Published on Sept. 16, 2024
The Cherng Summer Scholars program allows Honors College students at the University of Missouri to explore their passions through research projects aimed at questions they are interested in analyzing. Students who are accepted into the nine-week program participate in projects that are individually designed, with the support and mentorship of a Mizzou faculty member.
This year, there were 12 Cherng Summer Scholars. Meet Gus Metz, a sophomore international studies and linguistics double major.
Question: Which faculty member are you working with on your research?
Answer: I worked with Dr. Michael Marlo, an associate professor of English.
Question: What is the focus of your research?
Answer: My research focuses on the Marachi dialect of the Luyia language, which is an understudied dialect spoken in Western Kenya. It is a tonal language, which means that changes in the pitch or tone of the speaker’s voice can change the meaning of words or indicate grammatical information. I specifically focused on the tonal patterns of verbs, and how tone can change based on a variety of factors including tense, the number of syllables in the verb, whether the verb has an object (or objects), whether it is affirmative or negative, and more. I analyzed about eight hours of audio from two speakers and am comparing the data with results from previous research on the dialect to get a better understanding of Marachi’s verbal tone system and how it varies across speakers.
Question: What interested you in this specific project?
Answer: I was awarded the ASH Scholarship this past year and have been working as a member of the Collaborative Research in African Linguistics (CORAL) team. I worked on a few other languages during the school year and began working with the Marachi dialect for my Cherng project. I think that analyzing and documenting understudied languages like Marachi is very important, and this project has also taught me a lot and will enable me to continue doing similar research in the future.
Question: How nice has it been to be part of the Cherng Summer Scholars program?
Answer: The Cherng Summer Scholars program was a great experience for me. It gave me the opportunity and resources to do a great research project and learn a lot. I have gained skills in linguistic analysis that will help me do more linguistics research in the future, as well as knowledge about how to organize and present my findings to others.