a-schwa

noun

The vowel [ɐ], which lies between [a] and [ə] (true schwa).

Meanings

nouna-schwa (plural a-schwas)

plural a-schwas

  1. The vowel [ɐ], which lies between [a] and [ə] (true schwa).

    Fact is that non-low vowels before /R/ are lowered or form falling diphthongs with an a-schwa, which apparently calls for a spreading analysis.

    2003, John R. Rennison, Friedrich Neubarth, An x-bar theory of Government Phonology: Living on the Edge, 28 Papers in Honour of Jonathan Kaye, Mouton de Gruyter, →ISBN, page 128
    1 more example

    Similar to German, the a-schwa plural suffix may combine with Umlaut, and Umlaut can also be the only plural marker (i.e. "combine with zero").

    a. 2008, Dorit Ravid, Wolfgang U. Dressler, Bracha Nir-Sagiv, Katharina Korecky-Kröll, Agnita Souman, Katja Rehfeldt, Sabine Laaha, Johannes Bertl, Hans Basbøll and Steven Gillis, "Core morphology in child directed speech: Crosslinguistic corpus analyses of noun plurals", in: Corpora in Language Acquisition Research: History, methods, perspectives (Trends in Language Acquisition Research 6), edited by Heike Behrens, 2008, John Benjamins, Amsterdam & Philadelphia, page 35

Translations

German a-Schwa, a-Schwa
  • a-Schwaa-schwa
  • a-Schwaa-schwa
Cite this entry
APA

a-schwa. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 3, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/a-schwa

MLA

“a-schwa.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/a-schwa. Accessed November 3, 2026.

Chicago

WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “a-schwa,” accessed November 3, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/a-schwa.

Source: a-schwa on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.