Documenting implosive variation in Atchan and Nghlwa
Alexandra Pfiffner, Professor
Linguistics
Closed. This professor is continuing with Fall 2024 apprentices on this project; no new apprentices needed for Spring 2025.
Implosives are a type of consonant found in 13% of the world’s languages (Maddieson, 1984) and are particularly widespread throughout the languages of sub-Saharan Africa. However, they remain extremely understudied in phonetics.
The goal of this project is to work through fieldwork recordings from Summer 2024 with speakers of Atchan (ISO:ebr) and Nghlwa (ISO:gwa), two Kwa languages spoken in the Abidjan area of Côte d'Ivoire. These two are related languages, but have different implosive inventories. The recordings are of individual speakers reading word lists, and they will need to be annotated and coded for phonetic data.
Role: The undergraduate student research assistants will be responsible for:
1) Annotating recordings (with my field notes and word lists as a guide) with the ELAN program
2) Creating TextGrids in Praat and segmenting words and their individual phonemes
3) Coding implosives for various acoustic factors
4) Helping with data analysis
Qualifications: Previous experience in Ling 110 and/or using Praat is beneficial, but not necessary, as students will be trained specifically for this project. Basic knowledge of French would also be helpful, but is not necessary. An interest in phonetics is a must.
Hours: to be negotiated