Introduction
Welcome to the Scalar digital book, "ENG 408 Projects: Sounds and Sound Patterns in 12 Languages"!
This book is co-authored by the twelve students who were enrolled in ENG 408 Phonetics and Phonology at SIUE. They have researched and reported on the phonetics and phonology of a specific language of their choosing. They have each authored their own chapter, and the table of contents of this digital book, including chapter titles and authors, is listed below. The students of ENG 408 have worked on their chosen language of focus throughout the semester, with an initial check-in, a final presentation, and the "publication" of their chapter after final revisions.
This is an applied project, meaning that students had the opportunity to apply the terms, descriptions, discussions, generalizations and debates covered in class to an actual, living language. The goal here is to learn something new about other languages through the lens of the topics we cover in the class. Students began with audio files and phonetically transcribed word examples provided through the UCLA Phonetics Lab Archive, which houses recordings from hundreds of languages from around the world. After choosing a focus language based on the availability of audio files and transcriptions, each student gathered reference materials from Lovejoy Library and through online searches.
Rather than writing a traditional (conventional) paper-based research paper, this project has been structured using a locally hosted instance of Scalar, to resemble a digital book (which looks in some ways like a web page, but allows for organization and referencing that looks more like an edited book). Students are the authors of their own chapter contributions. As a result, the projects will have a parallel structure for easy comparison, but will also reflect the unique efforts and styles of each student author. This digital book structure also allows students to include different types of media, including sound files, videos and images to more effectively illustrate particular sounds and patterns.
These chapters are not meant to replace peer-reviewed, published descriptions of the languages that may be found by searching through reference materials. Rather, they highlight the main aspects of the sound systems of the different languages, with overviews of the segmental (consonant, vowel) phonemes and their distributions, a discussion of syllable structure and phonotactics, some examples of allophonic alternations and their environments or domains of application, and also a focus on a particularly interesting aspect of the language (for example: tone, stress, voicing/phonation, or particularly interesting examples of allophonic variation). All chapters have a references section at their end so that interested readers can consult those works to learn more.
Each chapter is tagged, at the end, to this Introduction, so that you can return to the Table of Contents for this book. This allows you to either read the book in a linear order, or else browse the book in any order that you like. Just look for the "Introduction" tag at the end of each chapter.
We hope that you enjoy our book!
The Class of ENG 408 "Phonological Analysis"
This book is co-authored by the twelve students who were enrolled in ENG 408 Phonetics and Phonology at SIUE. They have researched and reported on the phonetics and phonology of a specific language of their choosing. They have each authored their own chapter, and the table of contents of this digital book, including chapter titles and authors, is listed below. The students of ENG 408 have worked on their chosen language of focus throughout the semester, with an initial check-in, a final presentation, and the "publication" of their chapter after final revisions.
This is an applied project, meaning that students had the opportunity to apply the terms, descriptions, discussions, generalizations and debates covered in class to an actual, living language. The goal here is to learn something new about other languages through the lens of the topics we cover in the class. Students began with audio files and phonetically transcribed word examples provided through the UCLA Phonetics Lab Archive, which houses recordings from hundreds of languages from around the world. After choosing a focus language based on the availability of audio files and transcriptions, each student gathered reference materials from Lovejoy Library and through online searches.
Rather than writing a traditional (conventional) paper-based research paper, this project has been structured using a locally hosted instance of Scalar, to resemble a digital book (which looks in some ways like a web page, but allows for organization and referencing that looks more like an edited book). Students are the authors of their own chapter contributions. As a result, the projects will have a parallel structure for easy comparison, but will also reflect the unique efforts and styles of each student author. This digital book structure also allows students to include different types of media, including sound files, videos and images to more effectively illustrate particular sounds and patterns.
These chapters are not meant to replace peer-reviewed, published descriptions of the languages that may be found by searching through reference materials. Rather, they highlight the main aspects of the sound systems of the different languages, with overviews of the segmental (consonant, vowel) phonemes and their distributions, a discussion of syllable structure and phonotactics, some examples of allophonic alternations and their environments or domains of application, and also a focus on a particularly interesting aspect of the language (for example: tone, stress, voicing/phonation, or particularly interesting examples of allophonic variation). All chapters have a references section at their end so that interested readers can consult those works to learn more.
Each chapter is tagged, at the end, to this Introduction, so that you can return to the Table of Contents for this book. This allows you to either read the book in a linear order, or else browse the book in any order that you like. Just look for the "Introduction" tag at the end of each chapter.
We hope that you enjoy our book!
The Class of ENG 408 "Phonological Analysis"
- Introduction
- Contributor Biographies
- Chapter 1: The Sounds of Portuguese, by Eyitayo Akomolafe
- Chapter 2: The Sounds of Armenian , by Matthew Briskovich
- Chapter 3: The Sounds of Dutch, by Sophie Compton
- Chapter 4: The Sounds of Standard Chinese, by Daniel Flaum
- Chapter 5: The Sounds of Turkish, by Grace Garner
- Chapter 6: The Sounds of Swahili
- Chapter 7: The Sounds of Romanian, by John Lynch
- Chapter 8: The Sounds of Icelandic, by Gage Peek
- Chapter 9: The Sounds of Cusco Quechua, by Susan McDonald
- Chapter 10: The Sounds of Pirahã, by Emmy Pruitt
- Chapter 11: The Sounds of Norwegian, by Lam Tran
- Chapter 12: The Sounds of Murrinh-Patha, by Carson Woodfin