Re: Schwa and [V]: Learning the IPA

On 6/13/06, David J. Peterson <dedalvs@...> wrote:
> In my opinion, this is just another one of those IPA myths they've
> cooked up (i.e., when stressed, the "schwa" vowel in English is [V];
> when unstressed, it's [@]; this is because schwa can never be
> stressed in English).
I'm not sure what you're calling a myth here.  Are you saying that the
schwa has no separate phonemic status in English?  Because that is a
long and complex argument with many valid points on both sides.  The
schwa phoneme, regardless of its acceptance or lack thereof, is quite
convenient; one must only be careful to apply it only to the reduced
vowels, and not to all of the unstressed ones.

Let's examine the facts of the case:

(1) The IPA recognizes two vowels, represented in CXS as [V] and [@],
which are quite audibly distinct phonetically;

(2) Where the existence of a schwa phoneme in English is admitted, the
symbol for the IPA's /@/ vowel  is commonly used to represent it.
Likewise, the /V/ symbol is commonly used to represent the vowel which
appears in stressed form in "cut" and in unstressed form in "hiccup".

My mistake lay only in allowing (2) to confuse me about the phonetics
of (1).  But I don't see any conspiracy or myth-promulgation on the
part of the IPA.

And FWIW, in "[Ss]ulky" as well as simple "sulk", I have something in
between a lateralized(*) [U] and a vocalized [l].  Whatever my /V/
vowel really is, it doesn't appear there; in fact, I can't think of
any words in which it appears before /l/.

(*) that is, the vowel is affected by the following /l/ in much the
same manner as rhot[ai]cized vowels are by a following /r/. The whole
is really a diphthong whose second member happens to be a vocalized
approximant rather than a regular vowel.





--
Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...>

Replies