Cadence Lux & Nicholas Mori: Aerodynamics and Phonetics of Indigenous Amazonian Speech Sounds

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In this project, Cadence and Nicholas analyzed nasality (language sounds produced with air flowing through the nose) within Amazonian languages using data from multiple South American field sites. Here is what Cadence and Nicholas had to say about the experience:

Cadence Lux: What I Did and Learned

"Throughout the time in my project, I was able to gain skills in the software Praat and work with speech sounds to ensure the sound files were adjusted correctly based on the words and structure in the International Phonetic Alphabet. The overall impacts of my project was to analyze Amazonian tribal language and recognize patterns of nasality that are not heavily researched prior to this vast, collaborative project. In the hindsight of this semester, I am most proud of accomplishing the ability to recognize speech sounds on the basis of spectrograms and furthering my understanding of global sound structure outside the familiar English gaze. I was able to gain skills in collaborative communication and furthering my linguistic knowledge of Phonetics. I gained more time management skills and ability to collaborate on work through an originally unfamiliar software. The overall takeaway of the project was to learn how not all languages are documented and there is still language patterns out there that are not as documented as we believed to be. I believe engaging in this research assisted in well roundedness as a student and gave me more experience to jump start my knowledge into the field I go into after I graduate college."

Nicholas Mori: What I Did and Learned

"In the SUNY-funded project, I annotated sound data of Amazonian languages collected by other linguists as a research assistant. I had the opportunity to observe how nasality spreads from nasal sounds to oral counterparts in several languages of Amazonia, so I successfully familiarized myself with conducting phonological work, utilizing a software program. This work contributes to discovering the phonological system of languages in South America. As data annotators, we - Professor Faytak, my colleague Cadence Lux, and I - had to reach out to fieldworkers who collected sound data we were analyzing to solve some transcription issues. This unique academic experience taught me that linguistics is divided into various subfields such as fieldwork linguistics, phonetics, and phonology, and they can collaborate with each other to launch a bigger project like the one I joined this semester. The research opportunity allowed me to learn the importance of collaboration between different sectors of the academia and to equip myself with an advanced level of technology utilization in phonological studies. As an aspiring linguist, I intend to conduct fieldwork or data collection in general on Japanese and various languages in Cameroon and Amazonia. The teamwork and the technology I was exposed to during the ELN work will allow me to carry out these independent studies of mine in the future as those skills are indispensable in studying human languages."