Date of Graduation
2016
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Type
MA
College
Eberly College of Arts and Sciences
Committee Chair
Jonah Katz
Committee Co-Chair
Sergio Robles-Puente
Committee Member
Sandra Stjepanovic
Abstract
Misiones Mbya is an indigenous language of South America spoken by the Mbya people in the Province of Misiones, Argentina. Although there are several studies in the literature about the Brazilian variety of this language, the linguistic information available about Misiones Mbya is extremely scarce. In this thesis I present a segmental analysis of the language (individual vowels and consonants) and a prosodic analysis of nasal harmony based on field data collected in three different communities in Misiones. The segmental analysis shows that this variety is very similar to the Brazilian variety of the language with only a few exceptions. The prosodic analysis of nasal harmony indicates that nasality fades with distance. It is also shown that some methods for carrying out acoustic analysis of nasality can yield results which can be confounded with stress.
Recommended Citation
de Paula, Matias N., "A Description of the Sound System of Misiones Mbya" (2016). Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports. 7077.
https://researchrepository.wvu.edu/etd/7077