what is a schwa? (was "just")

Sun Mar 1 19:03:05 UTC 2009

I don't disagree with what Pullum & Laduslaw are saying. In fact, that is the 
same message I was trying to convey about English /i/, which sometimes is 
represented by <i> and sometimes by <iy>. What they are saying is that schwa 
is/has been used in different ways by different phoneticians, and usually related 
to how broad or narrow is their PHONEMIC transcription. On the other hand, the 
IPA PHONETIC value us as a mid-central unrounded vowel. 

Or maybe I don't understand what you are saying. Or maybe you don't 
understand what I am saying. So maybe we are saying the same thing. 

In a message dated 3/1/09 11:52:02 AM, strangeguitars at GMAIL.COM writes:

> 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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> >
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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
> 
> 

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