Browsing by Author "Negesse, Feda(PhD)"

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    An Acoustic Analysis of Fricatives Produced by Typically Developing Child and Adult Speakers of Oromo.
    (AAU, 2019-03) Geshe, Dejene; Negesse, Feda(PhD); Jongman, Allard(Prof.)
    The present study was aimed to investigate word initial and medial voiceless fricatives /f, s, ʃ, h/ produced by typically developing children between the age of 3 and 6 and adult speakers of Haraghe Oromo dialect. The study investigated whether fricatives were distinct as a function of noise duration, normalized amplitude, and spectral features. The work included fricatives both in singleton and geminate forms. The word initial fricatives were all in singleton form because word or syllable initial geminationation is not permissible in Oromo. The extent to which the sounds vary as a function of vowel context, speakers‟ age and gender in both phonetic contexts was investigated. Among the parameters analyzed, fricative duration, normalized amplitude and the first three spectral moments (spectral mean and spectral standard deviation and spectral skewness) were more effective to discriminate fricatives. But only the third spectral moment in the CV and VCV fricatives and the second spectral moment in the VCV fricatives distinguished all fricatives in terms place of articulation. The spectral kurtosis was the least or almost not robust cue to discriminate fricatives. Similarly, locus equation did not discriminate fricatives. The result supports the claim that locus equation is not a salient acoustic cue to distinguish fricatives.In the study anatomical, physiological and developmental or behavioral factors played roles to bring variations as a function of place, vowel, age and gender. Surprisingly, gender difference was observed at early age which has been speculated to be conditioned by developmental or behavioral factors. The difference between geminate and singleton fricatives was evident both in durational and spectral attributes indicating that the two phonemes vary temporally and physiologically. In the CV context the voiceless glottal fricative behaved predominantly like vocalic segments than consonants, especially in having highly elevated average measures of spectral skewness and kurtosis. Among all fricatives /s/ turned out to be the most resistant to coarticulation and the least to be classified by the linear discriminant analysis. This typical nature of the sound may indicate that it was the last to be acquired by children among the test fricatives.
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    Standardization of Oromo: Orthographic and Lexical Perspectives
    (AAU, 2021-06) Leshyibelu Gelaglie, Desalegn; Negesse, Feda(PhD)
    This study describes the orthographic and lexical standardization of Oromo. Qualitative research design was employed to describe the orthographic and lexical standardization of Oromo. Both primary and secondary sources of data were used. Focus group discussions and an interview were the primary sources of data; whereas the documents compiled by the standardization committee of Oromo and the primary and secondary school textbooks were the secondary sources of data. Even though there are a number of scholars who argue for and against the use of Roman based script, this study argues that Roman based script (Qubee) should be continued to write Oromo as a result of the linguistic, practical, acceptance and from the country's language policy point of views. Despite its occurrence in the various texts of Oromo, and its inclusion as an independent phoneme in the phonemic inventory of the language, the grapheme for the glottal stop is still not devised. Hence, this study, strongly recommends that it has to be represented with grapheme. Since the main reason for opting Roman based script is to mark the geminated realization of grapheme, this study argues that the sounds represented by the digraphs have to be marked when geminated. Though it requires experimental investigation, the graphamatic representation of the ejectives [t’], [k’], [tʃ’] and [p’] may affect the maximum transfer of skills and may have a negative impact on the transfer of reading skills in English and Oromo as the graphemes with which these phonemes are represented are not the same in both languages. This pedagogical and transfer of reading skill challenges can be resolved via replacing the existing graphemes , , and by , , and respectively. The geminated realization can better be marked via doubling ony the first letter to be economical. The current alphabetic alignment of characters of the language is not systematic, particularly with regard to the order of digraphs in the alphabet. Hence, the study suggests the revisiting of the alphabetic order of the language.The finding also revealed that there are variations when writing Oromo ordinals, compounds, abbreviations, lexical and other word spacing related problems are the challenges of the standardization process of the language. The study believes that variation is due to the lack of codification and coordination among the stakeholders. Concerning the lexical elaboration strategy, both internal and external meanes are extensively applied in both the documents of the standardization committee of Oromo and in the textbooks to enrich the language. Semantic extension, derivation, compounding, blending, abbreviations, borrowing and loan translation are among the means which are used to elaborate i the language. Abbreviation and semantic extension are less productive in documents of the standardization committee of Oromo than in the textbooks. Semantic extension and borrowing and are more extensively used in the textbooks than in the documents of SCO. Meaning extension, derivation, compounding, blending, borrowing and loan translation are the most productive means of lexical elaboration in Oromo. All loanwords in Oromo are subject to modification. Regarding source language preferences, English is the main source of loanwords of Oromo as English is well developed to express scientific and technological concepts followed by Amharic, Arabic, Italian, Swahili and French. Greek loanwords are almost none in Oromo