A corpus-based study of the distribution of word-final schwa in Standard French and what it teaches us about its phonological status
Hutin, Mathilde (Université Paris-Saclay)
Jatteau, Adèle (Université de Lille)
Vasilescu, Ioana (Université Paris-Saclay)
Lamel, Lori (Université Paris-Saclay)
Wu, Yaru (Université Paris-Saclay. Université Sorbonne-Nouvelle)
Adda-Decker, Martine (Université Sorbonne-Nouvelle)

Date:	2021
Abstract:	What is commonly considered as an epenthetic vowel can actually refer to at least two different realities: phonological epenthesis or phonetic excrescence. French schwa, noted [ә], is a vowel alternating with zero and limited to unstressed syllables that can appear word-internally or word-finally. This paper presents an extensive description of the distribution of word-final schwa in Standard French in order to shed light on its nature: is it an intrusive vowel or a full epenthetic vowel? To that extent, three large corpora of French containing more than 110 hours of speech were used to establish the presence of word-final schwa as a function of sociolinguistics, orthography, phonotactics and phonetics. Our conclusions are that word-final schwa is impacted by speech style, gender, orthography, phonotactics (i. e. , the number of adjacent consonants and their sonority profile), and the phonological properties of the codas. However, speech rate does not impact word-final schwa realization. The specific results lead us to suggest that word-final schwa in Standard French shares similarities with intrusive vowels but ultimately behaves like a legit epenthetic vowel.
Rights:	Aquest document està subjecte a una llicència d'ús Creative Commons. Es permet la reproducció total o parcial, la distribució, la comunicació pública de l'obra i la creació d'obres derivades, fins i tot amb finalitats comercials, sempre i quan es reconegui l'autoria de l'obra original.
Language:	Anglès
Document:	Article ; recerca ; Versió publicada
Subject:	Schwa ; Epenthesis ; Pronunciation variation ; Standard french ; Large corpora ; Automatic alignment
Published in:	Isogloss, Vol. 7 (2021) , p. 1-27 (Articles) , ISSN 2385-4138

Adreça original: https://revistes.uab.cat/isogloss/article/view/v7-hutin-et-al
DOI: 10.5565/rev/isogloss.152

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