Introduction

Descriptions of French typically assume the existence of a vowel schwa, the so-called ‘e-muet’ or ‘unstable-e’, the salient property of which is that it alternates with zero, thus making it phonologically different from all the other vowels of French. While in certain dialects of French, schwa is phonetically similar to the vowel /œ/, it is phonologically different from this phoneme. In this chapter I present the properties of schwa along with some relevant data which lead to the conclusion that schwa is phonologically different from /œ/ as well as from all other vowels of the phonemic inventory. The [ə] (i.e. schwa), or [œ], which derives from schwa, has one salient property. Under certain circumstances it alternates with zero or with [ɛ]. Unlike the [œ]s which are allophones of schwa, those which express the phoneme /œ/ do not alternate either with zero or with [ɛ]. The latter alternates with the vowel [ø] (e.g. ils veulent [vœl] ‘they want’ versus il veut [vø] ‘he wants’, malheur [malœr] ‘misfortune’ versus malheureux [malørø] ‘unfortunate’).

The alternation between schwa and zero

I begin the overview of the facts by considering the alternation between schwa and zero. I present different types of cases where such an alternation is found.

Word-internal and word-final schwas

The alternation of schwa with zero can be observed in comparing the two groups of words given in (1). In both groups of words schwa is preceded by two consonants.