From: Rick McCallister
Message: 53266
Date: 2008-02-15
> Rick McCallister wrote (responding to my____________________________________________________________________________________
> clarification of PAN *e = schwa):
>
> > So, it from the usage in Bahasa Indonesia? where e
> is schwa
>
> No, as I mentioned in my post, it began (in AN
> linguistics, at least in the
> US) back in typewriter days (manual ones at that),
> when a machine with any
> foreign not to mention IPA characters was rare and
> expensive. Actually, I
> believe it was Isidore Dyen who first proposed it in
> the early 50s, along
> with several other changes to Otto Dempwolff's
> original 1930s system (which
> did use the schwa character and others that didn't
> work on US keyboards).
> Probably due to Prof. Dyen's prestige in the field,
> his system has become
> the standard. Personally I don't like it, as it can
> cause great confusion
> when dealing with the modern languages, most of
> which have acquired [e] (and
> [o]) from loanwords and/or regular sound change.
>
> In the earliest days and up to about Independence in
> 1947, Dutch and
> Indonesian writers used e-breve for schwa, and "e"
> for [e]. Perfectly
> rational. When Bahasa Indonesia was codified (and
> perhaps because of the
> typewriter problem), they switched to "e" for schwa
> (it's very common) and
> "é" e-acute for [e] (rather rare). Also rational. In
> 1972 there was a
> spelling reform, and I guess someone on the
> committee disapproved of
> diacritics, because they fixed a system that wasn't
> broken: e-acute was
> abandoned, and now "e" represents both schwa and
> [e]. Makes it difficult for
> learners, or when encountering unfamiliar words.
>
> While on the subject: I've noticed that most writers
> here use & for schwa
> because of the a-circle problem. Seems as good as
> anything, as long as we're
> consistent. (But in one of the ASCII-ified SAMPAs, I
> believe, & represents
> low-front æ (ae lig.)-- so there's a little room for
> confusion, though not
> in discussing PIE. Also in SAMPA, as I recall, "6"
> represents IPA
> inverted-a, a low-central vowel-- Patrick's use of
> it gave me pause for a
> moment, but it became clear enough what he
> meant.........)
>
> Allow me to mention that some mail-lists I belong to
> enforce a quite strict
> "No cross, no crown" policy-- i.e. no religion, no
> politics. It helps to
> keep the dialogue on a reasonable level, so that
> things don't degenerate
> into chat-room flame-storms. One might include "no
> overly personal remarks",
> but of course that doesn't happen here on Cybalist
> ;-)
>
>