11.681, Disc: Underlying Schwa?

[The LINGUIST Network]

LINGUIST List:  Vol-11-681. Mon Mar 27 2000. ISSN: 1068-4875.

Subject: 11.681, Disc: Underlying Schwa?

Moderators: Anthony Rodrigues Aristar, Wayne State U.<aristar at linguistlist.org>
            Helen Dry, Eastern Michigan U. <hdry at linguistlist.org>
            Andrew Carnie, U. of Arizona <carnie at linguistlist.org>

Reviews: Andrew Carnie: U. of Arizona <carnie at linguistlist.org>

Associate Editors:  Ljuba Veselinova, Stockholm U. <ljuba at linguistlist.org>
		    Scott Fults, E. Michigan U. <scott at linguistlist.org>
		    Jody Huellmantel, Wayne State U. <jody at linguistlist.org>
		    Karen Milligan, Wayne State U. <karen at linguistlist.org>

Assistant Editors:  Lydia Grebenyova, E. Michigan U. <lydia at linguistlist.org>
		    Naomi Ogasawara, E. Michigan U. <naomi at linguistlist.org>
		    James Yuells, Wayne State U. <james at linguistlist.org>

Software development: John Remmers, E. Michigan U. <remmers at emunix.emich.edu>
                      Sudheendra Adiga, Wayne State U. <sudhi at linguistlist.org>
                      Qian Liao, E. Michigan U. <qian at linguistlist.org>

Home Page:  http://linguistlist.org/

The LINGUIST List is funded jointly by Eastern Michigan University,
Wayne State University, and donations from subscribers and publishers.

Editor for this issue: Karen Milligan <karen at linguistlist.org>

=================================Directory=================================

1)
Date:  Mon, 27 Mar 2000 11:26:27 GMT
From:  "A.F. GUPTA" <engafg at ARTS-01.NOVELL.LEEDS.AC.UK>
Subject:  Re: 11.666, Disc: Underlying Schwa?

2)
Date:  Mon, 27 Mar 2000 09:34:49 -0800
From:  "Wojcik, Richard H" <Rick.Wojcik at PSS.Boeing.com>
Subject:  RE: 11.658, Disc: Underlying Schwa?

-------------------------------- Message 1 -------------------------------

Date:  Mon, 27 Mar 2000 11:26:27 GMT
From:  "A.F. GUPTA" <engafg at ARTS-01.NOVELL.LEEDS.AC.UK>
Subject:  Re: 11.666, Disc: Underlying Schwa?


 "Geoffrey S. Nathan" <geoffn at siu.edu> said:

> And there are plenty of rules that
> aren't 'true on the surface' (which is a problem OT has been
> wrestling with for quite a while).  Consider, for example, the
> contrast between 'police' and 'please', which, on the surface
> contrast in voicing of the /l/ (ignoring the irrelevant final
> consonant difference).  In old-fashioned ordering terms,
> schwa-deletion counterfeeds liquid devoicing, and no surface-true
> theory could deal with this situation, ....

I think we have to always remember the dialectal variation in
English.  This should read " which, on the surface IN SOME DIALECTS
contrast in voicing of the /l/ (ignoring the irrelevant final
consonant difference). "

It took me quite a while to work this one out, because for me the two
words both normally have one syllable and the /l/ is devoiced as
usual following the /p in both cases/.  I don't think I can be the
only one....

Anthea
 *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *   *   *
Anthea Fraser GUPTA : http://www.leeds.ac.uk/english/$staff/afg
School of English
University of Leeds
LEEDS LS2 9JT
UK
 *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *


-------------------------------- Message 2 -------------------------------

Date:  Mon, 27 Mar 2000 09:34:49 -0800
From:  "Wojcik, Richard H" <Rick.Wojcik at PSS.Boeing.com>
Subject:  RE: 11.658, Disc: Underlying Schwa?

> 	I find this whole discussion about underlying schwa a little strange, but
that may be because I can see no consensus in the linguistic community on how to
define phonology.  I think that we are talking about two very different concepts of
"underlying" schwas, and we are not being clear about the difference.  If we take
"schwa" to be a phoneme, then the question seems to be about whether schwa can
ever occur in the root representation of morphemes, where some morphological
derivative contains a different vowel in its place.  In that case, the schwa
phoneme in the root might be said to "underlie" the schwa phoneme in the derivative.
All this talk about whether "nation" and "native" are perceived as morphologically
related is beside the point.  Clear morphological relationships do exist, and
there are clear phonemic correspondences between them.  We just have to be clear
in what sense phonemes can be said to underlie other phonemes across
these relationships.
> 	
> 	Let's take the a/an alternation as an example.  There should be no
question that "a" and "an" are allomorphs of a morpheme.  How do we handle
that fact in a linguistic analysis?  Is it a phonological relationship?  I
don't like to think so, but it all comes down to how we choose to define the
term "phonology".  Let's assume that "a" /@/ is a schwa, and that it corresponds
to the vowel /ae/ in "an".  Does /@/ underlie /ae/ here?  We could argue either
side of that one, but the argument wouldn't be very interesting.  This is just
one morpheme, not a morphological pattern.  The fact is that /@/ could
plausibly underlie an /ae/ in English, and it is just serendipity that, if
it doesn't, it doesn't.  An accident of lexical history.  We just need an
example of a class of morphemes where we can distinguish a regular phonemic
correspondence between /@/ and /ae/, and that may be hard to come by. We
should just be very careful about interpreting lacunae in morphological
patterns as evidence of some kind of significant grammatical principle.
> 	
> 	Now let's talk about pure phonology, namely what happens to the vowel
in "an" when it gets reduced to a schwa.  In that case, we are not talking
about a phonemic correspondence but about the pronunciation of the phoneme
 /ae/ in an unstressed context.  The question here is a general one of whether
vowel coloring can be superimposed on reduced vowels.  If this question
makes sense, then it pertains to a different sense of "underlying".  The
question has nothing at all to do with phonemic correspondences between
related morphemes.  It has to do with the pronunciation of vowels in
unstressed syllables.  This thread (not to mention phonological theory
in general) has suffered greatly from an inability to distinguish
phonemic correspondences between related morphemes from constraints on
the pronunciation and perception of phonemes in a single morpheme.
There is a big difference between choosing what phonemes to pronounce
and actually pronouncing those phonemes.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
LINGUIST List: Vol-11-681