Date of Award
5-2026
Culminating Project Type
Thesis
Styleguide
apa
Degree Name
English: Teaching English as a Second Language: M.A.
Department
English
College
College of Liberal Arts
First Advisor
Ettien Koffi
Second Advisor
Joy McKenzie
Third Advisor
Mark Petzold
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.
Keywords and Subject Headings
acoustic-phonetics, Somali, Advanced Tongue Root, voice quality register, aryepiglottic folds, vowel harmony
Abstract
This study seeks to determine the precise articulatory nature of Somali vowel harmony, as a part of a continued debate regarding the language. Within contemporary research, two hypotheses have emerged regarding its production: Advanced Tongue Root (ATR) harmony, or an aryepiglottic voice quality register. This paper conducts a comparative meta-analysis of data collected in prior research on languages with ATR harmony and pharyngealized vowel systems, focusing on the behavior of back rounded vowels, in order to find a metric of differentiation to use for the final analysis on Somali. This answer is conditional, thus F2 for back rounded vowels is sought to determine whether it provides an acoustic correlate that can distinguish the two as a means of categorizing the vowel harmony of Somali. A development in this research is the creation of a Vowel Ratio Metric, which quantifies the behavior of vowel sets within the acoustic vowel space. Results show that Somali’s vowel harmony aligns with aryepiglottal voice register phonetic patterns, consistent with prior phonetic data on the language. This study proposes the Vowel Ratio Metric as a useful tool for future cross-linguistic phonetic research, and concludes that Somali is best characterized as a pharyngealized voice quality register.
Recommended Citation
Hanzsek-Brill, Connor D., "A Vowel Ratio Metric Investigation of Somali Vowel Harmony" (2026). Culminating Projects in TESL. 77.
https://repository.stcloudstate.edu/tesl_etds/77
