Vowel systems lettER

This set also involves an /r/-final variant and an /r/-less one in Sranan. There does not seem to be any conditioning involved. The /r/-less variant replaces /-´r/ with /-a/. The /r/-full variant has a final vowel that echoes the previous vowel. Words illustrating this set include: river, bitter and gutter.

It is clear from older forms that the original starting-point for a word like /másra/ was a form like /*másra/. To reach the modern forms we had syncope in Sranan, /r/ > /l/, followed by liquid-loss in Ndyuka, and probably a further reduction of final  to /v/ in Saramaccan, which maintains the distinction between the two sets.