Khoisan languages are interesting to phoneticians and phonologists because of their large, unique sound inventories. The goal of this project is a detailed description and analysis of all of the contrastive sounds found in Ju/'hoasi , a Namibian Khoisan language, as well as a theoretical analysis of the language which will advance universal linguistic theories. Sounds unique to Khoisan languages are 47 click consonants, as well as many different types of vowels. Vowels contrast not only by where they are made in the oral cavity, but also by the quality of voice used. The language also uses four different pitch levels to convey meaning contrasts, and to make phrasing more perspicuous and maintain rhythm in spoken language. While many languages in the world use pitch contrastively, pitch is used somewhat differently in Ju/'hoasi and other Khoisan languages. In addition, some of the consonants have a depressing effect on pitch, and thus cause physical perturbations in the speech which may be cognitively internalized. These will be investigated to determine how much of these effects are phonological, or cognitively based, and how many are phonetic, or due purely to the physical quality of the sounds. Complete investigation of the sound patterns of Ju/'hoasi will require travel to Namibia to record individual sounds, words, phrases and sentences which contrast by meaning, how they are phrased, and which part of the sentence is being focused on. The data will be processed both in the field using a laptop computer, and upon return to the United States, where resources at the Ohio State University Linguistics Lab will be used to investigate the physical acoustic properties of the sounds, words and phrases studied. Theoretical analysis will be carried out throughout the project. The final outcome of this work will be a doctoral dissertation by the student investigator, Amanda Miller-Ockhuizen.