Re: USAGE: Stress in English

MJR> There is evidence for this in the fact that when speaking v-e-r-y
MJR> s-l-o-w-l-y, people tend to pronounce, e.g., "along" as [ej.long].

Ack.  No, they don't!  They tend to pronounce it [ej.lON]. Sheesh, that
was sloppy. :)

MT> The question being, when people speak "slowly and carefully" enough to say
MT> it that way, is it actually unpacking a fast speech pattern, or is it a
MT> spelling pronunciation?

Exactly.

MT> I think the best argument for the schwatic phoneme is native speakers that
MT> can't distinguish what vowel a schwa is sposta be unstressed from, leading
MT> to orthographic hesitation:  cf. the very common definately vs.
MT> definitely, or miniscule vs. minuscule.   (Clearly in these cases the
MT> spelling hasnt influenced their pronunciation) :p

And yet there are dialects in which "definitely" definitely (ahem) has [I]
rather than [@] in the third syllable, and others in which
"minuscule" has [U] in the second.   So I don't think you can support
the claim that the underlying phoneme in either case is schwa, no matter
how badly people spell those words.  :)

-Mark

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