Word and phoneme frequency of occurrence in conversational Setswana: a clinical linguistic application

Abstract

Few studies are available that analyze the frequency of occurrence of phonemes in Setswana in conversational discourse. This information is important to better understand the phonemic importance of various phonemes and would contribute to a foundation of data to support further research and clinical applications. This study is aimed at analyzing the phonemes of Setswana language for clinical audiological purposes but the results are not limited to that use. Taped conversational samples of 118 speakers are collected from five different Botswana government departments.  The tapes were transcribed and analyzed using a custom made computer program. Frequency of occurrence of Setswana consonant phonemes in a conversational sample of 49 358 Setswana-words was deter- mined. The percentage of occurrence of each consonant in each of the three positions of words was found to be 53.9% in the initial, 41.8% in the medial and 4.1% in the final positions. In addition, the 50 most frequently used Setswana words were found. Further, an inventory of words for each consonant sound of Setswana Language was developed and due to space limitation the word inventory is not attached to this document; it is filed at the Library of California State University, Sacramento.

Southern African Linguistics and Applied Language Studies 2004, 22: 125–142