Re: [ADS-L] pron. o f just

[RonButters at AOL.COM]

Randy appears be confusing phonemics and phonetics, as do many nonlinguists. 
Schwa "stands for a range of sounds" only in the sense that in some phonemic 
representations of English, it is used to symbolize all unstressed vowels--in 
the same way that, say, /i/ "stands for a range of sounds" in SOME 
phonemicizations of English ranging from realizations with a very strong offglide to those 
with a pure long vowel. In other phonemicizations of English, [i] stands for 
the sound in "bit" and "beat" would be phonemicized as /biyt/.

It appears to me that Matt is talking about the standard Ineternational 
Phonetic Alphabet, in which schwa is indeed assigned a unique place in the oral 
scheme of things: a mid-central unrounded vowel."

In a message dated 2/28/09 10:04:20 AM, strangeguitars at GMAIL.COM writes:


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




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