Prosody

Stress-timing

The prosody of LibSE sets it apart from all other Liberian varieties of English and, indeed, all other Liberian languages. All of the languages other than LibSE - including VLE at its most acrolectal – are strict syllable-timed languages. Essentially, every syllable gets equal weight and, consequently, vowel reduction rarely occurs. In contrast, LibSE is far less syllable-timed, hence more stress-timed. It seems appropriate to position the syllable-timed languages of Liberia at one pole, white northern American dialects of English at the opposite pole, and LibSE somewhere in between (cf. Thomas and Carter 2003). Certainly, there is far less vowel reduction in LibSE than in the white dialects of American English.