Theme and variation in Jamaican vowels

Abstract

A B S T R A C TReporting the results of an instrumental acoustic examination of the vowel systems of ten Jamaican Creole (or basilect-) dominant and nine Jamaican English (or acrolect-) dominant speakers, this article links phonetic features with sociolinguistic factors. The nature and relative role of vowel quantity and quality differences in phonemic contrast are considered. The question of whether contrastive length operates in speakers' phonological systems is addressed by comparison of spectral and temporal features. Intraspeaker variation in vowel quality is found to play an important role in stylistic variation, demonstrating the complexity of variation in Jamaican varieties. The complex vowel quality (spectral) and quantity (temporal) relations reported here extend our understanding of the spectral and temporal characteristics of vowels involved in phonological contrasts in Jamaican varieties, the range of phonetic variation to be found within a postcreole continuum, and the interaction of phonetic factors in the expression of stylistic variation.

Sociolinguistic Patterns in Seattle English

“…In this study, a conservative approach was taken to representation of vowel trajectory; one intended to minimize the influences of flanking consonants by using 20% and 80% measurement points as “onset” and “offset,” respectively. The spectral overlap assessment metric, or SOAM, was used to address questions of merger (Wassink, 1999, 2006; cf. Hall-Lew & Nycz, 2013) with VOIS3D graphical representation.…”

An investigation of speech rhythm in London English

“…Wassink (1999Wassink ( , 2001Wassink ( , 2006 examined vowel duration in Jamaican English. Female speakers of both Jamaican Creole and Jamaican English had a greater difference in duration between pairs of long and short vowels than male speakers of these varieties.…”

Managing Legacy Data in a Sociophonetic Study of Vowel Variation and Change

“…First, sufficient information had to be included in the metadata or in the recording itself to indicate that interviewees were born and raised in Hawaiʻi and not people who emigrated to Hawaiʻi later in life. 3 This constraint was implemented to be as certain as possible that speakers included in the study were native Pidgin speakers, and descriptions of Pidgin highlight that inter-and intraspeaker variation is clearly present in the language, relatively few studies have applied variationist methods to acoustic data to describe this variation (for exceptions in other creoles, see Kraus 2017;Lesho 2014;Rosenfelder 2009;Sabino 1996Sabino , 2012Veatch 1991;Wassink 1999Wassink , 2001Wassink , 2006.…”