The value of Irish schwa

An acoustic analysis of epenthetic vowels

Abstract

This study was conducted in an effort to learn more about the phonology of the Irish language. The research is intended to be a phonetic analysis of one of the phonological processes characteristic to Celtic languages. The present study examines the extent to which schwa epenthesis in Irish acts as a neutralization process. A list of 30 Irish words acting as near-minimal pairs was compiled for this study. Vowel environment and syllable count matched across pairs, and only the vowel itself differed in whether it was epenthetic or underlying. Six native-Irish speakers were recruited for this experiment representing all three major dialects of the language: three speakers from Cork (Munster), two speakers from Donegal (Ulster), one speaker from Connemara (Connacht). Participants read from the word list, reading each word twice. Acoustic analysis focused on two measurements: vowel duration and formant frequencies. The formants for each vowel type are comparable, but the difference in duration is significant, indicating that Irish schwa epenthesis is an incomplete neutralization process. While schwa epenthesis has been reported to create an identical phonological form to that of the underlying schwa, the significant difference in vowel duration indicates a residual contrast of the original underlying forms.