An Aspect of Schwa Deletion in English

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to examine what factors motivate schwa deletion and to analyze how schwa deletion can be applied. Three main reasons of schwa deletion are stress position, sonority sequencing, and lexical frequency. First, deletion more frequently occurs in a post-stressed environment rather than in a pre-stressed environment. Second, sonority sequencing principle requires that a newly formed consonant sequence keep rising sonority. Finally, high frequency words undergo more schwa deletion than low frequency words because the frequency of a word is closely related to its recoverability. In OT analysis, ANCHORING constraints and FAITH-FINAL-V constraint play a crucial role in prohibiting deletion at the both edges of a word, With respect to foot assignment, PARSE-SYLL requires foot licensing as much as possible and *CLASH is used to ban stress clash. This study may imply the result that syncope or deletion is able to not only contribute the ease of articulation, but also improve foot licensing for syllables of a word. (Chonbuk National University)