Drafts by Jamilu Abdullahi
Unpublished PhD Thesis, 2018
This thesis presents results of a collection of studies that focuses on the production and percep... more This thesis presents results of a collection of studies that focuses on the production and perception of plosives, implosives, and fricatives by native speakers of Hausa and Malay. Selections of stops and fricatives were chosen from these two languages as they provided controls for interpretations of the analysis. Implosives are found in Hausa but not in Malay, and likewise specific stops and fricatives are found in Malay but not in Hausa. The first objective focuses on the production of stops and acoustic analysis of plosives and implosives by two groups of native speakers. The acoustic comparison would bring a further understanding of acoustic cues that are related with voiced plosives and voiced implosives. This will help in investigating the perception and production difficulties of the plosives and implosives. A total number of 45 Hausa native speakers and 45 Malay native speakers were recruited to participate in the study. All the participants were given a set of words consisting of the different combination of the target sounds to produce. PRAAT (Boersma & Weenink, 2001) was used to acoustically analyse all the recordings. In particular, voice onset time (VOT) and closure duration (CD) was measured for all the target consonants. The findings also showed that VOT is a distinctive feature that distinguishes place of articulation for various classes of plosives but it does not discriminate plosives from implosives. Instead, CD is a more reliable acoustic cue to differentiate between voiced plosives and voiced implosives. The result also show that the universal VOT categories (i.e. prevoicing, short voicing lag, and v long voicing lag) are not refined enough to account for differences between plosives and implosives. viii ACKNOWLEDGEMENT First and foremost, I gratefully thank Merciful and Almighty Allah to be the source of all strength and patience to accomplish this work. Alhamdulillah, wish His blessing I have the ability to finish this thesis even though there are so many obstacles that I had to go through during the completion of this thesis. At the end of this rewarding process of preparing my thesis, it is my responsibility to duly appreciate those people who helped me reach my goal. First and foremost, I am indebted to the members of my supervisory committee. The first person I would like to thank is my supervisor, Associate Professor Dr Yap Ngee Thai, for her inspiring suggestions, guidance, encouragement, and great patience with my seemingly endless revisions. Professor Yap cares about her students so much that she is just like a mother and I am really glad that I have had the privilege of getting to know her in my life. Special thanks also go to my committee members, Dr Hj. Sabariah Md Rashid and Dr Vahid Nimehchisalem, not only for all the constructive comments to keep me ever focused on the principles of good research, but also for all the encouragement they have given me in the past years.
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Drafts by Jamilu Abdullahi