Fricatives

Several processes have been noted with regard to fricatives in Gullah. According to Turner, the voiceless bilabial fricative [ɸ] is found in words such as fall and staff, where StAmE has [f]. And the voiced bilabial fricative appears in words such as river, very, we, and while where StAmE has either [v] or [w] (1971: 129; 2002: 241). Turner observes a process by which the alveolar fricative [s] is used instead of StAmE [ʃ] in words such as shrimp and shrink (1971: 129; 2002: 245– 246). And he also observes word-initial intrusive [h] in words such as umbrella, artichoke, and empty (1971: 129).

Based on the current speaker’s pronunciations, it appears that there is also a process by which word-initial [h] is deleted. Note in the reading list that the speaker pronounces happy as [api]. This speaker also variably pronounces he as [hi] and [i] in the reading passage. This latter pronunciation may be phonetically motivated (either by the same process affecting happy or by some more general fast-speech phenomenon) or morphologically motivated, given the fact that Gullah speakers often employ a gender-neutral pronoun [i] in place of he, she, or it.

Finally, it is observed by Turner that the interdental fricatives [ð] and [θ] are replaced by [d] and [t], respectively, in Gullah, in words such as this, brother, month, and think (1971: 128; 2002: 245). This process of fricative stopping is clearly still in effect in modern-day Gullah, as exhibited by the current speaker’s pronunciations of words like mouth, north, thought, the, than, then, etc. For this speaker, however, an alternative substitution for [θ] appears to be the alveolar fricative [s]. This substitution is found in the speaker’s pronunciations of the words bath, cloth, and, variably, north.