Vowel systems DRESS

DRESS words with ME /ě/ , and to some extent /ε:/, are represented in Suriname creoles by English words like neck, bed, egg, bread, dead, head, any, bury, ready, etc. The /ε:/ words are generally spelt ea. The normal representation of these differs in the various languages, although the phonemic symbol /e/ is traditionally used in all of them. In Sranan /e/ is usually  for instance. In Ndyuka /e/ is normally [e ~ ε], and in Saramaccan /e,ε/ are usually [e,ε] respectively. /ε/ is employed largely in Saramaccan in these words in combination with an anaptyctic vowel /-ε/.

Table 3. The DRESS set

A number of words that belong to this incidence set in RP and AmE have different realizations in the Suriname creoles.

Smith (1987) states: “According to Dobson (1957) raising of /e/ to /i/ is a fairly common process in the fifteenth or sixteenth century in the South-east. In the seventeenth century ships’ logs we find frequent examples of this raising, e.g. chists ‘chests’. Matthews (1938) provides many examples from Cockney including chistes (1553).”