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In:Interdisciplinary Approaches to Romance Linguistics: In honor of Barbara E. Bullock and Almeida Jacqueline Toribio
Edited by Mark Amengual and Amanda Dalola
[Issues in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics 45] 2025
► pp. 186–210

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Chapter 8
On the status of epenthetic schwa in French

 | Northeastern University
Published online: 2 September 2025
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/ihll.45.08gri
Abstract
The French schwa is notable for its highly complex variable alternations with zero resulting from both epenthesis and deletion processes. Curiously, an asymmetry in the word-final environment is observed as it is the most productive site for both deletion and epenthesis. This chapter explores this asymmetry by contrasting the distributions of realized lexical schwa and epenthetic schwa through an analysis of data from the Projet Phonologie du français contemporain (PFC) corpus. The differing distributions of lexical and epenthetic schwa resemble the case of lexical- and intrusive-s in Dominican Spanish explored by Bullock, Toribio, and Amengual (2014). Schwa epenthesis occurs almost exclusively in external sandhi contexts. Epenthetic schwa and overtly realized lexical schwa appear to be subject to two distinct distributions, rejecting a unitary conceptualization of the French schwa and instead arguing for a reconsideration for its status as an epiphenomenon.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Schwa in French
    • 2.1Epenthetic schwa
    • 2.2Northern and Southern French
  • 3.Data and results
    • 3.1Data
    • 3.2Lexical schwa realization
      • 3.2.1Lexical schwa in Northern Metropolitan French
      • 3.2.2Lexical schwa in Meridional French
    • 3.3Schwa epenthesis
  • 4.Discussion
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
References (60)
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