From Jamaican Creole to Jamaican English: Prosody

If we presume that the major model for JamE is written English supported by written normative works such as dictionaries, we can make some reasonable extrapolations about the process by which JamC input becomes JamE output at the prosodic level. Cues from the English writing system, coupled with reference to dictionaries, gives an indication of the location of word stress. In the JamC cases and their JamE equivalents, type I only and type I & II items both bear prominence or word stress on the first syllable. They are, however, over-differentiated in relation to such a model by having two lexically specified prosodic classes amongst such words. Where JamC is over-differentiated in relation to the written English model but does not clash with that model, JamC features are simply transferred to JamE, unnoticed.