Mellan 11 och 22 mars har vår institution besök av två forskare från Frankrike:

Sabrina Bendjaballah (Nantes), Ph.D. (1999) in Linguistics, University of Paris 7, is Senior Research Scientist at the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS). She has published on the phonology and morphology of Berber, Modern South Arabian, and Somali. Her current research topics include the realization and the representation of phonological length, verbal inflectional and derivational morphology, and the internal structure of templates. She is co-founder and co-editor of Brill’s Journal of Afroasitic Languages and Linguistics.

David Le Gac (Rouen), I am currently a Lecturer in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Rouen Normandie. I obtained a PhD in Linguistics and Phonetics at the University of Paris VII Denis Diderot in 2001 and then joined the University of Rouen in 2002. My research focuses on the phonetics and phonology of intonation. I am particularly interested in the realization of the information structure in various languages, especially in Somali and French, and in diatopic and diastratic variation of intonation.

They both have a special interest in Somali and together we want to do some research on the Somali consonants during their stay at GU. More specifically we want to make a detailed investigation of the behaviour of double consonants in the Somali sound system, and also describe carefully how these consonants are pronounced and how they differ from their short counterparts. In order to do so, we hope to get some help from those of you who live in Gothenburg, since we need as many recordings as possible of different persons' pronunciation to be able to draw conclusions about today’s prevailing pronunciation norms. Initially, we want to analyze the variety spoken in Mogadishu, and then move on to the variety spoken in Hargeysa, and later we hope to be able to compare those two results to other cities as well. Therefore we are most of all looking for speakers from the Mogadishu area who would like to be recorded, but speakers from the Hargeysa area are of course also very welcome to offer their help with recordings, as are speakers from other areas, too.

Seminar about Somali geminate consonants

Friday 8 March at 15.15 on Zoom: https://gu-se.zoom.us/j/66631280152?pwd=OUtjWHBGckJIQmxveGMvN2FPY1hqdz09
Meeting ID: 666 3128 0152 ---- Passcode: 057575

We would like to invite everyone interested to a short seminar where we will give a short general background to this issue of single/double consonants, tell you about the research that has already been carried out, and what we plan to do right now. Hopefully, in the coming years we will be able to find funding for a much bigger project, where we would be able to analyze much more data from many more speakers. We submitted an application for funding a month ago, but it will take several months until we know the result of that application. We would however like to start with a small pilot investigation already now.

We are hoping that those of you who live in Gothenburg would like to help us with the recordings that we need for this investigation. For this purpose we have booked the recording studio at University of Gothenburg from Friday 15 to Friday 22 March. We will be able to welcome you to the studio for a recording any time that suits you from early morning to late evening any day during that whole week. If you have the possibility to help us with a recording, just send an email with the day and time to morgan.nilsson@gu.se. Please also tell which city your way of speaking represents. We will be extremely grateful for your contribution. Each recording session will take approximately one hour and we need to do it in a sound-proof studio in order to get the best possible sound quality.

Seminar about the 3rd conjugation verbs: Their formation, use and meaning

Friday 15 March at 15.15 on Campus, Göteborg, Humanisten, room J440,
and on Zoom: https://gu-se.zoom.us/j/66631280152?pwd=OUtjWHBGckJIQmxveGMvN2FPY1hqdz09
Meeting ID: 666 3128 0152 ---- Passcode: 057575

We want to do some research on the Somali verb derivation. More specifically we want to make a detailed investigation of the role of the suffix -(s)o, which is illustrated in (1) and (2).

(1)
a. 1st conj. maax!, maaxaa, maaxdaa ‘is full (of a well)'
b. 3rd conj. maaxo!, maaxdaa, maaxataa ‘replenishes oneself'

(2)
a. 1st conj. kar!, karaa, kartaa ’boils'
b. 3rd conj. karso!, karsadaa, karsataa ’boils/cooks for oneself'

We want to describe the meaning of these verbs in their base form (maax, kar), and in their derived forms (maaxo, karso) as precisely as possible. Based on these descriptions, we want to determine the common value of the morpheme -(s)o, or, if no common value can be established, the values of all occurrences of -(s)o. Furthermore, we want to establish whether there is any systematic difference between -o and -so, both in their distribution (which classes of verbs they combine with), and their value (do they have the same value, a different one, or should it rather be described as vague or underspecified?) Based on these data, we will explore the possibility (or impossibility) of an analysis of -so into two component parts: -s+o, and the respective value of these smaller units.

Under sin vistelse vid SPL kommer Sabrina och David även att hålla följande tre föredrag:

Sabrina Bendjaballah: “The Modern South Arabian languages: an under-documented and understudied language family”
Wednesday 13 March at 15.15-17.00, room D424
https://www.gu.se/en/event/research-seminar-arabic-modern-south-arabian

‘Modern South Arabian’ is a family of six languages with no written tradition: Mehri, Harsusi, Bathari, Hobyot, Jibbali, Soqotri. These languages are spoken in the southern Omani province of Dhofar, the eastern Yemeni province of Mahra and the Yemeni island of Soqotra. Today, they are all considered endangered. The Modern South Arabian languages form a distinct branch of the Semitic family. They have been “discovered” around the 1850’s, but they still remain largely understudied. In this seminar, I will offer a general survey of the Modern South Arabian family, as well as an overview of the main characteristics of the phonology and morphology of Omani Mehri.

David Le Gac: Aspects prosodiques de « l’accent de banlieue » (en français)
Mercredi 13 mars, 15.15-17.00, salle C442

La prononciation des jeunes des quartiers urbains pluriethniques constitue un véritable stéréotype en français contemporain : l'accent dit "de banlieue" se reconnaît, s'imite, et fait la une. Mais quelles sont au juste les caractéristiques phonétiques de cet accent ? Y en a-t-il réellement ou n’est-ce qu’une impression ? Je présenterai dans cette communication les résultats de recherches que des collègues et moi-même avons menées sur ces questions et qui ont montré l’existence de spécificités phoniques, et plus particulièrement prosodiques, chez des jeunes vivant dans deux banlieues pluriethniques situées au nord de Paris et à Rouen. En nous fondant sur l’analyse acoustique d’enregistrements effectués sur le terrain et sur des expériences de perception, nous avons montré que les locuteurs des deux banlieues utilisaient des contours mélodiques montants-descendants similaires, associés à des syllabes courtes en fin de groupe intonatif. Ce patron prosodique est atypique en français standard, et sa présence dans les deux groupes suggère qu’il constitue un marqueur essentiel à l’identification de « l’accent de banlieue ».

Sabrina Bendjaballah & David Le Gac: “On Somali Geminates”
Thursday 14 March at 10:15-11:30 , room C452
https://www.gu.se/en/event/sabrina-bendjaballah-on-somali-geminates

There is a consensus on the fact that Standard Somali voiceless stops [t, k] are “never doubled to form a geminate”: they always surface as short stops (Saeed 1999:9). By contrast, Standard Somali voiced stops [b, d, g] are reputed to have geminate counterparts: [bb, dd, gg] (Saeed 1999:16). This results in an asymmetry in the way phonological length is taken to be realized in phonetics: with a length contrast for voiced stops, and with no length contrast for voiceless stops. Our aim is to provide an analysis of Standard Somali geminate voiced stops in order to decide whether such an asymmetry obtains. In addition, we extend our analysis to Djibouti Somali, with a view of providing first insights into Somali diatopic variation, which is still understudied at the present stage. Our results are thus expected to provide new information on the typology of geminates across Somali varieties.

Hjärtligt välkomna!
/ Morgan

morgan.nilsson@gu.se