The realisation of schwa plus underlying /r/ and /n/ in a local dialect of the Palatinate

Abstract

Barry (1995a) presents data from Standard German which, among other things, illustrates the two different schwa vowels found in that variety. Barry's acoustic analysis demonstrates that orthographic final ‘-e’ has a regularly closer central vowel than orthographic final ‘-er’, and that the latter normally has no closing r-consonant. Barry, however, did not present data to examine which variety of schwa was found before orthographic ‘-r-’ when the ‘r’ is pronounced (e.g. when an inflectional affix is added to a final ‘-er’ form, as in ‘besser – bessere’).