Doctoral Dissertation Research: Phonology of Betsimisaraka Malagasy

University Of Delaware, Newark DE

Investigators

Abstract

The goal of this research project is to deepen our understanding of the range of possible phonological systems across human languages by documenting and analyzing the understudied phonology of the Betsimisaraka dialects of Malagasy, spoken on the East coast of Madagascar. This project consists of at least six months' fieldwork on Northern Betsimisaraka with the aim of producing a complete phonological analysis of the dialect. Careful observations of native, monolingual speakers' articulations and acoustic measurements will be used to answer basic questions regarding the language's sound inventories. Systematic variations in pronunciation will be documented and analyzed, with special attention paid to processes known to occur in the Standard dialect of Malagasy. All data collected during elicitation sessions will be entered into a database and later archived following E-Meld's school of best practices. In addition to theoretically neutral descriptions of the phonology, analyses will be provided in both rule-based and constraint-based theoretical frameworks. Xerox's Finite State Transducer software will assist in the construction of these analyses, resulting in scripts that offer complete models of the language's phonology. It should be noted that Northern Betsimisaraka, though usually referred to as a dialect, may even constitute a language itself, based on recent studies on the mutual intelligibility of Malagasy speech varieties. The data and phonological analysis from this project could be used to help determine the Madagascar's exact dialectology. Sound files, digital photos, and videos, will be made publicly available to those who wish to do further phonological studies on the language, as well as to cultural institutions in Madagascar. Sound and video files will largely consist of local stories and conversations, granting them applications outside of phonology, from linguists wishing to investigate Betsimisaraka sentence structure to those researchers outside linguistics with interests in anthropology and other cultural studies.