Re: USAGE: Schwa and syllabification

From:    Danny Wier <dawiertx@...>
From: Chris Palmer
> > For what little it's worth, my phonology professor once gave us this
> > anecdote: Supposedly there is a word /tk=tf=t/ in Berber.
[snip]

> I honestly don't see how a stop can be syllablic. A fricative like [f=] can,
> obviously. More likely the word would be pronounced more like [t@ktf=t] with
> a barely-noticeable schwa.
Two years ago I was at a phonology conference in Indiana at
which a native speaker of one of these Berber dialects explained
that, although phonologically some of these stops might be treated
as syllabic, phonetically they do have a distinct epenthetic schwa.
With obstruents with higher sonority, such as the fricatives and
affricates there, no such epenthesis occurs.

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Thomas Wier	       "I find it useful to meet my subjects personally,
Dept. of Linguistics    because our secret police don't get it right
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