The vowel system

Jamaican Creole

The main vowels

JamC has twelve phonemic oral vowels. These are divided into five simple and seven complex vowels, as in (2) below:

The relationship between the simple vowels and their longer equivalents is primarily one of length rather than that of height or tenseness (Cassidy and Le Page 1980: xlv). Following Cassidy and Le Page, we represent phonetically long vowels by a double vowel, e.g. /ii/, /aa/ and /uu/ rather than the /:/ symbol. The aim here is to avoid obscuring the connection between these double-vowel nuclei and the other complex syllabic nuclei consisting of sequences of non-identical vowels.

Only two features, [back] and [high], are necessary to describe the vowel set. An analysis of the complex vowel set presented above shows that only the extreme vowels in the simple set, the high and the low, i.e. /i/, /a/ and /u/, combine to produce complex vowel phonemes. The combinations, as can be seen, are quite limited. The low vowel phoneme, /a/, neutral for the feature [back], combines either with itself in second position, or with a high counterpart, either the front vowel, /i/ or the back one, /u/. The high vowels either combine with themselves to produce long vowels, /ii/ and /uu/ respectively, or with the low vowel to produce the diphthongs /ia/ and /ua/. The system does not allow, within the same syllable nucleus, for the combination of vowels with different values for the feature, back, i.e. */ui/ or */iu/. Such sequences get realized by the first vowel functioning as a consonant, i.e. a semi-vowel.

The complex vowels, /ia/, /ua/ and /au/, are represented by Cassidy and Le Page (1980: xxxix) as /ie/, /uo/ and /ou/ respectively. However, they describe /ie/ as a diphthong covering the range between [iε] and [iɐ] , /uo/, the range between [uo] and [ua], /ou/, the range between [ɵu] and [iu] , and /ai/ the range between [iɐ] and [ɐε]. They also report that the simple vowel, /a/, covers the range between [a], [ɐ] and [ɑ]. We agree with their phonetic observations, but use these observations to arrive at quite different conclusions about the underlying phonemic representation of JamC diphthongs. Given that [a] and/or [ɐ] are the common denominators in all of the four diphthongs and that both of these are allophones of the simple vowel, /a/, we conclude that it is this same /a/ which appears underlyingly as the low vowel in all diphthongs.

In our analysis, the phoneme /a/, when it shares a syllable nucleus with the high front vowel phoneme, /i/, is realized phonetically as the mid-front vowel, [ε]. This gives rise to the phonetic realization, [iε], for the diphthong which we represent as /ia/. Along similar lines, /a/, when it shares a syllabic nucleus with the high back vowel /u/ is phonetically realized as the back vowel [o] in diphthongs /ua/ and /au/ producing the phonetic realizations [uo] and [ou].