Sri Lankan Portuguese Creole - Phonology and Phonetics

Phonology and Phonetics

Precise phonological knowledge of the Sri Lankan Portuguese Creole (SLPC) is limited. The earliest analysis of the language comes from the 19th and early 20th centuries, but since the research was based purely on written data, it lacks insight on how speech was actually produced. The only complete study that includes phonological analysis of native speakers seems to be Ian R Smith’s thesis which was published in 1978. His research surveyed the Creole-speaking people living in the Batticaloa area of Sri Lanka. It can be assumed, unless otherwise indicated, that the phonological information about SLPC in the section on vowels and consonants is solely from his thesis, due to the lack of similar resources of a precise nature.

Vowels
Standard Portuguese (SP) has rich vowel phonology with seven to nine oral vowels (depending on which dialect), five nasal vowels, ten oral diphthongs and five nasal diphthongs. While SLPC has retained the same oral vowels found in Standard Continental Portuguese, it does not make the distinction between nasalized and non-nasalized vowels. While the vowels are derived from Portuguese, the vowel features appear more similar to Tamil, since in both Tamil and the Creole vowels are distinguished by length.
Word internal sequences of two vowels do not occur in SLPC, therefore the creole does not appear to have diphthongs as there are in SP. Again, vowel lengthening seems to take place instead of diphthongization.

Chart A shows a vowel chart for SP, where nasality is distinguished from oral vowels, and a vowel chart for SLPC, where vowel length is a distinctive feature. Chart (B) shows both long vowels (such as the word for ‘wax’, from BrP ‘cerar’) and short vowels (such as in the word for ‘want’, from BrP ‘querer’).

Besides the distinction between vowel length and vowel nasality, the place of stress on vowels distinguishes SP and SLPC. Both Batticaloan Tamil and the SLPC have entirely predictable stress² patterns whereas SP does not. While stress is predictable, it is not simply a surface phenomenon, so it must be represented lexically.
A few rules about stress in SLPC:
1. Either short or long vowels can take on stress, but long vowels always carry stress.
2. A word can contain only one phonetically long vowel, but numerous unstressed short vowels.
3. Short vowels can be stressed only when found in initial syllables.
4. Stress falls on the last underlying long vowel of a word, or on the first vowel of a word having no long vowel.
Stress is important as it relates to the phonological changes that occur in the Creole. For instance, there is by way of prominence reduction of unstressed vowels. This means that relatively long vowels in an unstressed position are replaced by shorter vowels of a similar quality.⁶ :So, as a general rule, low and mid-vowels are contrastive under stress in SLPC, but neutralized and given the features of a mid-vowel when not stressed. Another way to say this is that through a pattern of neutralization, high vowels are eliminated in SLPC. The pattern of vowel reduction is shown in Table (1) below:

Table 1. Patterns of vowel reduction in SLPC on low, unstressed vowels.

Other phonological processes vowels of SLPC demonstrate are epenthesis and elision. Neither is a very common phenomena, however, so they will only be dealt with briefly. The insertion of epenthetic /u/ occurs to prevent the formation of certain consonant clusters that are atypical. One example of this is seen when the verb ‘to judge’ or, is nominalized. This is done by the suffix /-dor/, which requires an epenthetic /u/ when added to the stem /julɡ-/, because the potentially resulting consonant cluster of /lɡd/ does not regularly occur in the language. Therefore the combination of the stem, the epenthetic /u/ and the suffix /-dor/ yields the form, where the /u/ is inserted in-between the /lɡ/ and the /d/. Since word medial sequences of two or more vowels do not occur in Sri Lanka, as mentioned earlier, a process of vowel elision and glide epenthesis can co-occur to prevent vowels from coming together. Firstly, when there exists a possible combination of two vowels as result of some sort of word construction a glide separates them. Secondly, as a result of this the first vowel of the two may be reduced or elided.

A) Standard Portuguese

B)Sri Lanka Portuguese Creole

Consonants
SLPC uses several manners of consonant articulation which are not found in SP. Since this Creole do does express influence from Batticaloa Tamil, English, and Dutch (particularly via loan words.) It is difficult to determine where some of these segments have been loaned from. For instance, the closed front rounded vowel /y/ is considered a glide in SLPC and does not behave this way in Tamil or Portuguese. It seems to have evolved for the high front vowel /i/

As mentioned earlier, SLPC seems to have an affinity for gemination of vowels resulting in a distinction between short and long vowels. As for consonants, there is also a tendency to geminate all voiceless consonants after a short stressed vowel. However, all tense consonants can optionally become geminate. For instance, in the word /feːci/ (lock), the /c/ can become stressed and geminate, to achieve the pronunciation . Similarly, word /saːku/ (bag) can become which can be achieved by the simple rule:
C]-->.

Sri Lankan Portuguese Creole

Standard Portuguese