pron. of just

[Randy Alexander]

On Sat, Feb 28, 2009 at 11:25 PM,  <RonButters at aol.com> wrote:
> 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 off
> glide 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."

Ron, both Matt and I were talking about the International Phonetic
Alphabet; I quoted a phonetics reference book.  I'm not confusing
phonemics and phonetics.

One could, of course, assign a specific phonetic value to schwa, but
I'm trying to point out that doing so is not what appears to be the
norm.  Here's the rest of the comments on the schwa entry from Pullum
& Laduslaw (p48-9):

=====

Used for a range of distinguishable non-peripheral vowels for which
other symbols could also be used; thus [schwa] may represent in broad
transcriptions a retracted and only slightly rounded [o-e ligature] in
French, [turned a] in word-final position in British English,
[reversed epsilon] in stressed positions in British English, [barred
i] in many American dialects, and so on.

There is a wide range of variation in the articulatory descriptions
given to Schwa by American phoneticians.  Bloch and Trager (1942, 22)
define it as mean-mid central.  Pike (1945, 5) gives it as upper-mid
central.  Smalley (1963, 363) shows it as lower-mid central. Gleason
(1955, 8) does not distinguish [schwa] from [turned v] and describes
[schwa] as mid-central or back. On the distinction between [schwa] and
[turned v], see the unintendedly confusing note by Cartier and Todaro
(1983, 17).

Following in this tradition, Chomsky and Halle (1968, 176) do not
include [schwa] in their chart showing the feature composition of
English segments, though they use the symbol [schwa] throughout.  This
is because they write [schwa] for a totally unstressed vowel and
deliberately take no position on the question of its precise phonetic
realization (59, note 1; 245, note 7). Hence they espouse no phonetic
description corresponding to [schwa], though they note (59, note 1)
that for many speakers it may be [barred i].  Their feature system
apparently does not allow for the representation of a distinction
between IPA [barred i], [schwa], and [turned v].

=====

That paints a pretty clear picture of schwa being used as something
that is quite variable in phonetic transcriptions.  Which isn't to say
that one isn't free to assign specific formant values to it, if one
wanted to.

Randy

> 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>=20
>> wrote:
>> > I suppose that like Humpty Dumpty you're free to have words mean just wh=
> at
>> > you choose them to mean, but in phonetics schwa is the name of a=20
>> particular
>> > symbol that describes one particular sound and this is how M-W use it in
>> > their notation.
>>=20
>> I've never read anything that said schwa stood for one particular
>> sound.=A0 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.=A0 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".
>>=20
>> --
>> Randy Alexander
>> Jilin City, China
>> My Manchu studies blog:
>> http://www.bjshengr.com/manchu
>>=20
>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>>=20
>>=20
>
>
>
>
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>



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

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