Early creole syllable structure: evidence from early varieties

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4 Ingo Plag and Mareile Schrammthe texts that had sufficient length and were rated highest made it into our corpus, whichfinally consisted of 1036 word types. A list of the selected texts can be found in theappendix.All sources show a certain amount of variation, with the Early Jamaican text being moststriking in this respect. Of course, one could argue that this variation is due toinconsistencies in the notation of the source texts. However, as we selected only those EarlyJamaican texts which appeared most reliable, we should not expect this factor to influencethe quality of the corpus to great measures. Another explanation for the variability could bethat it was actually a prevalent feature of Early Jamaican. This does not seem unlikely,considering what we find in the modern variety of the creole. In 1961, DeCamp referred tothe linguistic situation in Jamaica as one of a continuum, “ranging from the speech of themost backward peasant labourer all the way to that of the well-educated urban professional”(1961: 82). Likewise, in a more recent study, Patrick (1999) finds that speakers of JamaicanCreole differ considerably in their linguistic performance. The high degree of variation thusappears to be a general characteristic of Jamaican from early on.All source texts were first digitalized, then word lists were created and each word typewas coded in an electronic database for the relevant phonological properties. For ouranalysis we concentrated on the clear majority patterns found in the creole data, mostlyexcluding isolated variants from the discussion. 3 However, in those cases where thevariability is substantial in a particular context, it was included in the analysis. Where thevariation is intriguing for some other reason, we comment on it in the relevant sections.The results of our investigation are described in the next section. 43. ResultsIn this section we will first take a look at complex onsets, then turn to word-final codas andfinally to word-internal consonant clusters. It will become clear that there is a substantialoverlap in the patterns of all four varieties, but there are also considerable differences, withthe Surinamese creoles patterning differently from the island creoles.3.1. Complex OnsetsWith regard to onset structures we observe a striking similarity between the four creolelanguages. All of them allow complex onsets consisting of two consonants, provided thatthese onsets obey the sonority principle (e.g. Clements 1990). Thus, different kinds ofword-initial obstruent-sonorant clusters are possible and attested:3 But see, for example, Plag and Uffmann (2000) for a detailed quantitative analysis of deletion andepenthesis in Early Sranan sources.4 Initial exploratory studies of Early Saramaccan, Early St. Kitts and Early Jamaican were carried outby Rotter (2002), Schüttenhelm (2002) and Schramm (2003). The analysis of Early Sranan is takenfrom Alber/Plag (2001).
Early creole syllable structure 5(4) English creolea. snake > sneki ESRSuriname > Srananbrake > brekib. afraid > frede ESAself > srepismoke > smokoc. broke > bruk ESKsleep > sleepsweet > sweetd. truth > trut EJAM 5swim > swimsmall > smallIf, however, the initial cluster violates sonority, as the /s-plosive/ clusters do in English,these clusters are uniformly repaired in all four creole varieties by deletion of the firstconsonant, i.e. /s/. Consider the data in (5) through (8):(5) English ESRa. speak > pikistand > tanstrong > trangascrape > krebisquare > kwerib. speak > *sipiki, *sikistrong > *sitaranga, *srangac. smoke > smoko (*somoko, *moko, *soko)snake > sneki (*sineki, *neki, *seki)d. sleep > slibi/sribi (*silibi, *sibi, *libi)drink > dringi (*diringi, *ringi, *dingi)(6) English ESAa. speak > pikkisteer > tîristrong > trangascratch > krassib. speak > *sipikki, *sikkistrong > *sitaranga, *srangac. smoke > smoko (*somoko, *moko, *soko)snake > sneki (*sineki, *neki, *seki)d. bless > blessi (*bilessi, *lessi, *bessi)drink > dringi (*diringi, *ringi, *dingi)5 Note that in EJAM there are some isolated forms in which the second consonant, usually an /r/ or an/l/, is deleted (e.g. blaspheme > b’apheme).
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Early creole syllable structure: evidence from early varieties

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