schwan.
/ʃwɑː/, /ʃvɑː/, U.S. /ʃwɑ/, /ʃvɑ/ The central vowel sound /ə/, typically occurring in weakly stressed syllables, as in the final syllable of ‘sofa’ and the first syllable of ‘along’; = sheva n. 2. Occasionally, the symbol of an inverted ‘e’ used to represent this sound. Also attributive and in other combinations.
/ə/, typically occurring in weakly stressed syllables, as in the final syllable of ‘sofa’ and the first syllable of ‘along’; = sheva n. 2. Occasionally, the symbol of an inverted ‘e’ used to represent this sound. Also attributive and in other combinations.ΘΚΠ
the mind > language > linguistics > study of speech sound > speech sound > vowel > [noun] > types of
naso-vocal1669
sheva1818
union vowel1821
shut sound1841
cardinal vowel1851
u-sound1852
neutral vowel1868
O1869
wide1870
vincular1871
indeterminate vowel1873
u-vowel1886
orinasal1887
pharyngal1887
glide-vowel1888
schwa1895
murmur vowel1910
murmured vowel1933
1895 P. Giles Short Man. Compar. Philol. 134 Indo-G. ə ‘schwa’ or the neutral vowel.
1933 L. Bloomfield Lang. 519 Linguists sometimes speak of this phoneme by the name shwa, a term taken from Hebrew grammar.
1934 R. C. Priebsch & W. E. Collinson German Lang. i. iii. 51 These overshort vowels are called ‘Schwa-vowels’ (from the Hebrew s̆eva).
1954 W. F. Leopold in S. Saporta & J. R. Bastian Psycholinguistics (1961) 354/1 Central [ə] (schwa) was learned in unstressed syllables during the second half of the second year, because its neutral character made it suitable in such a position.
1956 D. Jones Outl. Eng. Phonetics (ed. 8) viii. 30 The sound known as the ‘neutral vowel’ or ‘schwa’.
1963 English Jrnl. May 393/1 The inverted e or schwa for the neutral vowel used in weakly stressed syllables.
1964 D. Ward in D. Abercrombie et al. Daniel Jones 393 The plosives and j being registered with a following shwa vowel for present purposes.
1973 A. H. Sommerstein Sound Pattern Anc. Greek iii. 87 Though Greek has had a stress accent for about 1,600 years, unstressed vowels have firmly resisted reduction to schwa.
1975 Language 51 265 The syncope of a penultimate unaccented vowel and the deletion of final shwa lead to a system in which stress invariably falls on the last syllable.
1978 Canad. Jrnl. Linguistics 1977 22 226 In the treatment of German phonology..shwas (in, e.g., Zunge, geöffnet, etc.) are phonemicized as /e/ with no explanation.
1979 T. Burrow (title) The problem of shwa in Sanskrit.
1980 Amer. Speech 1976 51 272 The schwa some speakers have in the third syllable of medicine is produced by a low-level phonetic rule that reduces unstressed short vowels.
This entry has not yet been fully updated (first published 1982; most recently modified version published online March 2022).
<
n.1895