Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

A Phonological Analysis Of Asu, James Passetti

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis provides an analysis of the phonology of Asu, a small and endangered Nupoid language of Nigeria. The corpus of data used for the analysis comes from more than two hours of recordings of a word list for the language, provided to me by the historian and anthropologist Constanze Weise.

The Asu language recognizes only two syllable structures, CV and CGV. The only syllables without onsets are formed by four noun class prefixes [è-,ē-, à-,ā-], that create Asu nouns without onsets word-initially.

The phonemic inventory of consonants consists of seven pairs of corresponding voiced-voiceless obstruents at the labial, alveolar, …

Theory And Practice: Phonological Awareness Instructional Methods Used In Deaf Education, Mary Cantino

Theses and Dissertations

An inequality in literacy rates exists between deaf children and their hearing peers. Research indicates that visual phonic interventions such as Visual Phonics used alongside a phonics program enhances grapheme-phoneme correspondence. That practice in turn improves overall literacy achievement. However, as rates deaf literacy continue to lag ongoing research indicates that teachers may be ill prepared to use research-based interventions. This study seeks to identify the frequency of teacher implementation of Visual Phonics interventions as well as their exposure to these interventions via teacher education and professional development. This study will investigate if the presence of these elements by using …

The Phonology Of Mbati, Sarah Gloria Lepage

Theses and Dissertations

This description of the phonology of Mbati/Isongo (C13) (mdn) of CAR is based on a word-list recorded by native Mbati speakers. A description of nominal and verbal morphology is included as a foundation for discussing morphophonemic processes. Only open syllables and consonant-glide clusters are allowed. Alveolar and velar plosives are affricated or palatalized before the high front vowel. Prenasalized consonants act as phonological units, rather than clusters. Mid-vowels within noun roots harmonize according to the feature [ATR]. [−ATR]-dominated vowel assimilation occurs within verb stems. Vowel hiatus is resolved by glide formation, diphthong formation, elision, and epenthesis, depending on the vowels …

The Vowels Of Urban Qatari Arabic, Mark Daniel Shockley

Theses and Dissertations

Urban Qatari Arabic is a variety of Gulf Arabic [afb] spoken by Qataris with traditionally sedentary tribal backgrounds. This study examines phonetic and phonological aspects of Urban Qatari Arabic vowels using acoustic phonetic data gathered in Qatar. A new phonemic vowel inventory is proposed, including five long vowels and two short vowels. This finding contradicts published studies on Gulf Arabic, which include three or more short vowels; however, it is not unexpected when studies are compared from nearby Arabic varieties. The vowel inventory is also investigated using four linear mixed-effects regression models. In Gulf Arabic, variation in short vowel backness …

Perception And Production Of Nanning Mandarin Fourth Tone, Julie Flaming

Theses and Dissertations

Local varieties of Mandarin Chinese have been underdocumented. This study focuses on Mandarin high falling fourth tone (T4), as pronounced in connected speech by four female speakers native to Nanning City and its surrounding areas, in Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region. Surface forms of T4 and the high level tone (T1) often exhibit minimal difference, most likely due to the strong Cantonese influence in the area. I compare the pronunciation of T4 in multiple environments to the predictions about Standard Mandarin T4 surface forms in those same positions. Nanning T4 is flatter overall than Standard Mandarin T4 in all positions, with …

Tone In Acatlán Mixtec Nouns, Esteban I. Méndez-Hord

Theses and Dissertations

Varieties of Mixtec (an Oto-Manguean language group spoken in southern Mexico) have often been analyzed as having a three-way tonal distinction: Low, Mid and High. I present evidence from original research on simple, alienable nouns, that only two lexical tones, /H/ (corresponding to the traditional Mid tone) and /L/, where some H tones are floating, are needed to describe noun roots in Acatlán Mixtec. In essence, the extra-H tone (corresponding to the traditional Hi tone) only occurs in derived environments, which involve the interaction of tones from two or more morphemes. The bulk of the analysis uses H and L …

Handshapes In Afghan Sign Language, Justin Power

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis presents aspects of handshapes in Afghan Sign Language [afg]. Afghan Sign Language is a Deaf sign language found in Afghanistan (Lewis, Simons, and Fennig 2014).

Signs in Afghan Sign Language contrast based on the handshape parameter. Furthermore, handshapes contrast based on selected fingers, thumb configuration, arrangement, and aperture. The thesis gives evidence for the selected fingers features [one], [two], [three], and [four]; for the thumb configuration features [opposed], [radial], and [contacting]; for the arrangement features [spread], [joined], and [crossed]; and for the aperture features [open] and [closed].

Of the 22 expected feature combinations, 18 are found in the …

A Statistical Approach To Syllabic Alliteration In The Odyssean Aeneid, Cory S. Robinson

Theses and Dissertations

William Clarke (1976) and Nathan Greenberg (1980) offer an objective framework for the study of alliteration in Latin poetry. However, their definition of alliteration as word initial sound repetition in a verse is inconsistent with the syllabic nature both of the device itself and also of the metrical structure. The present study reconciles this disparity in the first half of the Aeneid by applying a similar method to syllable initial sound repetition. A chi-square test for goodness-of-fit reveals that the distributions of the voiceless obstruents [p], [t], [k], [k^w], [f], and [s] and the sonorants [m], [n], [l], and [r] …

Numeral Incorporation In American Sign Language, Vanessa L. Jones

Theses and Dissertations

Numeral incorporation is a moderately productive process in ASL which combines a numeral and a base to form a compounded fully formed sign. Numeral-incorporated signs involve some sort of simultaneity of the base and the numeral. I interviewed six individuals who use ASL as their primary language in order to gather examples of numeral-incorporated signs in ASL, thus getting a sampling of variation in the American deaf community.

Traditionally, numeral incorporation has been viewed as a process of combining a numeral sign with a noun, which I call a source sign. Instead, I found that the source signs are separate …

Allophonic Variation In The Spanish Sibilant Fricative, Alison Garcia

Theses and Dissertations

In Spanish, the phoneme /s/ has two variants: [z] occurs in the coda when preceding a voiced consonant, and [s] occurs elsewhere. However, recent research has revealed irregular voicing patterns with regards to this phone. This dissertation examines two of these allophonic variations. It first investigates how speech rate and speech formality contribute to the gradient and variable nature of the voicing assimilation rule. Next, it explores possible intervocalic /s/ voicing in Highland Colombian Spanish.

In accordance with other studies, the results showed partial voicing of coda position /s/ before voiced consonants (25%-80% voiced frication noise). Furthermore, there was scarce …

The Phonology And Morphology Of Verb Forms In Mubi, Davis Prickett

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis is an analysis of the verb system of Mubi, an Eastern Chadic language spoken in central Chad. Previous brief analyses of the Mubi verb system have been used to demonstrate and reconstruct the Proto-Chadic verb system. However, these analyses are based on a very limited amount of data and information on the language. This thesis provides more complete data on the verb system of Mubi in order to attain a more comprehensive description and analysis, as well as to evaluate the previous claims that have been made regarding the verb system.

Chapter 1 gives a general introduction to …

Phonological And Phonetic Aspects Of Enggano Vowels, Brendon E. Yoder

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis describes aspects of Enggano phonology and phonetics, primarily at the word level. It focuses mainly on vowels and vocoid sequences.

The Enggano phoneme inventory consists of twelve consonants and fourteen vowels in a seven-vowel oral system and an analogous seven-vowel nasal system. There are seven possible syllable types. Word stress is consistently final in both monomorphemic and polymorphemic words. Acoustic measurements show that word stress is indicated by intensity in closed syllables, and possibly by length and pitch in both open and closed syllables.

There are a few allophononic processes in Enggano. An intrusive vowel (Hall 2006) is …