UPCOMING EVENTS
UPCOMING EVENTS
SPRING 2022
Annual Conference on African Linguistics (ACAL 53)
Topic: Akan Tone Encoding Across Surrogate Modalities
Date: April 8, 2022 at 12:15-12:45pm EST
This upcoming joint talk with Professor Laura McPherson (Dartmouth College) provides account for the realization of Akan tone across different surrogate instruments. We analyze data from Atumpan (barrel drums), Seperewa (harp lute) and abɛntea (animal tusk trumpet) and show that there are some similarities and differences regarding the realization of Akan high and low tone with downstep across the surrogate instruments. Join us for the full details of the talk.
Georgetown University Linguistics Department Speaker Series
Topic: Grammatical Tone in Verb Complexes in Gua
Date: Friday, February 25, 2022 at 3:30-4:45pm
This talk focused on grammatical tone in Gua and how it interacts with lexical tone in complex verbs. I provide a formal optimality theoretic account for various tense, aspect, mood (TAM), negation and associated motion constructions in the language.
Linguistic Society of America (LSA) Annual Meeting
Topic: Alternative Methods for Collecting Oral and Nasal Data: The Earbuds Method
Date: Friday, January 7, 2022
I presented initial results and analysis of ongoing collaborative nasality project with Will Styler on airflow data collected using earbuds in Boso towards the determination of the phonemic basis of nasality in Gua. Various findings regarding contexts of the interactions involving ATR vowels, anticipatory and carryover nasality, and vowel quality were discussed. Generally, coarticulated nasal vowels are allophonic since they have less nasality, +ATR vowels are more nasal and high-vowels are arguably more nasal than other types.
SUMMER 2021
Presentation at WOCAL10
Topic: Interactions between ATR vowel harmony and Nasality
Date: Thursday, June 10, 2021
I presented data from Gua to show that nasality interacts with ATR vowels. I showed that although phonemic vowels /ẽ, õ, ɜ̃/ do not exist in Gua, a common phenomenon in West African languages (Rolle 2013), they are created in the language allophonically via nasalization and ATR vowel harmony.
WINTER 2020
Focus on the analyses of data towards the writing and completion of my PhD dissertation.
PAST EVENTS
Data Collection
I spent the entire quarter at the University of Education, Winneba to collect data on ATR and Tone Perception among University Students with Akan as the native language.
I also spent time working on the ongoing project on the Documentation of Gua language and Boso Oral and Cultural Literature at Boso
50th Annual Conference of African Linguistics
May 22-26, 2019
University of British Columbia
Vancouver, UBC Canada.
Two talks:
Acoustic Analysis of Gua Nasal and 'Nasalized' Vowels (Poster)
Perception of ATR Vowel Contrasts by Akan Speakers (Main Session Talk) with Sharon Rose and Sarah Creel