ə(unstressed) vs ʌ(stressed)

[Mona Abdellatif Mohammed]

Even for stressed syllables, some dictionaries do not use a separate symbol for schwa /ə/ and the short u /ʌ/. When schwa is the only symbol used, it can be assumed that the word is pronounced with the short u sound. The table below compares the transcription used by Merriam-Webster OnLine Dictionary and Cambridge Dictionary of American English.

Example Dictionary Citations
	Merriam-Webster transcription	Cambridge Dictionary transcription
cut	/kət/	/kʌt/	Play
sun	/sən/	/sʌn/	Play
love	/ləv/	/lʌv/	Play
truck	/trək/	/trʌk/	Play
stuff	/stəf/	/stʌf/	Play

i see this explanation in another site. i hope that you are looking for as i understand from you

[keannu]

This is what I found on the internet, and according to this, the two sounds are homophones that are interchangeable, that's why I heard two sounds for "cut" and "suck". I think some Americans pronounce this way and others the other.

ESL: phonetics: comments on flesl.net IPA vowel chart
[ə] and [ʌ]There is no important difference between the sound represented by the "schwa" symbol, [ə] — the vowel sound of the first and third syllables of the word "banana" — and the sound represented by the "open 'o' " symbol [ɑ], the vowel sound in the word "but." The first, [ə], is unstressed and the second, [x] is stressed, but the actual sounds are identical or nearly identical. This means that there are no English words which would change their meaning or become nonsense if [ə] were replaced with [ʌ] or [ʌ] with [ə] and that shows the two sounds are not separate phonemes but allophones of the same phoneme.

[Raymott]

— and the sound represented by the "open 'o' " symbol [ɑ], the vowel sound in the word "but." The first, [ə], is unstressed and the second, [x] is stressed, but the actual sounds are identical or nearly identical.

This site is unreliable. What do they mean by saying that 'but' uses a

[ɑ]? /bɑt/ is 'bot' on their own chart, not 'but' - are they claiming that [ɑ] and [ʌ] are allophones? Can Americans really not distinguish between 'bot' and 'but'? What do they mean by [x] is stressed, and what has [x] to do with vowels?

Even if [ʌ] and [ə] are allophones with stress being the only difference, that doesn't mean you can say /bətə/ for 'butter' and expect to be understood. I'd be more convinced if one of regular American contributors admitted to saying IPA /bətə/ (rhotic or not) for 'butter'.

Note that that site does not use IPA. It uses IPA symbols for sounds different from those which those symbols denote in IPA.
If [ə] denotes the AmE sound for 'butter', that's fine, but that doesn't make it a schwa.

[keannu]

I also think the above explanation has too many flaws like "x" or something.
Yes, I think you are right in that IPA makes distinction between [ʌ] and [ə], but I can't abandon the experience that I heard /bətə/ for 'butter' /kət/ for 'cut' and /sək/ for 'suck' from Americans. They surely said those, and "butter" case can be verified in the link of Rachel's English I gave you.
My temperary conclusion is that for stressed vowels, they use [ʌ] and for unstressed one,[ə], but for neutral ones(mono-syllables) without having to consider stress like "but, cut, suck", both sounds can be possible.

[raindoctor]

The question: is the stressed vowel different from the unstressed one? Yes, it is. The stressed vowel is lower and backer than the so-called schwa, which lies in the center of the vowel space. That's the case in American dialects. Just because some word has a lexical stress (marked in dictionaries), it does not necessarily mean that people stress it all the time.

[keannu]

I'm sorry I don't understand what you mean. Do you mean stressed vowels like "in·dus·trial[ɪn^|dʌstriəl] 's second "ʌ" can be unstressed as schwa [ə]?

[raindoctor]

Do you mean stressed vowels like "in·dus·trial[ɪn^|dʌstriəl] 's second "ʌ" can be unstressed as schwa [ə]?

Yes. This was noted long time ago by Charles-James Bailey. From his paper, Taylor & Francis Online :: A new intonation theory to account for pan

"(a) In rapid tempos heavy non-nuclear accents have lowered to unaccented status, while unaccented vowels other than schwa (in idioms that preserve them) may become schwa (except word-finally) and then undergo rules affecting the loss of schwa.


(b) Morpheme boundaries drop out in rapid tempo and the boundaries of phonological phrases may be reduced in status (say, to that of word boundaries) before the application of the phonological rules.


(c) Antevocalic syllabic sonorants automatically become unsyllabic (universally) as the result of a rapid tempo."


Similarly, one need to qualify the statement that stressed voiceless stops are aspirated. Mary Beckman and Janet Pierrehumbert did research on this topic ( I don't have their paper handy). They showed that VOT (related to aspiration) depends on whether stressed syllables are pitch accented or not.

[5jj]

Yes. This was noted long time ago by Charles-James Bailey. From his paper, Taylor & Francis Online :: A new intonation theory to account for pan

"(a) In rapid tempos heavy non-nuclear accents have lowered to unaccented status, while unaccented vowels other than schwa (in idioms that preserve them) may become schwa (except word-finally) and then undergo rules affecting the loss of schwa.

(b) Morpheme boundaries drop out in rapid tempo and the boundaries of phonological phrases may be reduced in status (say, to that of word boundaries) before the application of the phonological rules.

(c) Antevocalic syllabic sonorants automatically become unsyllabic (universally) as the result of a rapid tempo."

Similarly, one need to qualify the statement that stressed voiceless stops are aspirated. Mary Beckman and Janet Pierrehumbert did research on this topic ( I don't have their paper handy). They showed that VOT (related to aspiration) depends on whether stressed syllables are pitch accented or not.

Perhaps I am being a little dense here, but I don't quite follow all that. Could you just please confirm that you are saying that the answer to keannu's question, "Do you mean stressed vowels like "in·dus·trial[ɪn^|dʌstriəl] 's second "ʌ" can be unstressed as schwa [ə]?" is "Yes"?

Could you also please expand on the relevance of VOT to the question?

Thank you.

[raindoctor]

Yes, /ʌ/ can become /ə/. Similarly, aspirated stops can become less aspirated. Both are related, since the results are due to whether stressed syllables are accented or not.

The gradation goes like thus:

Nuclear pitch accent > pre-nuclear pitch accent > unaccented (no pitch change) > reduced > dropped (syncope)

For instance, look at the phrase "absolutely right". If each word in that phrase becomes its own chunk, we are left with "absolutely | right". In that case, lexical stress is retained and pitch accented. When one utters with one chunk, as heard on talk shows, one hears like "absly RIGHT": in this phrase, one hears primary stressed /æ/ vowel, the secondary stressed vowel /u/ is lost, and there is a pitch change on /aɪ/.
Similarly, aspirated stops can become unaspirated, depending on how speech is chunked (rhythmed).

That's why it is fallacious to claim that English is a stress timed language. Peter Roach showed that stress timed English doesn't sound native (check his youtube on Intonation). English is an accent timed language or tunit-timed language. Many voice over actors, impersonators, impressionists recognized this long time before the EFL instruction. But they don't use the same concepts. Instead, they use devices like "da da DA da". Frank Caliendo, who impersonates Dubbya Bush, John Madden, Charles Barkely, etc, claims he is working on Obama's impersonation, but couldn't get it right, since Obama has a distinct way of chunking speech.

[5jj]

Yes, /ʌ/ can become /ə/. [...] etc

Quite. My questions, however, were:

Could you just please confirm that you are saying that the answer to keannu's question, "Do you mean stressed vowels like "in·dus·trial[ɪn^|dʌstriəl] 's second "ʌ" can be unstressed as schwa [ə]?" is "Yes"?

Could you also please expand on the relevance of VOT to the question?