Phonological awareness skills of emergent bilingual Rumanyo-English learners
- Authors: Karupu, Erwina Mushinga
- Date: 2023-10-13
- Subjects: Phonological awareness , Grammar, Comparative and general Syllable , Phonemic awareness , Silent reading Ability testing , Diriku language , Emergent literacies
- Language: English
- Type: Academic theses , Master's theses , text
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/425100 , vital:72210
- Description: This thesis is an account of a cross-sectional study which focused on investigating Phonological Awareness (PA) in emergent Rumanyo/English bilingual learners. PA and its contribution to reading fluency were investigated among 47 third grade learners with an average age of 9. 19, at a Namibian School, for which Rumanyo is the language of instruction and English, the first additional language. This cross-sectional study examines two levels of PA: Syllable awareness and phoneme awareness. Measures included three subtasks: identification, segmenting and deletion. Reading fluency was measured through oral reading fluency and silent reading. The findings suggest that learners’ levels of PA are still developing with learners performing better on syllable awareness measures than on phoneme awareness. Reading fluency results evince low levels of proficiency in Rumanyo and in English, an average level of proficiency was recorded. To determine the relationship between PA and reading fluency, a Correlation Matrix was run and followed later with a linear regression. The findings demonstrate that syllable awareness predicted reading fluency in Rumanyo, whilst phoneme awareness did not show any association and as such, the model fit did not show any relationship either. With regards to English, neither syllables nor phonemes were a predictor of reading fluency. The study further examined to what extent the phonology of Rumanyo transferred to English. , Thesis (MA) -- Faculty of Humanities, Linguistics and Applied Language Studies, 2023
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- Date Issued: 2023-10-13
A perfect end: a study of syllable codas in South African Sign Language
- Authors: Köhlo, Mikhaela Demitria Katebe
- Date: 2017
- Subjects: South African Sign Language , South African Sign Language Phonology , Linguistics , Grammar, Comparative and general Syllable
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Masters , MA
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/36127 , vital:24492
- Description: Coda constraints are common in spoken languages. German, for example, can only have voiceless obstruents in the coda position (Lombardi 1999). Most sign language research has been on other sign languages, most notably American Sign Language (ASL). This research serves to contribute to syllable theory and has a methodology that allows for cross-linguistic research, strengthening the understanding of sign languages in general, and enhancing the description of SASL in particular. It is well known that syllables in spoken languages require a vowel nucleus to be well-formed. Sandler and Lillo-Martin (2006) provide evidence of sign languages requiring movement to be considered well-formed: even seemingly stationary signs such as WHO, which occurs at the chin, will have finger wiggling as some form of movement. It is thus natural to assume that movement is akin to vowels in syllable theory (Brentari 1998). Thus, locations are similar to consonants. However, the visual nature of sign allows for simultaneity - holds do not occur by themselves. Next to location, handshapes are phonetically complex features that may impact the constraints at coda position. To my knowledge, there is no formal research on the coda constraints of sign language syllables. The data examined here comes from a video dictionary of approximately 175 words. From this dictionary, a database of coded locations and handshapes are recorded for both the onset and the coda. From this, a consonant inventory is made and patterns are identified. Each source of data is analysed individually based on Brentari’s (1998) Prosodic Model. Patterns that are noticed are then looked at using Brentari’s (1998) framework to account for what phonological rules are dictating constraints. However, as a hearing researcher cannot claim native knowledge of a sign language, the conclusions drawn from the data will be tested using native SASL signers for negative judgement. The preliminary findings of the research suggest that there are constraints on the coda location and handshape of a sign and that this may be a result of the natural classes of handshape and location prohibiting certain onset-coda combinations. The onset and coda on monosyllabic signs mirror each other’s location, while the handshape cannot change in repeated and many monosyllabic signs. These constraints provide more understanding into the rich phonological nature of sign languages.
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- Date Issued: 2017