Jamaican Creole English



Winter term 1996/97
Seminar: English dialects and sociolects
Lecturer: Prof. Gibbon
Student: Elke Langelahn



Content:

1. Survey of history
2. Definition of basilect, acrolect and mesolect
3. Phonetic characteristics
	a) consonants
	b) vowels
4. Prosodic features



3. Phonetic characteristics

a) Consonants

1. The use of clear /l/ in all environments

2.  t, d  are used for both dental fricatives and alveolar plosives of the
     standard accents

	thing      tin
	father     f :d 

	Homophones: thin - tin, faith - fate, though - dough

3. Reduced range of consonant clusters
            RP: /ft/, /st/, /kt/ as in left, nest, act		RP: /ft, st, kt/ as in left, nest, act
	Creole: without final consonant    /l f/, /n s/, /ak/

	RP: / t,  t, pt, t t/ as in earthed, pushed, stopped, touched
	Creole: without final consonant

	RP: /nd/, /ld/ as in send, build
	Creole: without final /d/      /s n/, /bil/

	/ks/, /ps/ as in lapse, box, six exist in creole
	/sk/, /sp/ as in ask, mask do not exist in creole
		ask is /a:ks/, mask is /ma:s/




4. /v/, / /, /h/ tend to be absent in broad creole
	
	/v/     creole: /b/ or /w/
		vex      b ks 
		river    r ba 
		love     l b
	But some words have  v  for all speakers such as vote  vo:t 

	/ /     creole: /d / or / /
		pleasure      pl d a 
		vision        v d  n 

	/h/ does not really exist as a phoneme, but it is common as a speech sound
		homophones: hair - air
		h-dropping in half   a:f  and hole, whole   u l  


5. /j/ between a velar consonant and a following open vowel
		cat      /kjat/
		gas      /gjas/
		car      /kja:r/
		garden   /gja:dn/
	this does not happen with vowels of the lexical sets LOT or THOUGHT

6. Rhoticity
	realized /r/ in words like near, square, star, war, four, fourth and poor
	no /r/ in weak syllables such in letter, father
	non-rhotic in respect of lettER-words


b) Vowels

1. FACE, GOAT-vowel
	Creole: /e:/, /o:/  monophthongs in acrolect, falling 							diphthongs in basilect

					acrolect		basilect

		face			 fe:s 			 fi s 
		goat			 go:t 			 gu t 

2. NURSE-vowel with following /r/
	Creole: / /
	homophones: bird and bud   b d 











4. Prosodic features

	rhythm sounds more evenly stressed; there is less of a contrast between stressed and unstressed syllables

	final stress where in RP there is initial stress
	rea'lize       (RP 'realize)
	cele'brate  (RP 'celebrate)





Bibliography

Todd, Loreto (1974). Pidgins and Creoles. London: Routledge &	
   Kegan Paul.

Wells, John C. (1982). Accents of English 3: Beyond the British Isles. 
   Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.