s - Wyższa Szkoła Filologiczna we Wrocławiu

On the variability of vocalic inventory in Black South African English 53
Table 4. Word substitution by Bantu L1 listeners (adapted from Wissing 2002: 136)
Word
Reader(s)
Substitutes
bed bad bat bird
Totals
bed
bad
head
had
ten
tan
English (34) 66 0 40 140
Bantu (16) 28 2 16 62
English 22 (114) 0 28 164
Bantu 18 (82) − 26 126
hat had head hurt
English 28 28 (68) 22 146
Bantu 26 24 (50) 22 122
English 12 (18) 20 4 54
Bantu 4 (4) 14 − 22
ten tan turn
English (98) 8 104 210
Bantu (78) 6 86 170
English 12 (6) 38 56
Bantu 2 (6) 12 20
Secondly, the numbers between brackets render the tokens when there was
a perfect match between the word read by the English or Bantu speakers and the
word heard by the Bantu speakers. 8 One can see that there was a higher recognition
of the DRESS vowel in the context [h_d] and [t_n] rather than [b_d]. Conversely,
the TRAP vowel was more readily recognized in the context of [b_d],
rather than [h_d] 9 and [t_n]. The “erroneous” associations, on the other hand,
are a further piece of evidence in favor of the DRESS / TRAP / NURSE merger: for
290 tokens the listeners associated words from the NURSE set with the DRESS
vowel, while for 160 tokens, words form the TRAP set were associated with the
DRESS vowel. Not surprisingly, in only 74 cases words from the DRESS set were
associated with the TRAP vowel. The findings in this study support previous
claims that the DRESS, TRAP and NURSE vowel merge towards DRESS, and also
that TRAP occurs sporadically.
Let me turn now to the status of schwa and its relation to vowel reduction.
Researchers (such as, e.g., Mesthrie 2005, Van Rooy 2008) note that the respective
vowel reduction is largely absent in BSAE. Van Rooy (2008), via Van
8
9
Wissing (2002) excludes them from the substitution results as he shows that they are absent
only for Zulu and Southern Sotho L1 speakers and, hence, a direct matching would not have
been possible for native and non-native speakers of English (a list of the realizations based
on the background of the speaker clarifies the absence of the mentioned input, but it was not
included here for reasons of space).
For the English reader, the Bantu L1 listeners associated it almost equally with head.