Was it known before the discipline of linguistics came into being?
Also, is "stressed schwa" a self-contradiction?
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5What precisely do you mean by the ‘concept’ of schwa? Do you mean the sound [ə] itself (that obviously existed long before linguistics)? Or the name ‘schwa’ (which is from Hebrew and definitely predates modern linguistics, though not necessarily ancient linguistics)? Or the notion that as a central, unrounded vowel, it is the most ‘neutral’ of vowels and disproportionately found as a reduced form of other vowels especially associated with unstressed syllables (that may well have been introduced with modern linguistics)? Or something else altogether?– Janus Bahs JacquetCommented Jun 16 at 14:13
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Gemini AI says "The sound itself, a mid-central vowel, has existed in spoken languages for millennia, but there wasn't a specific term to refer to it until the 19th century." I am asking when was it recognized that Indo-European languages have this phoneme @Janus Bahs Jacquet– S KCommented Jun 16 at 14:57
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1The Hebrew word has definitely been used to refer to a reduced vowel longer than that (since Classical Hebrew), but whether it was used to refer specifically to a generally unrounded, mid central vowel before modern linguistics, I don’t know offhand.– Janus Bahs JacquetCommented Jun 16 at 15:03
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If you're asking about the schwa indogermanicum (that is, the thing people thought existed before laryngeal theory), you should be aware that that's an entirely different thing from a phoneme /ə/ that may or may not exist in any given Indo-European language.– CairnarvonCommented Jun 17 at 3:28
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2 Answers
Shwa” - literally "emptiness" - starts off as a technical term in Hebrew grammar as formulated in the Middle Ages. It designates the diacritic consisting of two vertical dots below a letter, indicating that that letter is not followed by any vowel. Its function is the same as the Arabic sukūn, on which it is evidently modelled. But in certain contexts the shwa is realised as a short vowel, to break up what would otherwise be an uncomfortable cluster of consonants. The European Hebraists at some point declared the latter to be a short central vowel, In the 19th century the Hebrew term was (mis)appropriated to designate such a vowel in all languages.
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Mobile shwa (shva na') refers to the shevaot that aren't inserted to break up illicit clusters, but those shevaot that supersede a full vowel as a result of inflection (i.e. they are a result of vowel reduction, not epenthesis). Quiescent shwa (shva nah) originally just marked the absence of a vowel, but today is sometimes pronounced to avoid illicit clusters.– TristanCommented Jun 24 at 9:23
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Also, is "stressed schwa" a self-contradiction?
No, regardless of what definition of schwa is used. If schwa means mid-central vowel then many languages have this in stressed syllables. If schwa means "reduced vowel" then a phonemic distinction between full and reduced vowels in stressed syllables is attested in the Khanty languages.
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3The only definition of schwa that precludes it being stressed is that which applies in languages like Danish, where it’s a short, reduced, centralised vowel that may only appear in unstressed syllables. But the fact that there’s no stressed version of a vowel that definitionally may only appear in unstressed syllables seems a bit… obvious. Commented Jun 17 at 0:31
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i did some googling and "schwa" and 'stressed schwa" seem to be lost in the thickets of a typical linguistics war,– S KCommented Jun 18 at 18:18
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1@SK I guess they are talking about English, in which case it's a matter of interpretation (as well as dialect). No reason why a stressed schwa can't occur in other languages Commented Jun 18 at 20:53
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1@Someone211 - I would delete the question - but you have taken the trouble to answer. "schwa" is a poorly defined idea. "stressed schwa" is an absurdity.– S KCommented Jun 18 at 23:57
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3@SK Well, no, ‘stressed schwa’ is not an absurdity – that’s the point of this answer. There are lots of languages that have a phoneme /ə/ which can appear in stressed syllables – Welsh, for example (e.g., Cymru /ˈkəmrɨ̞/ ‘Wales’). Even English arguably has stressed phonemic schwa, at least for some speakers (e.g., just /jəst/ ‘only’ vs just /jʌst/ ‘fair’) – potentially for everyone, if we accept that /ʌ/ is really just /ə/ in stressed position, in which case they’re in complementary distribution and can be reduced to just /ə/. Commented Jun 22 at 9:22