Sound system Vowels

Table 1 summarizes some of the phonetic realizations of Gullah vowels. In each case, the first symbol or set of symbols represents the pronunciations provided by the speaker recorded for this project—an elderly African-American female basket maker from Mount Pleasant, South Carolina. Additional symbols summarize observations made by Turner (1971, 2002) with regard to these sounds. Since some changes are likely to have taken place in the Gullah sound system since Turner’s fieldwork was conducted, any apparent differences in Turner’s observations and those made with regard to the current data set are noted in the text. It should also be noted that none of these sounds have been acoustically measured.