Due: Fri August 13, 2010 when you take the final

Written presentation:

You can select a written presentation of the following project. Characterize the phonemic/phonetic inventory of an unfamiliar language based on a limited number of elicitation sessions. Present your discussion in the form of a chart, discussing the prominent phones and the environments of each phone, capturing generalizations whenever possible. Your chart should follow the layout of the IPA (and use its symbols). Have the place of articulation going across the top, and manner along the left side for the consonants. Present the vowels in the form of a vowel quadrilateral (or triangle as the case may be) separate from the consonants. Nasal vowels should have their own quadrilateral. Support your analysis with minimal pairs whenever possible to illustrate the difference between the phonetic information and the phonological information. That is, once youve identified as many sounds in the language as you can, make some statements about where certain sounds occur and if you can identify any phonemes in the data (through minimal pairs) and identify any allophones.

Please try to word-process your papers whenever possible; at the least write neatly in ink. Phonetic fonts are down-loadable from various sites on the web. One set is at http://www.sil.org, the site of the Summer Institute of Linguistics. Your paper should be five pages in length but could be longer depending on how many examples you produce. Be sure to number your examples. You may feel free to contrast the sounds of your language with those of English but also describe the sounds with regard to the sounds represented by the IPA symbols.

Extras 1 - Phonotactics: Syllable and word structure

On the basis of what you know so far characterize the syllable and word structure of the language. Your characterization should present the minimal structures (onset, rhyme, nucleus, coda) needed to describe the language. What is canonical syllable structure? Are complex onsets allowed? What sort of segments are allowed to fill a coda? What is the status of glides? Do different word categories have different structures? Be sure to support your discussion with examples throughout.

Extras 2 - Prosody

What is the phonetic nature of prominence in the language? Does the language have stress (as in English), tone, some kind of accent? How is it assigned?

Are there different types of prominence for different phonological units? For example, are there differences at the word level, the phrase level, and the sentence level?

Say what you can about intonational contours, maybe just contrasting statements with questions.

Some guidelines for elicitation

Respect and be considerate towards your informant

Do your elicitation in small doses

Prepare well for each session

Observe carefully, imitate and introspect

Try sounds that you know are wrong to determine limits of allowable variation

Take copious notes (Dont erase!), not necessary to tape record, but if you can get permission from your informant, go ahead.

Some comments on final papers

I will evaluate papers on basis of applying the techniques and content of the course to a novel and unknown language (extra points for exotic-ness), looking particularly for detailed and original observations.

I specifically ask people not to consult secondary sources; if you have done so, please indicate in what way these sources guided your investigation.

Format of final papers

I expect a linguistic analysis of the language you picked, focusing on phonetics. That means that the paper needs to be written in the style congruent with linguistics. One thing that this encompasses is an overall tone of objectivity and description. Try not to use first person subjects when possible. Also, there is no need within this style of writing to include literary flourishments that is, just report the facts. Your paper should include the following sections and please use these headings:

Introduction This should be a little background about you and what language you selected. This section doesnt have to be very long and could include an overview of your findings (how many consonants, vowels you found through your elicitation).

Methodology This section should be a detail of your subject (who they are) and how you elicited the data. Also, what method you used (did you record it?; did you transcribe on the spot?; etc) to interpret the data. Also, detail how you decided on certain sounds that is, were some decisions harder than others and how you finally decided on how to transcribe that sound.

Analysis This section reports your findings. Here I want a detail account of all the sounds you were able to identify in the language. Start with consonants first, then discuss vowels. Include glides where you think its appropriate. Also include a consonant and vowel chart. I would go through each sound and organize them either by place or manner of articulation as you catalogue all of the sounds. Please include examples for each type of sound (1 example from the data per sound is sufficient). Do not put all of your transcribed words in the paper, but put them in an appendix that you can refer to. The best way to do this is have an appendix with the English gloss (definition), the word in the other language if you have how its spelled (if not, dont worry about this) and your transcription of that word. Also, it is best if you number your entries so that if you use an example in the paper, you can refer to it by number of the appendix (but still include your transcription and the gloss in the paper itself, but refer back to how to identify it in the appendix). After you catalogue all the sounds, then analyze any other aspects of the language you are able to identify. This includes if you can identify any phonemes or possible allophones, if you notice a patter of distribution for some sounds (they only occur in 1 environment), as well as anything you can say about syllable structure or prosodic features (these are extra, but interesting if you can comment on them).

Conclusion This section ties it all up. Here is where you include a summary of things youve found, as well as any possible suggestions for future studies (including what you would do different? Need more data? Better transcription tools?).

The Other option: Acoustic analysis

Complete the acoustics project by matching spectrograms with the words and providing justification for which word goes with which spectrogram.

You can design your own project, but you need to discuss it with me as soon as you can.