Phonotactic rules

Like Australian creoles, Aboriginal English tends to reduce consonant clusters in ways common to Atlantic creoles, as described by Holm (1988−1989).

Aphesis is common, as in bout ‘about’, roun ‘around’, cos ‘because’ (Sharpe 1976), leven ‘eleven’, long ‘along’, way ‘away’, I’z ‘I was’, we’z walking ‘we was walking’, onna table ‘on the table’, alla people ‘all the people’ (Sharpe 1977), we’ent ‘we went’. There are also frequent cases of the omission of initial /h/. Syncope occurs occasionally, as in akn ‘acting’. Apocope often occurs, especially involving the loss of final stops after nasals, as in /hεn/ ‘hand’, /hævn/ ‘haven’t’ and /wεn/ ‘went’. The cases of prothesis noted in Kriol are carried over into Aboriginal English, with nused to ‘used to’ and nother ‘other’. In addition, /h/ is frequently added to words where it does not occur in StE, as in hant ‘aunt’, happle ‘apple’ (Alexander 1968), hoval ‘oval’ and huncle ‘uncle’. Epenthesis occurs in /imiju/ ‘emu’ (Sharpe 1976). The common case of paragogue from non-standard Australian English, anythingk ‘nothing’, occurs at least in Sydney Aboriginal English (Eagleson, Kaldor and Malcolm 1982: 135).