Phonotactic rules

In Kriol, and to a lesser extent in Torres Strait Creole, there is a resistance to consonant clusters in initial or final position. Many of the phonotactic processes observed by Holm (1988−1989) in Atlantic creoles are also in evidence in Australian creoles. For example the omission of one or more sounds at the beginning of a word (“aphesis”), as in /ton/ ‘stone’, /piya/ ‘spear’ (Sandefur 1979: 39); the omission of one or more sounds from the middle of a word (“syncope”), as in Torres Strait Creole, where the middle consonant of three is often dropped word-medially (Crowley and Rigsby 1979); the omission of one or more sounds from the end of a word (“apocope”), as in /ek/ ‘axe’, /fren/ ‘friend’ (Sandefur 1979: 40); the addition of a sound at the beginning of a word (“prothesis”), as in njusimpat ‘to use’ (Fraser 1977: 152) and nother ‘other’ (Dutton 1970: 151); the insertion of a sound in the middle of a word (“epenthesis”), as in jineg ‘snake’, jilib ‘sleep’ (Sharpe and Sandefur 1977: 52), burrum ‘from’ (Sharpe and Sandefur 1977: 58) and anis ‘ants’ (Shnukal 1991); the addition of a sound to the end of a word (“paragogue”), as in wandi ‘want’ (Sharpe and Sandefur 1977: 56) and aksi ‘ask’ (Dutton 1970); and the changing of the order in which two sounds occur in a word (“metathesis”), as in aksi ‘ask’ (Dutton 1970: 144).

Vowel harmony may be observed between affix and stem, as in the case of the transitive verb suffix allomorphs, e.g. tjak-am ‘throw’, kuk-um ‘cook’ (Hudson 1981: 37).