Schwa and the structure of words in German

This paper argues for a treatment of schwa in German as a vowel of epenthesis. The analysis presupposes a CV model of the syllable in German. Within this framework, an epenthesis rule is given, which is then applied to all forms of schwa, even the word-final ones. Assuming a particular version of a lexicon (following the theory of lexical phonology) and distributing the epenthesis rule over all levels in the lexicon, the analysis succeeds in describing all subgroups of schwa occurrence adequately and is argued to be superior to accounts previously proposed. Syllabic sonor ants are handled by a postlexical rule of reassociation between sonorants and the syllabic

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