Re: Questions about Schwa and Stress

David Peterson wrote:
><< I REALLY need to know whether there are any languages in which vowels
never reduce to schwa. >>
>
>    Spanish.  At least, Mexican Spanish; I won't vouch for any of the other
>myriad countries.  /e/ is realized as either [e] or [E], but I think that's
>about the only vowel variation there is, other than diphthongs>
No vowel reduction in Italian (the standard as taught, at least) either.
How about Hawaiian (are you still learning it?)-- I'd suspect not.

>    Also, my historical linguistics professor claims that there are no
schwas
>in French.  Is this true?
That may depend on how you choose to analyze the _underlying_ phonology--
you could say (and some early generative phonologists did say) that
particles like je, me, te, ne, le etc. are /j, m, t, n, l.../, and schwa is
inserted by rule in surface structure in certain cases (like, or maybe the
same as, the liaison rule that inserts schwa in things like "les roses
sont..." [leRoz@sO~] ).  Or you could say that schwa _is_ present
underlyingly and gets deleted/realized in certain cases.  Either way it
makes for some complicated rules.   And fast speech may be a whole nother
matter too.