Interacting spectral and temporal properties in Jamaican Creole and Jamaican English vowel production

Abstract

The vowel system of Jamaican Creole has been described as exploiting a contrastive length distinction, wherein long vowels and falling diphthongs contrast with single vowels in identical phonological environments [Wells (1973); Mead (1996)]. For example, /pan/ on, pan, can /tan/ stand /pen/ pen /paan/ to grasp /taan/ turn /pien/ pain. However, the nature of the relative contributions of spectral and temporal differences remains unclear. The interactions between spectral (F1/F2) and temporal properties, and their roles in shaping a three-dimensional vowel space (F1×F2×length) were examined in an acoustic study of the vowel production of 24 speakers at different points along the creole continuum from Jamaican Creole to Jamaican English. Data suggest that Jamaican Creole and Jamaican English speakers utilize vowel duration differently. It will be demonstrated in this paper that, for the Creole speakers, vowel duration functions to enhance slight spectral distinctions among low central and upper-mid-back vowels /a,o,u/. [Mead, ‘‘On the phonology and orthography of Jamaican Creole,’’ J. Pidgin Creole Languages (1996); Wells, Jamaican Pronunciation in London (Blackwell, London, 1973).]