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Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory 16: Selected papers from the 47th Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages (LSRL), Newark, Delaware
Edited by Irene Vogel
[Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory 16] 2020
► pp. 7–18

Variability in French word-final schwa

Effects of focus and speaker

| University of Calgary
| University of Delaware

The production of schwa in French is highly variable. Some of this variability is predictable based on sociolinguistic (e.g., dialects), phonological (e.g., segments, word position), and stylistic (e.g., reading) factors. We investigate the effect of prosodic structure on the production of word-final schwa in Parisian French, while controlling for the other factors. We also investigate variability in schwa production within and between speakers of the same variety. Our findings show that prosody does affect the production of schwa: the stronger the prosodic boundary, the more probable schwa production is. While this is true for all the speakers, we also found considerable variation in the rates of schwa production, despite our controlling for dialect and style.

Keywords: Parisian French, word-final schwa, prosodic boundary, focus, variability
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.French schwa
  • 3.Present study
    • 3.1Hypotheses
  • 4.Method
    • 4.1Participants
    • 4.2Stimuli
    • 4.3Procedure
    • 4.4Analyses
  • 5.Results
  • 6.Discussion
  • 7.Conclusions
  • References
Published online: 21 August 2020
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/rllt.16.01ath
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