The phonological status of Dutch epenthetic schwa

Abstract

In this paper, we use articulatory measures to determine whether Dutch schwa epenthesis is an abstract phonological process or a concrete phonetic process depending on articulatory timing. We examine tongue position during \l\ before underlying schwa and epenthetic schwa and in coda position. We find greater tip raising before both types of schwa, indicating light \l\ before schwa and dark \l\ in coda position. We argue that the ability of epenthetic schwa to condition the \l\ alternation shows that Dutch schwa epenthesis is an abstract phonological process involving insertion of some unit, and cannot be accounted for within Articulatory Phonology.

Lexical representation of phonological variants: Evidence from pseudohomophone effects in different regiolects

“…For instance, reports of acoustic studies suggest that pre-stress schwa deletion in English (e.g., Davidson, 2006) is a gradient phonetic process. By contrast, articulatory measures suggest that Dutch schwa insertion is better explained by a categorical than a gradient process, and thus is likely to arise at an earlier phonological processing level (Warner, Jongman, Cutler, & Mücke, 2001). Most relevant for us, both acoustic and articulatory evidence suggest that the alternation between schwa and reduced variants in French is categorical rather than gradient, suggesting a phonological or lexical rather than phonetic locus (Bürki, Ernestus, Gendrot, Fougeron, & Frauenfelder, submitted for publication;Bürki, Fougeron, Veaux, & Frauenfelder, 2009;Côté & Morrison, 2007).…”

What affects the presence versus absence of schwa and its duration: A corpus analysis of French connected speech

“…For instance, speech rate may affect processes at the level of phonetic implementation (e.g., Fosler-Lussier and Morgan, 1999;Kuperman et al, 2007), phonological encoding (Levelt, 1989), and lexeme retrieval (Levelt, 1989). Similarly, different processing stages may be sensitive to prosodic variables (e.g., Klatt, 1976;Oller, 1973;Warner et al, 2001).…”

Rational phonological lengthening in spoken Dutch

“…(1) a. melk /m˘lk/$/m˘-l@k/ 'milk' hulp /hYlp/$/hY-l@p/ 'help' berg /b˘Òx/$/b˘-Ò@x/ 'mountain' korf /kOÒf/$/kO-Ò@f/ 'basket' b. filmer /fIl-m@Ò/$/fI-l@-m@Ò/ 'cameraman' ergens /˘Ò-x@ns/$/˘-Ò@-x@ns/ 'somewhere' (Adapted from Warner et al, 2001). Warner et al (2001) argue that this is a phonological alternation, ruling out the alternative possibility that the schwa is not present in the speaker's phonological representation, but merely perceived due to retiming of the neighboring segments ("targetless schwa").…”