LINGUIST List 9.1483

Fri Oct 23 1998

Qs: Vowels, American broadcast dialect, Schwa

Editor for this issue: Jody Huellmantel <jodylinguistlist.org>

Directory

1. MARC PICARD, Stress and long vowels
2. JPKIRCHNER, American broadcast dialect
3. Joo-Kyeong Lee, Vowel reduction to schwa

Impressionistically, it would seem that if a language has both stress
and long vowels, then at least some of these long vowels are bound to
occur in stressed syllables. Does anybody know of any references where
this has been stated as a universal constraint or a principle of some
sort or even just a tendency?

Marc Picard

I am posting this on behalf of a student of mine who is having a terrible time
finding any references on the establishment of the Inland North dialect as the
U.S. broadcast standard. She has scoured libraries and the Internet and says
she has come up with nothing.

Since I know the American broadcast networks issue pronunciation guides, it
seems there must be some kind of loose formal mechanism for maintaining
dialect standards. I also know that when I was a very small child (late
1950s) more American announcers seemed to have nonrhotic accents than one
hears on TV now.

Can anyone steer my student to materials that would explain how this accent
was established as "neutral"? We'd be grateful.

James Kirchner

If you know a language which involves vowel reduction to schwa in
EVERY unstressed syllable, PLEASE let me know. Some languages, such as
Russian, have vowel reduction sensitive to position such that unstressed
(unaccented?) vowels are reduced to schwa in a posttonic syllable,
but I exclude those languages. I will really appreciate it if you
give me information about languages in which every unstressed vowel
gets neutralized to schwa, and I will post the responses later.

Thank you,
Joo-Kyeong Lee