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Schwa and /œ/ in French

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 June 2016

Douglas C. Walker
Douglas C. Walker*
Affiliation:
University of Calgary
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Extract

Few topics in the phonological literature have inspired the amount of attention that has been lavished on the notorious “mute-e” of contemporary French. Perhaps the most perplexing difficulty for phonologists is how (or even whether) to include schwa in phonological representations. Solution of the representation problem, moreover, is necessary for a proper identification of the conditions under which schwa is deleted, maintained or inserted, and for an analysis of alternations linking schwa and other vowels. Many different solutions to the representation problem have been suggested: schwa as a distinct vowel; schwa as absent from the phonemic inventory (hence from underlying representations) and inserted as a “lubrifiant”; or (in the current non-linear literature), schwa as an empty nucleus; schwa as an unlinked vowel.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Linguistics/Revue canadienne de linguistique , Volume 38 , Issue 1 , March 1993 , pp. 43 - 64
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Linguistic Association 1986

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