Schwa Absorption in English: A Constraint-based Approach

• Published in: Studies in Linguistics Vol. 70; no. 70; pp. 21 - 35
• Main Author: Park, In-Kyu
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: 한국중원언어학회 2024
• Subjects: 언어학; variation,gestural overlap; voicing agreement; Optimality Theory; aspiration; schwa absorption
• ISSN: 1975-8251; 2508-4259
• DOI: 10.17002/sil..70.20241.21

This study presents an alternative analysis of partial schwa absorption in English within the constraint-based theory. Most of the previous studies have assumed that the pretonic stressless vowel (schwa) is deleted in fast and/or casual speech (Hooper, 1978; Hammond, 1997). Some experimental studies, however, show that schwa elision is not a pure deletion process but a result of increasing overlap of speech gestures, and that the vowel is compressed to the extent that it is overshadowed by neighboring consonants. Based on these empirical analyses, we suggest here that the schwa in a pretonic syllable is partially absorbed to its neighboring sound or reduced to a extremely short vowel in the output, which is marked as C ə . More specifically, we propose the output form including a very short, weak schwa and some constraints C ə[-stress] and Agr-Cə[voi] to account for partial schwa absorption in fast and/or casual speech. It is clear that our approach can be a better empirical and theoretical analysis, based on several phonetic considerations such as gestural overlap, shortening, and voicing agreement. KCI Citation Count: 0