A corpus-based study of the distribution of word-final schwa in Standard French and what it teaches us about its phonological status

What is commonly considered as an epenthetic vowel can actually refer to at least two different realities: phonological epenthesis or phonetic excrescence. French schwa, noted [ә], a alternating with zero and limited unstressed syllables that appear word-internally word-finally. This paper presents extensive description of the distribution word-final schwa in Standard order shed light on its nature: it intrusive full vowel? To extent, three large corpora containing more than 110 hours speech were used establish presence function sociolinguistics, orthography, phonotactics phonetics. Our conclusions are impacted by style, gender, (i.e., number adjacent consonants their sonority profile), properties codas. However, rate does not impact realization. The specific results lead us suggest shares similarities vowels but ultimately behaves like legit vowel.