Sonorants

In LibSE, the sequence VN syllable-internally is frequently realized as  i.e. with the nasality transferred to the preceding vowel and the nasal consonant not realized, e.g. /time/ [tã]; however, when the sequence is VNV, the consonant is resyllabified rather than deleted, e.g. timer, [ta.mə]. Also, /l/ is often not present in coda position. Thus, small is realized as [sma], tell as [tε]. That /l/ is present underlyingly is readily demonstrated by the addition of a vowel-initial suffix, which triggers resyllabification of the lateral, i.e. telling [tε.lẽ]. The other liquid, /r/, has disappeared entirely from final and preconsonantal environments. In a few cases where /r/ occurs after a stressed vowel, /r/ and the unstressed vowel that follows it have dropped out. Accordingly, carry is realized as [kε], Merican ‘Settler’ as . Despite its absence in these environments, /r/ usually does show up in onset clusters, e.g. tree [tri], priest [pris]. However, in words where the syllable preceding the onset cluster is stressed, then the /r/ often goes unrealized on the surface, e.g. secretary [sεkətεri] , cartridge [kɑtɪƷ].

One of the speakers whose interview forms part of the Sinoe corpus had a distinctive velar /r/ like that found in Sierra Leonean Krio. It is not clear whether the speaker’s velar /r/ was idiosyncratic or was instead a relic of a pattern that was more common in the past. In the Sinoe Settler speech community as a whole, the word shrimp has changed to swimp [swIm], a sound change consistent with a velar /r/. An elderly Settler teacher in an upriver settlement in Sinoe, asked if there was any other name for "crawfish," answered, "Yes, swimp [swIm], s-w-i-m-p.”