ry in
a number of dialects) but morphological.  That is, the participle here is
-en, as in "taken" or (dial.) "spitten", and should probably be represented
orthographically as such: "throwen", "blowen", "flowen", "Cohen"...

Larry