Vowel systems TRAP

TRAP words with ME /ă/ are represented in Suriname creoles by English words like cat, back, have, ants, thank, arrow, etc. The normal realization of these words in the Suriname creoles is as a short low centralized vowel.

The anaptyctic vowel here seems to be normally sensitive to the nature of the final consonant:

Table 5. The TRAP set

The metathesis of /sk/ removes ask from the ambit of the BATH words. Cabbage was also earlier /tja’bisi/ in Sranan.

A number of words that belong to this incidence set in RP and AmE have different realizations in the Suriname creoles.

Table 6. TRAP words with deviant realizations

Catch is widely realized with a mid vowel in other creoles, as well as in many English and American dialects: Jamaican /k(j)etʃ/ , Guyanese /ketʃ/ , etc. Further, a form [kɪtʃ] is found in a number of places in S. and E. England.

The raising of the vowel of hang is present in the modern dialects around London, and had taken place by the seventeenth century in Cockney (Matthews 1938).