Consonants

The most distinctive Tobagonian consonant sound is ///. It may be heard in the pronunciation of words like [ʔows] ‘house’, [ʔow] ‘how’, and [sooʔm] ‘something’. In addition, the word-initial consonants [h], [b], [d], [g] and [y] are most usually dropped in basilectal Tobagonian speech. In the speech of some speakers, the h- is absent from all English words containing it—a phenomenon that is not unusual in speakers of a range of non-standard English dialects across the world. Examples of content words with this form are: home > ome, house > ouse, hot > at, hat > at, hit > it, hoe > oe, hand > an(d). The h- is absent from monosyllabic words, and the stressed syllable of non-monosyllabic words such as appy. For function words we find the unstressed-stressed pronoun pair hi-hii > i ‘he/his’ and ii ‘he/him/his’, and huu > uu ‘who’, which may occur as an interrogative pronoun, relative pronoun, or clause intensifier.

 

Syllable structure differs in Tobagonian from both Trinidadian and StE in that, word initially, there is only a single sound produced rather than a cluster; hence we find: [fr-]> [f-]. In adult speech, this feature is limited to from > fom/fam, which is the only function word in English that starts with the cluster [fr-].

 

Whereas /s/ can be the first of up to three consonants at the onset of a word in English, in basilectal Tobagonian speech it may be dropped, for example, from words like skin, squeeze, smell, spit, and start (> kin, kweeze, mell, pit, and tart). [s-] is not dropped when it combines with the liquids and semi-vowels [r], [l], [w], and [y].

 

In even the most acrolectal speech in Tobagonian (but not in Trinidadian), the single-initial consonants b and p are lengthened by the addition of bilabial [w] to become [bw-] and [pw-] before the diphthong [oi] in a small group of words that include boy > bwoi, boil > bwoil, boycott > bwoicott, spoil > spwoil, and poison > pwoison.

 

The shift from [v] to [b] recorded variably for Trinidadian also occurs in basilectal Tobagonian. It is found in words like the following: crave > crabe, love > lob, governor > gobna, and heavy > (h)eaby. As the list suggests, it occurs wherever the [v] may occur in a word. The shift does not seem to be motivated by any special phonological conditioning. When a fricative gives way to a plosive there is a change in lip movement which historically was important for registering negative emotions visibly.

 

The cluster [-lf] is reduced to [-f] in the grammatical word self as the latter compounds with pronouns, even, and adverbs of place and time.

 

Basilectal Tobagonian speech also evidences the dropping of final single-consonants especially the nasal ones, from grammatical words.

 

In the second syllable of words, and intervocalically, [t] is replaced by [k] and [d] by [g]. The effects are seen in the following words: little > likku, bottle > bokku, riddle > riggu, middle > miggu, handle > ha [ŋ] gu, gentlemen > jenkumen. Voiceless [t] becomes voiceless [k], and voiced [d] becomes voiced [g]. The movement from front to back consonants seems motivated by the back vowel [-u], with which syllabic [l] is produced. This change may also be heard in some mesolectal Trinidadian speech.

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

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

السعودية تدشن أكبر نظام لتخزين الكهرباء بالبطاريات في العالم !

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