An Exploratory analysis of individual variation in schwa epenthesis in Flemish Dutch and Scottish English

This study examines schwa epenthesis as it occurs in Flemish Dutch and Scottish English from a forensic phonetic perspective in terms of the potential it exhibits for speaker comparison purposes, as prior investigations have shown that sociolinguistic variables-such as schwa insertion-may also reveal individual speaker variability. An analysis of spontaneous speech samples for two homogeneous groups of speakers revealed that schwa epenthesis in Flemish showed higher inter-speaker variability than in Scottish English. This suggests that while Flemish schwa insertion may potentially be suitable... Mehr ...