Jamaican English

The main vowels

Below, we present our proposals for the vowel system of JamE.

We propose here that JamE has 15 vowels. These are made up of six simple vowels. The three features necessary to describe these involve

Redundantly, every vowel with the feature [back] also has the feature [labial].

There are nine complex vowels in JamE, six of these being double vowels. Each simple vowel has a complex counterpart in the form of a long or double version of itself, i.e. /ii/, /ee/, /aa/, /ɔɔ/ , /oo/ and /uu/. This introduces length or doubling as a feature which is characteristic of JamE complex nuclei. The remaining three complex vowels are diphthongs, rising from a low or lower-mid vowel to a high vowel. The first vowel element is always one of the two Low vowels, either /a/ or /ɔ/.

 

Wells (1973: 25) proposes that JamE has 16 vowels. His sixteenth vowel, /ɔɔ/, is treated by us as an allophone of /o/ when this vowel occurs before a tautosyllabic /r/.

The length feature implicit in our vowel inventory does not match the approach of Meade (2001: 42) to JamE vowels. He suggests that the main phonetic feature distinguishing between short vowels and long monophthongs was tenseness, with the short ones being lax and the long ones tense. This position, on the face of it, seems justified by the fact that, in JamE, much more so than in JamC, the non-low long vowels differ from their short equivalents not just in length but in height and tenseness. The long non-low vowels are always higher and tenser than their short equivalents. Whatever the merits of Meade’s approach for JamE, there is contradicting evidence. This involves the relationship between the third pair of vowels, /a/ and /aa/, in which no height or tense differences are involved. Length is the sole distinguishing feature here. Thus, if one is seeking to find a feature which distinguishes all short vowels in JamE from all long monophthongs, then tenseness versus laxness would not do the job but length would. It is on these grounds that we single out length as the primary distinction between these pairs, with relative height and tenseness being secondary, predictable features of the distinction in the case of the non-low vowels. This approach is much more economical than that of Meade (2001: 42) which proposes that tenseness is the primary feature for the non-low pairs of vowels, and length the primary one for the low pair.

الاكثر قراءة في Phonology

Minimal pairs and sets

Aspiration

Assimilations

Phones and allophones

Feature geometry

The Sonority Sequencing Generalization

Finding the underlying form

Bukusu: nasal+consonant combinations

The Northern Cities Shift

Major class features

Standard lexical sets

Allophony in other languages

Place of articulation

Natural classes

Dissimilation

اخر الاخبار

اخبار العتبة العباسية المقدسة

المجمع العلمي يواصل إقامة مسابقة الثقلين القرآنية لطلبة مدارس كربلاء

عضو مجلس إدارة العتبة العباسية المقدسة يطلع على آليات تطوير البرامج التعليمية في مجموعة العميد

مجموعة مناحل الكفيل تختتم مشاركتها في معرض السليمانية الدولي للزراعة والصناعات الغذائية

لتوثيق التراث العلمي.. وفد قسم شؤون المعارف يلتقي عددًا من أعلام مدينة النجف

المزيد

الآخبار الصحية

ثورة طبية.. الذكاء الاصطناعي يكشف سرطان الكلى في وقت قياسي

لتعزيز الطاقة والتغلب على التعب.. عليك بـ7 طرق بسيطة

لتحسين الهضم والتحكم في الشهية.. ما أفضل وقت لتناول التمر؟

خبراء يكشفون تأثير الاستحمام في الظلام على جودة النوم !

المزيد

الآخبار التكنلوجية

إزالة ثاني أكسيد الكربون من الغلاف الجوي.. ما دور المحيطات والبحار؟

نظائر الهيليوم مقياس لاكتشاف رواسب الذهب.. كيف ذلك؟

الصين تطلق أول ناقلة نفط خام ذكية في العالم تعمل بالميثانول

الزمن على المريخ أسرع من الأرض.. دراسة علمية تكشف الفوارق

المزيد

مواضيع ذات صلة

Spelling and Pronunciation SUMMARY

American English vs. British English

Morphological Basis of English Spelling

Phoneme–Grapheme Correspondences in English Vowels

Phoneme–Grapheme Correspondences in English Consonants

Spelling and Pronunciation Irregularity of English Spelling

Structural Factors in Second Language Phonology SUMMARY

Perception

Optimality Theory (OT)

Ontogeny Phylogeny Model (OPM)

Markedness

Hypercontrast