Re: Questions about Schwa and Stress

David Peterson wrote::
>In a message dated 10/13/01 3:53:11 PM, dan@FEUCHARD.FSNET.CO.UK writes:
>
><< Yes. There are a hell of a lot of schwas in French (my idiolect at least),
>
>e.g. "Je suis chez Adelie parce que quelqu'un m'a defoncé la gueule" is
>
>/Swi: S@z ad@li paRsk@ kelkE~ ma dEfonsE la g&l@/ >>
>
>     Yeah, see, that's exactly what I thought!  Yet, we had that assignment...
>  You know, I bet it was for simplification that he said that, because it
>certainly did make the problem set a lot easier.  Yet, looking at your
>transcription, the word "guele" is pronounced [g&l@]?  Not being a French
>speaker, I would've pronounced that [gøl], where [ø] (just in case it gets
>screwed up) is a a close-mid, front rounded vowel with no schwa at the end.
>There's really [&] in there?
Sorry, my bad for not knowing the ASCII IPA. It is indeed rounded /e/, I
just don't have o-slash on my keyboard. The schwa, to my ear, does seem to
be rounded and in my idiolect, slightly fronted.

The pronunciation of this schwa in words such as "menu" or "belote" seems
to be found more among younger speakers (my grandma definately says /mny/
and /blot/, not /m@ny/ and /b@lot@/), as does the "ressurection" of final
e-muet.

The pronunciation of schwa at the end of words is not confined to theose
ending in -e, but also to words ending in (audiable) consonants, a sort of
vocalic echo e.g. "bac" /bak@/.

Dan
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
A crueze-tu en acestas tre cosas:
         la veritát, la belleisa,
                 la seuitát a la caima?