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[Laurence Horn]

At 10:53 PM -0400 6/26/02, Scott Sadowsky wrote:
>On 6/26/2002 22:38, Dale Coye wrote the following:
>
>>Bible names maintain the schwa-- Solomon, Simeon, Gideon,  except for
>>Lebanon (though Lebanon, NY in Madison Co. again shows schwa for older
>>speakers).
>
>FWIW, Mt. Lebanon, PA is pronounced ['lEb at nIn] or ['lEb at n@n] by the
>natives.  Anything else marks you as an out-of-towner.  The country of
>Lebanon is pronounced canonically, as ['lEb at nan].
>

Two (and a half) questions:

(1)  Are we positive that it's a question of maintaining the schwa in
these words/names, as opposed to an [a] gradually weakening to a
schwa?

(2)a.  Is Lebanon, Indiana also pronounced with a schwa (or barred i)
locally?  I don't know if Dale's statement implies that the Indiana
town always has a full secondary-stressed [a].
      b.  Does anyone know if Americans in Lebanon (the country in the
Levant), such as the ones at the American university in Beirut
(either now, if it still exists, or back when it did, before the
unpleasantness a while back) pronounce the country's name with a
schwa?

Of course, the questions in (2) can equally be taken as asking
whether the final syllable in these town names is unstressed locally.

larry