intrusive schwa

[Beverly Flanigan]

Not just older speakers; epenthesis of a vowel to break up a "difficult"
consonant cluster is common and not just dialectal.  I hear 'athelete,
atheletic' all the time, 'filum' somewhat less.  When I was young, I said
'groweth' for 'growth' (technically not a consonant cluster, of course, but
the glide must have induced the intrusive schwa).


At 09:02 AM 10/5/99 -0400, you wrote:
>I've definitely heard the schwa in "fil^m" spoken in New York City (and
>around it), from somewhat older speakers.
>
>Lynne Murphy wrote:
>
>> you also hear the schwa in fil^m in south african english, but i always
>> assumed that was due to non-English-native (Afrikaner and African)
>> influence.
>>
>> lynne
>> --
>>
>> M. Lynne Murphy, Assistant Professor in Linguistics
>> Department of English, Baylor University
>> PO Box 97404, Waco, TX 76798 USA
>> Phone:  254-710-6983     Fax:  254-710-3894
>> http://www.baylor.edu/~M_Lynne_Murphy
>
>Attachment Converted: "c:\eudora\attach\ksetzer.vcf"
>