Phonotactics

As in English, word final /h/ and word initial /ŋ/ are not permitted. There is some variation with regard to syllable structure, especially with respect to consonant clusters. In many Austronesian languages, consonant clusters are not permitted, and this general pattern may have influenced Tok Pisin in its formative period, and still affects that used by speakers of Austronesian languages today. Generally, too, it can be assumed that the more Anglicized the variety, the greater the tendency to allow clusters of two or three consonants according to English patterns. However, little research has been done on this. The best source of information is still Pawley (1975) who looked in detail at the question of epenthetic vowels in the Tok Pisin of an informant from Rabaul. His analysis is limited to this single informant, but highlights some of the problems of deciding on whether the underlying representation is phonemic or not.

A number of possibilities are presented by Pawley’s (1975) data. It may be that the underlying representation is a consonant cluster, with epenthetic vowels variably inserted in certain environments. An alternative interpretation would treat the vowels as phonemic, but elided in certain circumstances. His informant, for example, inserted considerably fewer epenthetic vowels in rapid speech, so one factor is simply speed of delivery. Some of the apparent constraints governing selection of epenthetic vowels are discussed below. Pawley tends towards treating the vowels as transitional features in consonant clusters, especially as some Papua New Guinean languages show such features in “loose” consonant cluster systems. Nevertheless, it appears that some elements which are phonemic vowels in the English source lexis have been reanalyzed as epenthetic in Tok Pisin. A good example is the possessive bilong from the English belong which is normally reduced in speech to blong, blo or even criticized as bl’ to following words as in bl’em (= bilong em) ‘his, her’.