Specific historical sound changes underlie the phonological development in Sao Vicente
the verdict
INSUFFICIENT LEANING
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Discussion threads and encyclopedia entries touch upon specific sound shifts in the São Vicente dialect, but do not comprehensively establish the broader phonological development.
# What sound change(s) underlie [iʒ-] in São Vicente?
Tags: sound-change, portuguese, creoles
- Score: 11
- Views: 277
- Answers: 1
- Answered: yes
- Asked by: Dan Getz (602 rep)
- Asked: 2016-01-05
- Edited: 2016-04-16
- Site: linguistics
## Question
Is there a particular sound change that would explain changing a word-initial [ʒu] (or alternatively [dʒu]) to [iʒ] before a stressed syllable? Or might this be best explained as dropping the [u] by syncope and adding a [i] by prothesis?
I found this in a couple words of the São Vicente dialect of Cape Verdean Creole, which is related to both Portuguese and other dialects of Cape Verdean Creole:
| Portuguese | Sotavento Creoles | São Vicente |
|-------------------|-------------------|-------------|
| jogar [ʒug'aɾ] | ['dʒugɐ] | [iʒ'ga] |
| ajudar [ɐʒudˈaɾ] | ['dʒudɐ] | [iʒ'da] |
This dialect often elides unstressed [i] and [u] sounds in words, compared to other dialects or languages. So a change from [ʒu-] → [ʒ-] (or [dʒu-] → [ʒu-] → [ʒ-]) would make some sense. In other languages I'm familiar with, [ʒda] or [ʒga] would be seen as "unpronounceable", so adding an initial vowel could make sense.
However, this particular dialect
São Vicente Creole
São Vicente Creole is the name given to the variant of Cape Verdean Creole spoken mainly in the São Vicente Island of Cape Verde. It belongs to the Barlavento Creoles branch. It is the second most widely spoken Cape Verdean creole. It has produced literature from a lot of writers and musicians including Sergio Frusoni and many more.
## Characteristics
Besides the main characteristics of Barlavento Creoles the São Vicente Creole has also the following ones:
- The progressive aspect of the present is formed by putting tí tâ before the verbs: tí + tâ + V.
- The sounds /s/ and /z/ are palatalized to [ʃ] and [ʒ] when they are at the end of syllables. Ex.: fésta “party” pronounced [ˈfɛʃtɐ] instead of [ˈfɛstɐ], gósga “tickles” pronounced [ˈɡɔʒɡɐ] instead of [ˈɡɔzɡɐ], más “more” pronounced [maʃ] instead of [mas].
- The stressed final sound /ɐ/ is pronounced /a/. Ex.: já/ʒa/ instead of djâ/dʒɐ/ “already”, lá/la/ instead of lâ/lɐ/ “there”, and all the verbs that end by ~â, calcá/kɐlˈka/ instead of calcâ/kɐlˈkɐ/ “to press”, pintchá/pĩˈtʃa/ instead of pintchâ/pĩˈtʃɐ/ “to push”, etc.
- The sound /dʒ/ (that originates from Portuguese /ʎ/, written “lh”) is represented by th
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