Re: Questions about Schwa and Stress
| From: | BP Jonsson <bpj@...> |
|---|
| Date: | Monday, October 15, 2001, 9:04 |
|---|
At 07:14 2001-10-14 +0000, Raymond Brown wrote:
>Reduction of vowels to shwa seems to be a characteristic of languages with
>strong stress accent, especially if, as in English & Russian, the stress is
>free and unpredictable.
It is important whether the language is stress-timed -- i.e. the stresses
tend to be spaced equally in time -- or syllable-timed -- i.e. syllables
tend to take up equal amounts of time. Stress timed languages usually have
vowel reduction while syllable-timed languages usually don't. As always,
there ate no absolutes...
/BP 8^)>
--
B.Philip Jonsson mailto:bpX@netg.se (delete X)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~__
A h-ammen ledin i phith! \ \
__ ____ ____ _____________ ____ __ __ __ / /
\ \/___ \\__ \ /___ _____/\ \\__ \\ \ \ \\ \ / /
/ / / / / \ / /Melroch\ \_/ // / / // / / /
/ /___/ /_ / /\ \ / /Melarokko\_ // /__/ // /__/ /
/_________//_/ \_\/ /Eowine __ / / \___/\_\\___/\_\
Gwaedhvenn Angeliniel\ \______/ /a/ /_h-adar Merthol naun
~~~~~~~~~Kuinondil~~~\________/~~\__/~~~Noolendur~~~~~~
|| Lenda lenda pellalenda pellatellenda kuivie aiya! ||
"A coincidence, as we say in Middle-Earth" (JRR Tolkien)