Vowel systems STRUT

STRUT words with ME /ǔ/ which developed to EModE /Λ/ are represented in Suriname creoles by English words like cut, jug, run, love, rub, money, enough, country, etc. The main realization of this set of words is with /o, ɔ/.

It is fairly clear that there must have been a Proto-Suriname-Creole vowel phoneme /*Λ/ which could be responsible for these /o, ɔ/-reflexes. We claim this because of the usual distribution of the anaptyctic vowels, which is different from other items with mid rounded organic vowels:

Table 8. The STRUT set

A minority of words that belong to this incidence set in RP and AmE have the phoneme /a/ in the Suriname creoles.

Table 9. STRUT words with /a/

The causation of this /a/-variant is not obvious. Possibly this is supportive of the hypothetical Proto-Suriname-Creole vowel phoneme /*Λ/ referred to above.

Another group of deviant items in the Suriname creoles go together with the FOOT set of words and will be dealt with there.