Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 February 2009
Barry (1995a) presents data from Standard German which, among other things, illustrates the two different schwa vowels found in that variety. Barry's acoustic analysis demonstrates that orthographic final ‘-e’ has a regularly closer central vowel than orthographic final ‘-er’, and that the latter normally has no closing r-consonant. Barry, however, did not present data to examine which variety of schwa was found before orthographic ‘-r-’ when the ‘r’ is pronounced (e.g. when an inflectional affix is added to a final ‘-er’ form, as in ‘besser – bessere’).