pron. of just

[Randy Alexander]

On Sat, Feb 28, 2009 at 5:37 AM, Matthew Gordon <gordonmj at missouri.edu> wrote:
> I suppose that like Humpty Dumpty you're free to have words mean just what
> you choose them to mean, but in phonetics schwa is the name of a particular
> symbol that describes one particular sound and this is how M-W use it in
> their notation.

I've never read anything that said schwa stood for one particular
sound.  Everything I've seen about it either describes it as a range
of sounds; unless you count its designation as a mid-central unrounded
vowel.  Pullum & Laduslaw's Phonetic Symbol Guide (p48) says it is
"used for a range of distinguishable non-peripheral vowels for which
other symbols could also be used".

--
Randy Alexander
Jilin City, China
My Manchu studies blog:
http://www.bjshengr.com/manchu

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