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

Phones and allophones

Assimilations

Finding the underlying form

The Sonority Sequencing Generalization

Major class features

Feature geometry

Standard lexical sets

Bukusu: nasal+consonant combinations

Place of articulation

Allophony in other languages

Floating tones

Natural classes

Dissimilation

اخر الاخبار

اخبار العتبة العباسية المقدسة

قسم الشؤون الفكرية يطلق باقة من النشاطات الرقمية الخاصة بشهر المحرم

العتبة العباسية المقدسة تختتم السلسلة الأولى لمشروع المحاضرات القرآنية العاشورائية في بابل

العتبة العباسية المقدسة تسلّم راية العزاء إلى تجمّع مواكب محافظة الديوانية

قسم الشؤون الفكرية يواصل إقامة المجالس الحسينية ضمن سلسلة (بيوت النعيم)

المزيد

الآخبار الصحية

لكبح الجوع وخسارة الوزن.. "سر بسيط" في نظام جوكوفيتش ؟

هل يساعد الرجيم في علاج الأمراض العقلية؟

لحماية أسنان طفلك.. هذا الفيتامين يقلل خطر التسوس

أكل الطعام بسرعة.. طريق سريع إلى أمراض خطيرة

المزيد

الآخبار التكنلوجية

ما هي أفضل درجة حرارة لتكييف الهواء في السيارة؟

ذوبان الأنهار الجليدية يوقظ "عمالقة نائمة"!

9 يوليو يشهد أقصر يوم في التاريخ المسجل ؟!!

راتبه عشرات ملايين الدولارات.. زوكربرغ يخطف "عقل أبل"

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