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From: alderson@netcom16.netcom.com (Richard M. Alderson III)
Subject: Re: Why is a SCHWA ?
In-Reply-To: sleichte@nb.net's message of Wed, 09 Oct 1996 01:17:54 -0400
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Date: Wed, 9 Oct 1996 22:54:58 GMT
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In article <sleichte-0910960117540001@wheat-25.nb.net> sleichte@nb.net
(Stuart R. Leichter) writes:

>It's not so much that a schwa exists, as such. It's as though the schwa had to
>be invented to explain the sound between the _s_ and the _n_ in _hasn't_.

At origin, "shwa" is the name of a particluar vowel in Hebrew, a reduced vowel
that sometimes appears and sometimes does not, in different forms of a word.
It is never accented.

The term was taken over into Indo-European linguistics as the name for a set of
vowel correspondences which differed from those expected:  Gk. & Lat. a, e, o =
Skt. a < *a, *e, *o; Gk. & Lat. i = Skt. i < *i; Gk. & Lat. a = Skt. i < "shwa
indogermanicum".  (We have another explanation for this correspondence set
these days.)

From there it spread into general linguistics (and thence to dictionaries,
grammars, and the like) as the name for unaccented mid central vowels.  The
confusion arises in calling accented mid central vowels "shwa", as often
happens when one is more concerned with the phonology than the phonetics.

So shwa does exist, and yes, it was invented (or co-opted) to explain such
sounds.
-- 
Rich Alderson   You know the sort of thing that you can find in any dictionary
                of a strange language, and which so excites the amateur philo-
                logists, itching to derive one tongue from another that they
                know better: a word that is nearly the same in form and meaning
                as the corresponding word in English, or Latin, or Hebrew, or
                what not.
                                                --J. R. R. Tolkien,
alderson@netcom.com                               _The Notion Club Papers_
