We are happy to accept theses (BA, MA, LA) within our areas of research. Some ideas for experimental studies (BA, MA) can be found below Please contact Prof. Bettina Braun or Prof. Nicole Dehé for more information.
1) The Intonation of Faroese
The Intonation of Faroese is still understudied and any contribution will be welcome. For example: the intonation of specific utterance types, a comparison with related languages, phonological and phonetic aspects, etc. Speech data (from a map task study carried out in 2019) are available for analysis.
Contact person: Prof. Nicole Dehé
2) Word Stress and Language contact
Data are available for English and Icelandic, purpose-recorded for the analysis of word stress and cross-linguistic influence. The two languages behave very differently with respect to word stress. Icelandic has fixed initial primary word stress, English has more flexible (rule-based) word stress.
Possible topics include:
Word stress in Heritage Icelandic, Word stress in L2 Icelandic
Contact person: Prof. Nicole Dehé
3) Topics in Heritage Icelandic Phonology
As part of a funded research project on Heritage Icelandic spoken in Manitoba, Canada, a large corpus of data for phonological and phonetic analysis is available. Potential topics include segmental issues, phonological rule application, regional differences, contact phenomena (contact with English), comparison between methodologies, among others.
Contact person: Prof. Nicole Dehé
4) Flámæli in Icelandic
Flámæli is a process of vowel change in Icelandic. It was widespread in the first half of the 19th century, before a policy was introduced with the aim to eradicate flámæli.
Due to emigration of Icelanders to North America between 1872 and 1914, flámæli can still be found in Heritage icelandic spoken in Canada by descendants of those immigrants. You will be given speech material recorded in Manitoba, Canada, and will investigate this phenomenon.
Contact person: Prof. Nicole Dehé
5) Intonation
Kontinuierliche und kategorische Unterschiede In natürlicher Kommunikation passen wir unsere Sprachmelodie (Intonation) situativ an. In rhetorischen Fragen verwenden wir beispielsweise andere intonatorische Muster als in informationssuchenden Fragen. Sind diese Unterschiede kategorisch oder kontinuierlich? Dieser Frage wird in einer Imitationsstudie mit verschiedenen Sprechergruppen (Deutsch, Schweizerdeutsch) untersucht.
Kontaktperson: Prof. Bettina Braun / Prof. Nicole Dehé
