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"Went straight up as if from a factory" <---- for the word "as" in this sentence should I say it like /æz/ or like /əz/ ?

tchrist
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Avril
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1 Answers1

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Both [æz] with stress, and [əz] without stress, sound fine, to me (I'm a native English speaker). But the stress does matter. You can't stress the [əz] version and have it sound like normal American English (I can't say about other dialects).

I've used brackets for your examples instead of slashes, since the variation between the vowels [æz] and [əz] that you're asking about concerns phonetics, not phonemes, and by convention, slashes are used only for phonemic forms. There is no phoneme /ə/ in English (though some might disagree with this).

Greg Lee
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  • Yes, except I'm not sure explicitly enunciating the /æz/ insteead of a schwa automatically implies stressing it. And I'm having trouble imagining a context where you might naturally place (heavy) stress on it. – FumbleFingers May 16 '15 at 23:11
  • @FumbleFingers, In the SPE account, only some level (not necessarily high) of stress can save [æz] from reduction. Of course, not everyone agrees. I do, though. – Greg Lee May 16 '15 at 23:38
  • I had to look up SPE = The Sound Pattern of English, and I must admit I was kinda relieved to see it flagged This article may be too technical for most readers to understand (it was mostly double Dutch to me! :) But I suppose what you're getting at is that from the linguist's more formal perspective, "stress" applies to a broader range of contexts than I (as a relative layman) would normally expect. I'm naturally inclined to always assume intonational stress means *high stress*, but it ain't necessarily so. – FumbleFingers May 17 '15 at 12:53
  • Apropos which, do you think it's even possible to place [high] stress on a schwa when used as the indefinite article? It seems a somewhat "odd" (but credible) usage to me - I don't want [stressed schwa] thing - I want the* thing*. But is it still a schwa, and would it still be transcribed as /ə/ in IPA? – FumbleFingers May 17 '15 at 12:59
  • @FumbleFingers, no, I don't think it's possible to have stress on schwa in American English (don't know about other dialects). When English speakers try to stress [ə], they actually say [ʌ]. The two vowels are articulated quite differently, and they sound quite different. There is no stressed [ə] in American English, even at a low level of stress. I see it written, sometimes, but it's just wrong. – Greg Lee May 17 '15 at 14:38
  • @FumbleFingers, on the existence of non-primary stress, yes, the SPE treatment does concern lower stress levels. This is not an innovation of SPE, though. It elaborates a traditional analysis of American structuralist phonemics, which recognized at least 3 distinctive stress levels. – Greg Lee May 17 '15 at 14:48
  • I'm UK SE, so the /ʌ/ in my *hut* is completely different to Northerners. Their version sounds like a much-shortened version of *hoot* to me, and most Americans seem to use a shortened version of *hart. But mostly I don't even notice these differences, because some "automated process" (in my Broca's area?) transparently collapses all the variants into "the same sound" for the purposes of deciding what words* people are saying. – FumbleFingers May 17 '15 at 14:52
  • @FumbleFingers, yes, you don't normally notice non-phonemic differences, and there is no phoneme /ə/ (so please stop writing it). – Greg Lee May 17 '15 at 15:01
  • Sorry - I wasn't trying to include myself among the "some" who disagree in the final sense of your answer (I'm well aware that relativelky speaking I know nothing of such matters). But in case anyone else ends up reading these comments, here's a link to John Lawler explaining things in a way that seems very clear to me as I read the text. I doubt I'll be able to remember which way round to use phonetics and phonemics, but hopefully I'll at least retain the fact of their being a distinction, and what the two basic categories are. – FumbleFingers May 17 '15 at 15:33
  • ...but I promise to stop writing /ə/, if you can just explain to me what if any distinction there is between, say, /əz/ and [əz] – FumbleFingers May 17 '15 at 15:36
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    @FumbleFingers, mostly, linguists disagree about such a difference as /əz/ versus [əz]. I say this: they are phonetically identical, and /əz/ refers to an intended pronunciation, while [əz] refers to an actual pronunciation. If they are the same, that just means someone said exactly what he intended. If you propose /əz/ for English, in effect, you propose that English speakers intend to say /əz/, which could conceivably be true, in some language or other, but happens to be false for English. A schwa is never an articulatory target in English. – Greg Lee May 17 '15 at 15:58
  • I should qualify that. Schwa is never an articulatory target unless you're Inspector Clouseau. – Greg Lee May 17 '15 at 16:18