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Hanne Kloots, Georges De Schutter, Steven Gillis und Marc Swerts: Svarabhaktivokale im Standardniederländischen in Flandern und den Niederlanden 

The present article investigates schwa epenthesis in final consonant clusters in contemporary Standard Dutch, for example, in words like wolf and arm. The study is based on the speech patterns of 80 Flemish and 80 Dutch teachers of Dutch. Social variables taken into consideration were gender, age, and the regional provenance of the informants. The composition of the consonant clusters themselves was taken into account as a phonotactic variable. The questionnaire was in two parts. The first consisted of a word-list which had to be read aloud and the second of pictures of items which had to be named. Perhaps surprisingly, there is no difference between the results from the word-list and those from the visual exercise. A further important result is that the Flemish teachers inserted fewer epenthetic schwas than their Dutch colleagues did. It also transpired that the younger generation of teachers used less epenthetic schwas than their elders did.  At first sight, there are no differences defined by gender, but this picture changes when we introduce the factor of national origin. The Flemish women used epenthetic vowels more frequently than the men did, whereas in the Netherlands the complete opposite was true. The regional origin of the informants was also important.  Informants from areas where the local dialect frequently used epenthetic schwa inserted more schwas when using the standard language than those from areas where epenthetic vowels are traditionally rare. Finally, the results showed that schwa was inserted after /r/ more often than after /l/.