Many schwas

[ronbutters at AOL.COM]

Two points:



1. The Century Dictionary is not talking about phonemes.

2. You are talking about a dictionary that is 100 years old. I'd agree that Zurinskas's concept of phonological theory is perhaps 100 years out of date, but I don't see how this is very "encourging."


-----Original Message-----
From: Grant Barrett <gbarrett at WORLDNEWYORK.ORG>
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Sent: Tue, 17 Feb 2009 9:34 am
Subject: [ADS-L] Many schwas







On Feb 16, 2009, at 13:29, Tom Zurinskas wrote: 

> What amazes me is that folks call these two n's different phonemes 

> and yet they think schwa is one phoneme when it is in reality many. 
 

I hesitate to encourage you, Tom, given your oft-ridden pronunciation, 

hobby horses, but I feel compelled to say that, having spent some time 

recently with the Century Dictionary, I find that the pronunciation 

editors there also believed that there were many schwa sounds. 
 

The Century Dictionary (first published in 1889, last revised in 1911, 

and last published in 1914) pronunciations are given using a system of 

the editor's own devising. The key contains the following types of 

schwa sounds: 
 

a with a macron above and a dot below: prelate, captain, courage, adage 
 

e with a macron above and a dot below: episcopal, abnegate, aggregate 
 

o with a macron above and a dot below: abrogate, eulogy, democrat 
 

u with a macron above and a dot below: singular,=2
0education. 

accumulate, accentuate 
 

a with two dots below: aback, abandon, errant, republican 
 

e with two dots below: absent, abstinent, absorbent, prudent, difference 
 

i with two dots below: charity, density 
 

o with two dots below: abandon, ablution, valor, actor, idiot 
 

a with dieresis and  two dots below: Persia, peninsula 
 

e with macron and two dots below: ("as in _the_ [/thuh/] book") jack- 

in-the-box, nevertheless, stick-in-the-mud 
 

u with macron and two dots below: acupressure, adventure, nature, 

feature 
 

Grant Barrett 

gbarrett at worldnewyork.org 
 

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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org