schwa insertion rule: view article

In Urban Basanawa, some inflected forms are subject of the schwa insertion rule, below is the schwa insertion rule, C is a consonant, X is the inflectional ending which is a subject of the schwa insertion rule.

CX > CəX / _# and if C is a non-sonorant consonant that is underlyingly voiced.

The rule also applies to alveolar plosives when followed by an inflection starting with an alveolar non-sonorant, and it applies even when the alveolar plosive followed by the inflection is underlying unvoiced:

CX > CəX / _# and if C is a non-sonorant alveolar consonant.

As the final devoicing rule is productive in Urban Basanawa, voiceless consonants and voiced consonants are neutralized in final positions, thus they are usually indistinguishable in actual pronunciations, and the schwa insertion rule effectively "re-voices" the final voicing consonants what are devoiced in uninflected forms.

Some examples of the schwa insertion rule(shown in IPA):

/lant/ "land(singular)" - /landəs/ "lands(plural)"

/dax/ "day(singular)" - /dagəs/ "days(plural)"

/stɛrf/ "(I) die" - /stɛrvət/ "(we/you(plural)/they) die"

/du:t/ "(I) kill" - /du:dət/ "(he/she/it/we/you(plural)/they) kill" - /du:dədəst/ "(you(singular)) killed"

/laŋk/ "long" - /laŋgər/ "longer" - /laŋgəst/ "longest"

however, in some dialects, the schwa insertion rule applies to sonorants too.

below are inflectional suffixes that are subjects of schwa insertion rule:

- personal agreements of verbs, except for the 1st singular forms and the 3rd singular past forms.
- the past tense of weak verbs(written as -t/-d/-ed in romanization).
- plural forms of s-nouns.
- comparative and superlative forms of adjectives. ✎ Edit Article ✖ Delete Article

Comments

[link] [quote] [move] [edit] [del] 14-Dec-15 10:01 [Deactivated User]

sems that I really need to write down this rule to establish a consistent spelling and pronunciation rule...