Browsing by Author "Yigezu, Moges (PhD)"

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    An acoustic analysis of a pathological speech: The case of an amharic speaking person with Flaccid dysarthria
    (Addis Ababa University, 2007-07) Messele, Abebayehu; Yigezu, Moges (PhD)
    It is an established fact that language is the chief distinctive feature of humans. Unfortunately, there are a number of individuals missing usage of language and/or speech partially or entirely, from the beginning or lately, momentarily or for a long time, usually for defined reasons or for reasons which cannot yet be explained. This work particularly attempts to investigate the extent of abnormality of the speech of an individual with Flaccid Dysarthria. The subject was diagnosed as a Primary Lateral Sclerosis patient, which is a progressive degenerative motorneuron disease, that is, nerve cells in the body gradually die off. It affects only some of the nerve cells in the body--those that control voluntary movement of muscles. The main objective of this study is to acoustically analyze the patient’s vowels, consonants, intonation contours and duration. Acoustic methods were employed to examine the speech of the patient. More specifically, the data were from solicitation and spontaneous utterances of the subject. They were digitally recorded, sampled and quantized, then fed into a speech analyzer software called Praat. The interpretations of the data were done on the basis of the facts revealed by the software. Accordingly, the patient’s vowels were found to be confined to the center of his oral cavity and have a hypernasal quality. The qualities of his consonants also showed how the problem is serious. Most of the consonants are so distorted that it is difficult to identify them on spectrograms. The suprasegmental aspects of his utterances also exhibit deviant patterns. Hence, the patient’s speech lacks intelligibility.
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    Analysis of Tone in Oromo
    (Addis Ababa University, 2003-06) Bulti, Habte; Yigezu, Moges (PhD)
    Tone is an important phonological phenomenon in Oromo. It distinguishes the meanings of lexical items and signals some grammatical functions. It has not been studied in detail so far. Thus, the aim of this study is to describe and analyse it. The study is organized into four chapters. Chapter one presents a brief overview of the phonology. It also presents the review of previous studies which are relevant to the present study. Chapter two deals with the significance of tone and its lexical and grammatical functions. It also presents toneless morphemes, floating tone and tone stability. In addition, it discusses the possible tonal patterns in the language. Chapter three treats tonal processes such as tone assimilation, tone spreading, tone absorption and tone copying. Chapter four presents the summary and conclusion of the study
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    Documentation and Grammatical Description of Chabu
    (Addis Ababa University, 2015-02) Tsehay, Kibebe; Yigezu, Moges (PhD)
    The main objective of this study was documenting Chabu language: collecting a representative natural linguistic data with a view to multifunctional later use in scientific work and practical applications and to archive in digital archives as important repositories of the language. To make the documentation a good representative of the Chabu language, variety of natural texts of multiple genres have been collected, although only a few are used for the dissertation. This thesis, as part of the documentation’ investigated the endangerment situation of Chabu and described the grammar of the language. To this end, the study employed the Community Based Language Research (CBLR) model (Czaykowska-Higgins, 2009) in its loose sense and Basic Linguistic Theory (Dryer 2006) as theorethical framework. Although the community members did not participate in the planning stage most of the data collection and organisation activities were done in collaboration with members of the Chabu community. In order to make the documentation comprehensive the study followed an extended documentation format that enabled it to document various texts from multiple genres, compile the grammar of a language and produce a dictionary with about 1700 lexical items. The data were gathered in six months stay over three years period through participant and non participant observations, interview, and elicitation techniques with the help of multimedia technology (video and photo cameras and audio recorder) both in natural and induced settings. The elicitation and the cross checking of the data was also done during our stay with Chabu assistants in Meti, Tepi and Addis Ababa in about 10 additional months. The study explored that Chabu is facing a danger of extinction because of multiple factors among which lack of recognition is the most important. Chabu is found to score the lowest point in most of the parameters set by UNESCO as indicators of vitality. The study also disclosed that the name “Shabo” which is found in most recent literature of Chabu has no base from the speaker community and neighboring ethnic groups. The grammatical description revealed that Chabu has twenty four consonant and seven vowel phonemes in which consonant gemination, vowel length and tone have phonemic states. As the study result revealed, Chabu nouns are found to be inflecting for number, gender, definiteness and case. Chabu has a three way number and a two-way gender system that are morphologically marked. Chabu pronoun system is found to be unique in distinguishing gender in three persons and three numbers. The person oriented demonstrative system distinguishes four distance categories (proximal, medial (near the hearer), distal and invisible). The language is found to be having productive system of noun formation. Chabu does not have a separate word class of adjectives; all words that serve as adjective have derivational relation with verbs. Chabu verbs found to be inflected for person, gender, number, tense, aspect and mood by attaching `suffixes and prefixes to the main verb or to the auxiliary. The language has four tenses, three morphologically marked aspects, and a variety of directive moods. In verb stem formation, Chabu displays suffixation of derivational morphemes to verb roots and partial root reduplication in some cases of frequentative formation. The findings also disclosed that Chabu is an SOV language which allows some degree of flexibly. Serial verbs, complement clauses, adverbial clauses, converbs, relative clauses, and coordination construction are among the attested multi clausal construction of Chabu. Finally, the study suggests that the Chabus and their heritage language need to be recognized and protected by both regional states and federal government. Thus, different strategies should be designed to salvage, preserve and promote the language and the cultur of the Chabu by the regional administrations and by national policy makers.
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    Documentation and Grammatical Description of Kara
    (Addis Ababa University, 2018-04) Belete, Alemgena; Yigezu, Moges (PhD)
    This study focuses on the documentation and grammatical description of Kara. Kara is the name of the people and the language. The Kara language, which belongs to Afro-asiatic phylum and Omotic family, is spoken by approximately 1,000 people. The data for documentation and grammatical description has been collected using communicative events and elicitation with the aim of building the corpus of the language. The grammar description part of the study examines the phonological, morphological and syntactic structure of the Kara language. The phonemic inventories show that Kara has 28 consonant phonemes and ten vowel phonemes with [+ATR] or [-ATR] value. Kara nouns distinguish gender/definiteness, number and case. Kara has two way gender distinctions: the masculine and the feminine, and it is semantically motivated. One of the fascinating features of the Kara language is that it uses feminine gender to express augmentative value, but it uses masculine gender to express diminutive semantic value. Kara morphologically distinguish singular from plural. The number system of Kara is also fascinating, i.e. the modifiers agree in number with their head. Adjectives, numerals and demonstratives become singular or plural based on the number of the head noun. The study has also investigated the pronouns and the verbal and nominal modifiers. Furthermore, it describes the structure of the verb roots and the formation of the verb stems. Kara has three verbal forms, and the verb root does not stand alone to form an independent word. The grammar also offers details about sentence types, complex sentences and word-order. Kara is a verb final language, hence, SOV is the basic word-order employed. The order of the noun and its modifiers is flexible. Adverbial clauses may come preceding or following the main clauses. Objects, time adverbs, and very rarely the subject can occur following the main verb in spontaneous speech. Lastly, the study presents transcribed, glossed and translated Kara text, exported as interlinear text from ELAN and the metadata for major activities.
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    Documentation and Grammatical Description ofTapo
    (Addis Ababa University, 2017-06) Gelaneh, Mellese; Yigezu, Moges (PhD)
    This thesis concerns the documentation and description of the grammar of Tapo. Thespeaker call their language l' ap:> (Tapo). Tapo i spoken in Ethiopia and outh Sudan and is widely known in the literature as Upuuo. The sub-family it belongs to is Koman (Coman). The textual data used for documentation has been collected with the aim of building a corpus of the language. Different tasks of the community from daily activities to folktales and personal and community history narrations are recorded and archived. The description of Tapo focuses on phonology, morphology and syntax of the language. The phonology part has primarily focused on the segmental phonology. Tapo has a total of 27 consonant phonemes articulated at bilabial, dental, alveolar, palatal, velar, and glottal places of articulations. All consonants occur in word initial position. Only wordmedial consonant clusters are allowed in Tapo. These clusters consist of a nasal or a lateral consonant that always assimilated in place of articulation to the following consonant, except to dentals. Tapo has a seven-vowel system with ATR distinctions on the high vowels [+ATR] li,uJ and [-ATR] II, u/. Tapo's nominal system has scant noun nominal categorization. The language differentiates between masculine, feminine and neutral singulatives and plurals in nouns. Tapo has an agglutinative type of verbal system.!t is described based on pre and poststem saffixation. Tapo's pre-stem contains bound subject pronouns, conditional, and tense markers. On the other hand, post-stem suffixation incorporates benefactive, mood, directionals and bound object pronouns. The basic word order of Tapo is Agent-Verb-Object in transitive and ubject-Verb in intransitive verbs. Constituents are marked based on hierarchy. Object marking is based on syntactical hierarchy of entities belonging to human, animal and inanimate. The most dominant hierarchy being human entities, as a beneficiary mostly placed following the verb, followed by animates and lastly inanimate entities that would take secondary object position.
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    Segmental and Non-Segmental Phonology of Kūnámá ̄
    (Addis Ababa University, 2018-06) Getachew, Anteneh; Yigezu, Moges (PhD)
    This dissertation presents the descriptions of the segmental and non-segmental phonology of Kunama, a Nilo-Saharan dialect cluster spoken in Western Eritrea and Northern Ethiopia. It also provides an annotated multimedia corpus of the names and description of the Kunama cultural artifacts. The study uses primary data recorded from speakers of the Kunama Shukre dialect, spoken by an isolated minority group living in Tahtay Addi Yabo Woreda of Northwestern Zone of the Tigray Regional State, Ethiopia. The data was collected in three-round fieldworks in a period of two years (2014-15). The study has applied both impressionistic and instrumental analyses methods. The segmental phonology part covers the description of consonant and vowel sounds, phonotactics and syllable structure, phonological and morphophonological process and phonological adaptation of loanwords. Kunama (Shukre) has 18 consonant phonemes, whereas, the glottal fricative /h/ consonant, which has previously been proposed as the 19th consonant phoneme of Kunama, is found to be marginal. Two labialized velar consonants are attested to be the allophonic variants of the basic velar phonemes. The language has five phonemic vowels with an equal number of longer counterparts. The schwa and the central high-close vowel have a phonetic status despite that they are frequent. The analysis of phonotactics and syllable structure shows that the language has a richer and moderately complex inventory of syllable shapes. The productive and the most frequent consonant clusters (CC) follow sonorant-obstruent pattern, in which the prenasalized sequences (Nasal-Obstruent) are the commonest of all. Clusters and geminates occur only word-medially, so more than one consonant is severely marked, word-initially while three consonant sequences (CCC) are disallowed. Typologically, Kunama syllables are specified as light-open, heavy-open, light-closed and heavy-closed structures. Syllable weight specification is based on the mora count in the rhyme constituents of a syllable. Kunama light syllables are mono-moraic, i.e. having either a short vowel or a short vowel with a non-sonorant coda; whereas, the heavy syllables are bi-moraic having a long vowel, a diphthong, or a short vowel with a sonorant coda. A (C) V (C) template that makes an obligatory nucleus and optional margins, therefore, represents the Kunama basic syllable structures. While CV syllable is the unmarked structure, closed syllables (VC and CVC) are constrained word-finally. The morphophonemic processes comprise of terminal vowel deletion, vowel and glide epenthesis, glide formation, vowel rounding assimilation, gemination and degemination. Post-lexical alterations may cause constraint violations and necessitate resyllabification as such some constraints that operate on non-derived lexical items may not diametrically encode onto derivations. The analysis of phonological adaptation of loanwords explores the adjustment of word shapes and the mapping of sound segments of borrowed terms. Accordingly, consonant final loanwords are adapted with epenthesis of the nominal vowel suffix [a], and sound segments are adapted via substitution, deletion and retention strategies. The vowel adaptation is asymmetrical as both phonetically and phonologically grounded changes have been observed; nonetheless, the consonant adaptation is phonologically grounded. The non-segmental phonology part covers the analyses of gemination, vowel length and tone, in the lexicon and in the grammar. Kunama is a tone language with quantity contrast of vowel and consonant length. It has three phonemic tone levels (High, Mid and Low) that combine in nine ways on the surface of bi-moraic syllables and on sequences of two light syllables. These level combinations are claimed to be the basic melodies of the language. Complex (polysyllabic) contour melodies that combine simple rises and falls are attested on polysyllabic words. The study attempts to show the importance of pitch scaling in Kunama tone production as such it proposes a four-point pitch height scale in the tonal space of three distinctive level heights. The F0 scaling splits the high tone into extra-high and high pitches though no evidence shows the prominence of the former in underlying contrast. Tone plays a grammatical role as well, and it marks number of the possessor, in a range of possessive constructions, and number of person object in verbs. It also identifies inclusive vs. exclusive possessor, copula vs. genitive, and used as an intensifier morpheme on adjectives in attributive function. The salient tonal processes in Kunama are triggered by morpheme boundary phenomena. These include spreading and floating of tones, re-linking of floating tones, high tone shifting and docking, contour formation, tone assimilation and a low tone terrace.
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    The Syllable Structure and Syllable Based Morphophonemic Processes in Gawwada: Based on Moraic Model Representations
    (Addis Ababa University, 2011-04) Girma, Firew; Yigezu, Moges (PhD)
    The Gawwada are a small ethnic group in Ethiopia who inhabit the Omo region west of Lake Chamo River and North East of the Konso, and speak a language of the Cushitic family known as Gawwada. This thesis deals with the syllable structure of Gawwada in light of the Moraic model and discusses the sound pattern, basic syllable types, syllable constituents, phonotactic constraints and syllabification as well as syllable-based morphophonemic processes. Unlike the prevIOus studies made by Harageweyn (2002) and Geberew (2003), Gawwada has thirty consonant and five vowel phonemes. Among the thirty consonant phonemes, five of them, fbi, xl, hi, lal, and Iv, are newly identified in this study. The language has also eight basic syllable types: V, W , VC, CV, CVV, CVC, WC, and CWC. In addition, it has a syllable template of optional onset and coda, and obligatory nucleus. Besides, closed versus open, light versus weight, syllable types and mono, bi and multi-syllable have been identified. The study also pointed out that in Gawwada, word initial and final positions do not allow cluster of consonants. Consequently, the inexistence of word initial clusters has made them to be out of moraic considerations because of tbe claim that syllable onsets do not contribute to syllable weight as they are assumed to have no moraic value. Contrary to this, word final clusters do contribute to syllable weight bearing a mora. During the analysis, sequences of three consonant clusters (tri-consonants) have been re-syllabified so as to make them permissible sequences by reducing them to sequences of two clusters at word medial positions. Finally, the moraic model, apart from its basic aim, which is solving syllable related issues such as vowel and consonant length, and light and heavy segments, ha also shown its strength by treating and explaining the morphophonemic changes such asassimilation, deletion and reduplication in light of the phonotactics of the language