Alm: 7101: advanced phonetics phonology of african languages course objectives

1. 
   To develop students’ knowledge of the processes and principles of phonetics and phonology;
   
2. 
   To guide and engage them in a coherent model of the description of the phonology of a specific African language;
   
3. 
   To sharpen the students’ awareness of the relationship between phonological structure and phonological function
   
4. 
   To provide the basis, through varied phonetic and phonological analyses exercises of data from different African languages, for the students to be motivated to undertake the analysis of the phonological systems of African languages.
   

The course will give an overview of general phonetics and phonology and the sound system of African Languages; outline some phonological theories and demonstrate their application in the analysis of the phonology of specified African Languages.

1. 
   Phonetics and Phonology: Phonology as functional phonetics; principles of phoneticization; phonemics and the alphabet theory; the phonemic principle in structuralist, grammar, its limitations.
   
2. 
   From phoneme to morpheme: the need for morphophonemic’s; the morphophonemic principle and the archiphoneme.
   
3. 
   The phonology component in Generative grammar, prosodic phonology
   
4. 
   Application of a selected phonological theory to the description of aspects of a specific African language.
   

By the end of the course, the students should:

1. 
   Be equipped with the advanced skills to describe the phonetics and phonology of languages, which they can utilize as language teachers and learners of materials developers;
   
2. 
   Be able to evaluate the strengths and limitations of given phonological theories;
   
3. 
   Have the knowledge, understanding and insight to analyze different types of linguistic data phonetically and phonologically.
   

Lectures, seminar presentations, analytic exercises of samples of data and group discussions

The final examination shall account for 70% and coursework 30% of the final mark.

Fry, D.B. (1979): The Physics of Speech Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press
Lade forged, P. (1962): Elements of Acoustic Phonetics

Chicago: University of Chicago Press

Lade forged, P. (1982): A course of Phonetics. London:

Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc

Laver, J. D. M. (1994: Principles of phonetics.

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

Lieberman, P. (1997: Speech Physiology and Articulatory Phonetics: An Introduction New York: Macmillan

Katamba, Francis (1992): An Introduction to Phonology. London: Longman