The Prosody of Harar Oromo Nouns

This paper examines the tone in Harar Oromo, a language widely spoken in Ethiopia. The focus is on tone in nouns. The examination implements acoustic analysis of tone using pitch contours, which helps in determining the type and position of tone in roots and in nominative and accusative case. The results show that roots can have either L or H tone, while case suffixes always have H tone. This suggests that tone is predictable in suffixes, but not in roots. The analysis suggests that Harar Oromo has a restricted tone system that is similar to stress-like languages

Vowel Elision, Epenthesis and Metrical Systems in Bedouin Arabic Dialects

This dissertation is a contribution to the understanding of the synchronic metrical phonology and related segmental processes in two Bedouin Arabic dialects of the Arabian Peninsula that have received little attention in the literature, Ruwaili and Hofuf Bedouin. Presented within a lexical phonology and morphology framework, the major goals of the dissertation are to provide a unified prosodic account of structures that result from the processes of syncope (High Vowel Deletion, Trisyllabic Elision, low vowel deletion) and epenthesis, to understand the strategies that are used in each of the dialects to account for unsyllabified segments, and to account for the major metrical patterns. The two varieties, while similar in many ways, also show some significant differences, with Ruwaili closely resembling other Bedouin varieties and Hofuf Bedouin being distinct in many ways and showing types of variation not reported in other Bedouin dialects. Differences between them can be expressed in terms of where various processes occur, most notably that epenthesis is found at different morphological levels in the two dialects. The dissertation examines the history of migration of the various Bedouin varieties and concludes that the differences can be accounted for due to contact with Hofuf Sedentary, a non-Bedouin dialect neighbouring Hofuf Bedouin. Thus, the dissertation both provides extensive data on two understudied Bedouin varieties and considers the similarities and differences between the Bedouin dialects of the Arabian Peninsula, extending earlier studies which focus on individual dialects.Ph.D