A Phonological Analysis of Somali and the Guttural Consonants

Saeed 1999 remarks that the phonetic and phonological facts of Somali are woefully understudied. He makes a specific appeal for further research on Somali in these fields. This thesis can be said to be a response to Saeed's call for further research on the language. Given that there are no existing works dedicated to the phonology of Somali this thesis relies on the Somali data gathered through my own fieldwork. The purpose of this thesis is to present the Somali data that was collected, to present a partial model of the phonological facts of the language, and to discuss the theoretical consequences of the data and interpretation. Specifically, we propose a new theory of the guttural consonants.Arts and Sciences Honors Undergraduate Research Scholarship, 2009-2010Undergraduate Research Office Summer Research Grant, Summer 2009No embarg