Re: Questions about Schwa and Stress

En réponse à David Peterson <DigitalScream@...>:

>
> ending in -e, but also to words ending in (audiable) consonants, a sort
> of
>
> vocalic echo e.g. "bac" /bak@/. >>
>
>     Wow!!!  Man, Conlang is so cool today!  Yeah, that would make a lot
> of
> sense, because this guy doesn't really know much about modern-day
> English as
> spoken by young speakers, let alone French.  Do you think it could be
> said
> that, in older speakers, there's possibly, if not an absence of schwa,
> at
> least very few in non-functional words (meaning non pronouns,
> prepositions,
> etc.)?  One example was the word "genou", which I was taught to
> pronounce
> [Z@nu], but which got transcribed on this particular assignment as
> [Znu].  W
> hat do you think?
>
The French schwa is the only vowel in French that can be reduced (to nothing)
in some circumstances. The main circumstance is fast speech, in which most if
not all schwas disappear. So even among young speakers (like me) 'genou' can be
pronounced [Znu] in fast speech. [Z2nu] (when pronounced, the French schwa
sounds quite like an /2/) is only pronounced this way in careful speech (it's
the same with the pronouns and the article 'le', BTW). I've read somewhere that
it was the only feature that differentiated the French schwa from the full-
blown vowel /2/ (oe-ligature): the /2/ doesn't get reduced in fast speech (in
fast speech, 'peureux' is still pronounced [p2R2], not *[pR2].

Christophe.

http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr