Norfuk vowel phonemes

Our preliminary analysis of vowels in the speech of two broad Norfuk speakers gathered in the late 1950s reveals a wide range of phonetic variation, and the nature of the available data does not permit us to pursue a conventional phonemic analysis (eliciting minimal pairs, testing informants for contrasts and in various phonological environments etc.). However, it seems that even at the time of Flint’s survey, the pronunciation of Norfuk words reflected their diverse lexical origins and grammatical status. It may be useful to adopt a notion from Lexical Phonology and to distinguish between a core stratum and a peripheral stratum of phonological contrasts. The core stratum applies to the stock of P-N historical lexical items (for which 18^th-century English was the lexifier) and to the vestiges of the original creole grammatical forms (such as se ‘copular’ etc.). The peripheral stratum of phonological contrasts applies to more recent English loan words and ‘code-switchings’, which are parasitic upon the speakers’ knowledge of standard Norfolk English.

Our tentative proposal for a set of core stratum Norfuk vowels is summarized in Figure 3.