24 only the basic procedures used, and that more specific details are provided in the relevant
sections of later chapters.
1.6.1 Speakers
I made sound recordings of four Ikoma speakers in order to do an instrumental analysis of the vowel system. A number of different wordlists were recorded, some by all four
speakers, and other lists by only a selection of the speakers. Three males and one female contributed to this study, and the relevant information about the participants is given in
7 below. 7
Participants in acoustic research Speaker Name
Gender Age at time
of recording Home village
A Mussa Chory Thobias
Male 36
Rwamchanga B
Rev. Paul Muya Male
45 Morotonga
C Thobius Maro Masanja
Male 64
Robanda and Musoma
D Veronica Banagi
Maronga Female
41 Morotonga
Each of these speakers gave informed consent to participate in this study and to have their names mentioned here. Speakers A and B both spent most of their lives in the Ikoma
language area and have only recently moved to the town of Musoma the region’s capital. Speaker D has lived her entire life in the Ikoma area. Speaker C spent his
childhood in the Ikoma area but has also lived for many years in various other parts of the country.
1.6.2 Wordlists
A number of wordlists were used in order to investigate vowels in different contexts and types of words. The various wordlists were created by selecting items from a previously
25 elicited list of 1700 words.
17
Some lists for recording also included items such as inflected verbs and even phrases, and these data came from Ikoma texts and my own
ongoing research into the Ikoma language. When appropriate, wordlists were randomized using the website
http:www.random.orglists . All four speakers were already familiar
with the trial Ikoma orthography which is being developed by SIL Int’l, so this orthography was used for the wordlists. Prior to recording each list, speakers were given
the chance to review the list and offer corrections. I then recorded them as they read through the list, first reading the number of the item, the Swahili gloss, and then the
Ikoma word. Nouns were read with two repetitions of the singular form followed by two repetitions of the plural form. Verbs were generally given in the infinitive form and were
read with three repetitions each. When choosing words to record, I took a number of factors into consideration.
The most overarching considerations for all of the wordlists were the avoidance of nasals and the choice of surrounding vowels and consonants. Concerning the issue of consonant
effects on vowel measurements, Starwalt 2008:71-72 contrasts two ways of choosing words for analysis
One way is to collect and analyze a large list with several hundred words but few repetitions and thus determine the character of the vowels in the various
environments in which they occur. Another is to limit the list, and draw from the list one or more words for each vowel. When limiting the list, more care needs to
be taken to control for certain variables, such as tone and consonant onset and potentially coda, as well as recording more tokens for statistical purposes.
In her work, Starwalt chose the latter option of limiting the list and controlling heavily for tone and consonants. I, however, chose the former option of attempting to “determine the
character of the vowels in the various environments in which they occur” 71. Therefore,
17
The wordlist originally used for elicitation was a Swahili translation of the SIL Comparative African Word List Snider and Roberts 2004.
26 while avoiding nasal consonants, for each of the wordlists I freely chose other words with
consonants from a variety of places and manners of articulation. Aside from the consonant issues, the criteria for choosing words differed
somewhat depending on the wordlist, since each list was designed with the intention of analyzing vowels in a specific position or word type when surrounded by vowels of
varying qualities. Therefore, more specific criteria concerning the number of words used, vowel length, parts of speech and noun classes, will be addressed in each individual
section where measurements from different wordlists are discussed.
1.6.3 Recording procedures
