This thesis investigated the realization of the English voiceless post-alveolar affricate and the voiceless post-alveolar fricative in native Panamanian speakers learning English as a second language. The Spanish of Panama has a typical deaffrication process where the post-alveolar affricate phoneme is mostly pronounced as a fricative; as a result, the Spanish affricate has two allophones, the voiceless post-alveolar affricate and the voiceless post-alveolar fricative that occur in free variation in the Spanish of Panama. The word positions tested were word initially and finally only. Thus, the purpose of the study was to determine the dominant sound in the Spanish of Panama, to identify dialectal allophonic transfer from the Spanish of Panama, and to verify the accomplishment of the phonemic split in English through the frequency of usage of the target sounds. Subsequently, in order to exemplify the deaffrication phonological process of Panama, I developed and discussed a Feature Geometry of the Spanish language along with the Underspecified consonants of the Spanish language. In addition, I tested three main theories about acquisition of contrastive target sounds, Markedness, and similarity and dissimilarity of sounds. The results showed that these Panamanian learners of English produced the English voiceless post-alveolar fricative significantly more target appropriately than the English voiceless post-alveolar affricate. This indicates that the dominant sound in the Spanish of Panama is the dialectal allophone, the voiceless post-alveolar fricative, which I suggest may become the default post-alveolar phoneme in the Spanish of Panama. Subsequently, the high frequency of the voiceless post-alveolar fricative also indicates that the participants transferred their Panamanian Spanish dialectal allophone, the voiceless post-alveolar fricative, into English and more importantly, they have not reached the phonemic split for these two English target sounds. Taking the dialectal allophone, the voiceless post-alveolar fricative, as the default post-alveolar phoneme in the Spanish of Panama, The Markedness Differential Hypothesis (Eckman, 1977) accounts for the observed trends described as follows: the learning of the less marked sound (English voiceless post-alveolar fricative) was easier to acquire and the learning of the more marked sound (English voiceless post-alveolar affricate) was difficult to acquire.

Ziel der vorliegenden Arbeit ist es, die linguistischen Teildisziplinen Phonetik und Phonologie mit der Didaktik des Russischunterrichts zu verknüpfen. In der Arbeit wird ein differenziertes Phoneminventar des Russischen entwickelt, das mithilfe artikulatorisch motivierter distinktiver Merkmale die palatalisierten und nicht palatalisierten Segmente (Phoneme) eindeutig voneinander unterscheidet. Dabei wird die Merkmalsgeometrie als Instrumentarium dahingehend genutzt, um das artikulatorische Merkmal für die Distinktion palatalisierter und nicht palatalisierter Segmente (Phoneme) zu ermitteln. Darüber hinaus wird ein Lösungsvorschlag für die phonologische Einordnung der Affrikaten formuliert. Ziel des didaktischen Teils der Arbeit ist es, ausgewählte thematische Schwerpunkte der Phonetik und Phonologie im Fremdsprachenunterricht Russisch unter Berücksichtigung der Kompetenzorientierung näher zu beleuchten. Dabei wird eine Unterscheidung hinsichtlich der Arbeit an phonetischer und phonologischer Kompetenz vorgenommen. Ein enger Praxisbezug wird dahingehend hergestellt, dass ein mögliches methodisches Vorgehen für die Entwicklung der phonetischen und phonologischen Kompetenz im Russischunterricht aufgezeigt wird.

Thesis (DLitt (African Languages))--University of Stellenbosch, 2005. / This study investigates the Intrusive Stop Formation process in Zulu. In this process an intrusive stop arises when a nasal and fricative are juxtaposed resulting in the following seven affricate sounds /þf’, {v, ts’, dz, tñ’, dL, tS’/. These sounds are theoretically distinct from the four affricate phonemes which occur in Zulu, namely /kl’, dZ, ts’, tS’/. In this study the former are termed derived affricates and the latter pure affricates. Two aspects of Intrusive Stop Formation are focused on - firstly, determining experimentally whether durational differences obtain between pure and derived affricates and secondly, using the results of the experimental investigation to facilitate a feature geometry description of the Intrusive Stop Formation process. In the experimental investigation nine affricate sounds were examined. Words, containing these sounds, were recorded in frame sentences by five speakers, using PRAAT, a speech–processing platform. The duration of the pure and derived affricates were then determined. It was found that pure affricates are durationally longer than derived affricates. The next progression in this study was the incorporation of the experimental results into a feature geometry description of Intrusive Stop Formation. Feature Geometry Theory has enjoyed acclaim because of its ability to retain Distinctive Feature Theory – the crux of Phonology – in a nonlinear framework. However, Feature Geometry Theory faces challenges with regard to the extent to which it includes phonetic detail; and its formalization technique. This study – Intrusive Stop Formation in Zulu : An Application of Feature Geometry Theory – brings a new perspective to Feature Geometry Theory with the incorporation of the Duration tier – significant for the description of the Intrusive Stop Formation process. Furthermore the study introduces a more efficient formalization technique, which facilitates the explanation of the process. It is always incumbent upon endeavours like this study, which examine specific phonological processes, to show relevance. In the concluding section the application of the experimental approach and Feature Geometry Theory is evaluated in terms of the contribution made to the disciplines of Human Language Technology and Speech Disorders. A compact disk accompanies this thesis. It contains the sound files, spectrograms and textgrids of the recorded data.