Eychenne, Julien. 2015. Observations on the phonetic realization of opaque schwa in Southern French. Studies in Phonetics, Phonology and Morphology 21.3. 457-494.

This paper discusses a little-known case of opacity found in some southern varieties of French, where the vowel /ə/, which is footed in the dependent syllable of a trochee, is usually realized as [ø], like the full vowel /OE/. This case of opacity is particularly noteworthy because the opaque generalization is suprasegmental, not segmental. I show that, depending on how the phenomenon is analyzed derivationally, it simultaneously displays symptoms of counterbleeding and counterfeeding opacity. A phonetic analysis of data from one representative speaker is carried out, and it is shown that the neutralization between /ə/ and /OE/ is complete in this idiolect. Implications for the structure of lexical representations and for models of phonology are discussed in light of these results. (Hankuk University of Foreign Studies)