Karl Olaw Christian Wagner and Dr. Wendy Baker Smemoe, Department of Linguistics

The research the grant from the Office of Research and Creative Activities has allowed me to perform has been a wonderful opportunity that has helped me to take my undergraduate work to a higher level. To be able to apply the linguistic knowledge I’ve gained in the classroom in real research, even research abroad at that has been of great worth to me. The entire process has been a learning experience and continues to be so as I finish my work on this project. This process, from the first rough sketches of a possible research project to the current work of analyzing data and preparatory work for publishing, has taught me many valuable lessons. The money I received from the grant was used to fund my travel and all associated costs therewith as I traveled to Central America to gather data. I am very grateful for this assistance.

My research focused on the areas of second language acquisition. I decided to research the acquisition of glottalic consonant sounds not found in English. I wanted to know how Mayan Q’eqchi’ speakers produced these natives sounds in their language compared to English speakers who learned Q’eqchi’ as a second language. I did not formulate an official hypothesis but rather centered my research around answering three research questions to expand understanding on the subject. During the process of gathering and analyzing data I found that those research questions would change to account for the ways in which I gathered data and how that data was analyzed. While thinking about how I would write an article on my study to be published I also found that I had to think differently about these questions to present a final study that was both useful and informative. My research questions will be discussed shortly.

The core of my work was that of a field study. Before I left the country to gather my data for native Q’eqchi’ speakers I had to do the same here. I located ten second language speakers of Q’eqchi’ and gathered recorded speech data so that I could analyze the consonants I was doing my research on. Many of these participants were acquaintances and recording and interviewing them helped me to know how I should prepare for the more rigorous task of finding and interviewing people I was not as familiar with in a foreign country, while communicating in a foreign language. I then had the marvelous opportunity to travel to Central America and find native speakers for my study. Q’eqchi’ is a Mayan language spoken by several hundreds of thousands in Guatemala and Belize. I would say that the process of gathering data and meeting people in such a situation has been of great worth to me. I wouldn’t say that I had any major issues in my data collection, but doing field research can be quite hard, especially in cultures that are not your own. Fortunately I was fluent in the language and had previous exposure to the way of life amongst the Q’eqchi’. This was a great boon to my ability to find and befriend people who would be willing to give of their time and help for no compensation.

While stressful at times, the data collection portion of my research was definitely the most enjoyable part. Since then I, along with help from Dr. Baker, have been performing data analysis and am now in the process of writing a 15-20 page paper to be hopefully be published in a linguistics journal. This process has been quite interesting and helpful to me as well. I feel that it has become one of the greatest preparations I will have had for future graduate studies I plan on pursuing. It is a great blessing to be able to work with such a wonderful mentor who has helped me with research and job opportunities on several occasions throughout my undergraduate career. Through analyzing my collected data, we have been able to find many useful answers to my research questions that have helped this study and research succeed so far.

My first research question dealt with the differences between the production of regular versus ejective stop consonants by the native and non-native speakers. I found a wealth of great evidence in my data that suggested differences as well as similarities. As would be expected the non-native speakers could not produce the foreign sounds, the glottal ejectives, as well as the native speakers. There was also an interesting range between the non-natives. The wealth of information gathered from the phonetic analysis of the sound recordings has left me with plenty of data for my research paper. The analysis of this data led me to some interesting ways in which native speakers produced certain sounds. This led me to formulating a new research question. This new and second research question looked at how the native speakers produced a certain sound, in this case the uvular ejective stop (q’). There was a discrepancy where some speakers would make this an implosive (the sounds moves inwards) or an ejective (sound moves outwards). I will be looking at how this affects the way in which the second language speakers learned to produce this sound.

My final research question focused on the non-natives speakers and how well they were able to produce certain sounds. Some of the ejectives which I was studying resembled English sounds more closely than others in a variety of ways in which the sound produced. I wanted to see if language interference would affect which sounds were learned better. In this case we hypothesized that sounds which were more similar between the two languages would be harder to learn than sounds that are more dissimilar due to this interference. According to the data we found and the statistical information, our hypothesis looks to be correct. All of these research questions have helped my lay a foundation for a great article that is worthy of publishing.

Dr. Baker, as well as the resources that Brigham Young University possesses, have allowed me to find a wealth of articles and supporting data that I have been able to use in the ongoing finalization of my research paper. Performing this study has given me a great appreciation for how marvelous the time in which we live is and the way in which the work of many can come together to help, support and strengthen one another’s arguments so quickly and efficiently with modern technology. With such wonderful resources at hand, it has made my task more worthwhile and significant. My research is not yet done, but with the help of Dr. Baker I hope to have a publishable research paper finished early next year. After we have finalized and organized all the data I believe that we will have a strong base from which we can fully answer and explore the research questions and proposals of this project. This experience has helped me in a variety of ways and has helped me prepare for future research and academic work as I prepare for graduate studies. I am most grateful for this grant that I have received and for those who have made that possible. I hope that once my research is done it will inspire future studies dealing with languages of limited exposure which can contribute greatly to the field of linguistics.