Hi Philip
That makes it clear. Thanks for information.
I make the same distinction between the little bitty Schwa and the
soft "u" or Wedge as you call it. I call Wedge, the Neutral vowel,
because it doesn't have any of the distinguing attributes of the
other soft vowels.
I actually distinguish between three types of Schwa, based on where
they can be found. Most people don't even notice that they exist, so
in order to hunt out these ghost sounds, you have to know where to
look.
1. Stand-alone Schwa usually begins a word as it is a tiny syllable
all to itself. (i.e. alone, along, oppose, awake, aquire, identity)
Although I have also heard in the middle of words like "alligator".
2. Schwa following a consonant to make up a small syllable, again
usually at the beginning of a word. (i.e. suppose, banana, tomato,
balloon) but occassionaly in the middle or the end (i.e. kangaroo,
banana, drama)
3. Schwa preceding or merged with a consonant to also make a small
syllable usually at the end of the word. This happens most noticably
with the letters, r,l,n,and z, but with other consonants too.
(i.e. letter, girl, humble, reason, melon, chicken, foxes, fishes)
Note that the tiny Schwa doesn't do all the work that a full sized
vowel does. I never see a Schwa joining 2 consonants together into a
syllable. That seems to need at least a Neutral vowel or wedge.
So for example, when I looked a your example word, mention, It
surprized me because it wasn't obvious which kind of Schwa it was.
But then I deduced the syllable boundary was between the "sh" and the
Schwa and it fell in to category 3. mention = mensh+(n) where the
schwa is merged with n sound.
Mustn't get complacent.
Perfect is a whole other story.
I am still considering it.
Regards Philip
from Paul V.
--- In shavian@y..., "Philip Newton" <philip.newton@g...> wrote:
> On 6 Oct 02, at 15:56, paul vandenbrink wrote:
>
> > What are [@] and [V] are represented with two different letters,
> > which enable us to differentiate stressed from unstressed
syllables?
>
> They're ASCII IPA. [@] is shwa in IPA (an "e" rotated 180°), [V] is
> wedge (looks a bit like a small cap A but without the crossbar --
or
> like an upside-down letter v).
>
> For me, they sound different -- for example, "mention" has shwa in
the
> second syllable, while "men shun" has wedge in the second syllable.
Or
> in Shavian terms, [@] is "ado", while [V] is "up". [V] can only be
in
> stressed syllables, while [@] can only be in unstressed syllables.
> Similar to how "array" can only be in unstressed syllables IMO,
with
> the stressed equivalent being "err".
>
> So "perfect" (the adjective) is peep-err-fee-egg-kick-tot for me,
while
> "perfect" (the verb) is peep-array-fee-egg-kick-tot for me. Thus
> indicating that the stress pattern is PER-fect for the adjective
but
> per-FECT for the verb.
>
> I can't think of a similar example contrasting "up" and "ado", but
I
> hope this explains things a little.
>
> Cheers,
> Philip
> --
> Philip Newton <Philip.Newton@g...>
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