The consonant system

Jamaican Creole

The consonants

There are 21 phonemic consonants in JamC. These include the semi-vowels, /w/ [w] and /j/ [j], which are the phonetic vowels [i] and [u] functioning as consonants due to distributional constraints.

 

The palatal stops /kj/ [c], /gj/ [Ɉ] and /ny/ [ɲ] proposed by Cassidy and Le Page (1980) are not included in our inventory because we consider these phonetic palatals to be sequences of stops and the semi-vowels (cf. Devonish and Seiler 1991).

 

One feature little remarked on in the discussion of JamC consonant phonology over the years is the phonetics of the stop phonemes, /b/, /d/ and /g/. When these occur in the onset of a prominent syllable, they are phonetically realized as ingressive stops,  and [µ]. In other environments, notably in the coda or in the onset of a non-prominent syllable, the egressive [b], [d] and [g] allophones are employed. The distribution of these stops parallels that of the aspirated and unaspirated allophones of the voiceless stops, /p/, /t/ and /k/, with the aspirated allophones, [p^h], [t^h] and [k^h] occurring in the onset of prominent syllables, and the unaspirated ones, [p], [t] and [k], elsewhere.

 

Wells (1973: 12) suggests that /h/ occurs contrastively in the Western varieties of JamC, notably those of Manchester, St. Elizabeth and Westmoreland. This is supported by the intuitions of JamC speakers from the entire range of western parishes. For such speakers, /h/ would serve to distinguish between the following pairs.

(24) a. /an/ ‘and’ /han/ ‘hand’

        b. /iar/ ‘air’ /hiar/ ‘hair’

 

Such contrasts do not exist in the Eastern varieties of JamC, inclusive of that of Kingston. It is not, however, that the phone [h] does not exist in these varieties. Rather, it is employed for a different phonological function. Thus, the items above would, in the eastern varieties, be realized variably as [an] ~ [han] ‘and, hand’ and [iεɹ] ~ [hiεɹ] ‘air, hair’. In items without a lexically specified onset consonant, [h] may variably appear as a marker of emphasis, as an ‘[h]emphatic’ /h/. The phone [h], in the eastern varieties is simply marks off emphatic onsetless word initial syllables from their non-emphatic counterparts.

 

The consonant phoneme /ŋ/ has an unusual distribution in being the only one which is restricted to occurring in the coda.

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 للقرآن الكريم يصدر الكتاب الثاني من سلسلة يخشى

قسم الشعائر يكرّم أصحاب المواكب المشاركة في إحياء ذكرى شهادة السيدة الزهراء (عليها السلام)

جامعة العميد تستقبل طلبة المراحل الأولى المقبولين ضمن كلياتها للعام الدراسي الجديد

سماحة السيد الصافي يكرّم طلبة حفظ القرآن الكريم المتفوّقين ويؤكّد دور التدبّر في الهداية والتكامل

المزيد

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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