The Phonology of a Three Year Old Safaliba-Speaking Child

Abstract

This thesis explores the language of a three year old Safaliba-speaking child from a phonological perspective. The findings of this work are largely based on primary data collected during a two month field-work between December 2014 and January 2015. Primary data was collected by means of elicitation: interviews and discussions recorded using an audio sound recorder. Native speaker intuition was relied on for gathering, transcribing, and analysing the data. Even though the study is descriptive, it adopts an eclectic approach. The study begins with a description of the phonemic inventory of the language and then goes on to describe the phonemic inventory of the three year old Safaliba-speaker. With these as the foundation, differences, similarities and strategies that three year old Safaliba-speakers use in their quest to speak the language are identified. The results show that three year old Safaliba-speakers are able to distinguish between vowels in terms of their oral-nasal and their length qualities. However, out of the twenty-five consonants in the language, the three year old is able to produce sixteen of them. Fricatives are more difficult for them to produce as compared to stops, nasals, semivowels and laterals. The main strategy used by three-year old Safaliba-speakers is substitution. This, to a large extent, coincides with what is reported in the literature and explains universals and unmarked versions in languages all over the world.