schwa
(ʃwɑː)
Also shwa.
[G.: see sheva.]
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 2. Occas., the symbol of an inverted ‘e’ used to represent this sound. Also attrib. and Comb.
| 1895 P. Giles Compar. Philol. 134 Indo-G. ə ‘schwa’ or the neutral vowel. 1933 Bloomfield Language 519 Linguists sometimes speak of this phoneme by the name shwa, a term taken from Hebrew grammar. 1934 Priebsch & Collinson German Lang. i. iii. 51 These overshort vowels are called ‘Schwa-vowels’ (from the Hebrew {sbreve}eva). 1954 W. F. Leopold in Saporta & 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. Gr. iii. 87 Though Greek has had a stress accent for about 1,600 years, unstressed vowels have firmly resisted reduction to schwa. 1975 Language LI. 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 Canada. Jrnl. Ling. 1977 XXII. 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 LI. 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. |