Author: Koen Bostoen

UGent receives award at the International Swahili Language Day in Paris

During the celebration of International Swahili Language Day (July 7) at the UNESCO headquarters, Paris, Ghent University has been awarded a prize to recognize and appreciate its unique contribution to promoting and developing Swahili in Belgium and Europe through teaching and research.  Koen Bostoen (BantUGent) ,  students Lies Van Hoey and Tanne Naessens and PhD student Aron Zahran (BantUGent) received a certificate of recognition from the Prime Minister of Tanzania, His Excellency Dr. Mwigulu Lameck Nchemba. Unfortunately, our other Swahili teachers  Maud Devos (BantUGent) and Gundelinda Shayo were unable to attend.

 

 

 

 

Lis Kerr presents at West African Word Order Workshop, CNRS-LLACAN

Lis Kerr gave an invited talk titled “OV/VO variation within a genealogical subgroup: The case of Mbam Bantu” at the West African Word Order Workshop (WAWOW) at CNRS-LLACAN, 6th July 2026:

The workshop brought together specialists of West African languages with TAM-based OV/VO word order alternations, with a focus on discussing their diachronic development. It was organised as part of the ERC-BANG project (PI Abbie Hangtan) and held in hybrid format.

Hilde Gunnink conducts fieldwork in South Africa and Lesotho

In June 2026, Hilde Gunnink conducted two weeks of linguistic fieldwork in South Africa and Lesotho, funded by FWO (grant # K229826N). She collected data for her ongoing FWO-funded project “Language contact and linguistic reconstruction. (Pre)historic Bantu-Khoisan interactions in Southern Africa in a historical linguistic perspective”. She interviewed 34 Sesotho speakers from different areas in South Africa and Lesotho in collaboration with linguists from South Africa, Ntebogeng Shongwe and Edled Lekhela, and from Lesotho, Amina Moosa. The interviews were targeted at understanding variation in the realization of clicks in Sesotho, challenging the standard view of Sesotho as only using an alveolar click type. The preliminary data suggest far more individual variation in Sesotho phonology than previously reported, with many speakers interchanging alveolar and dental clicks. The results will be presented at the conference of the Southern African Linguistics and Applied Linguistics Society (SALALS) in September 2026. In addition, she collected data on South African English, in order to investigate the possible influence of tonal depression on the prosody of South African English.

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Lis Kerr gives talks at Banto3d and ACAL57, University at Buffalo (USA)

Lis Kerr (BantUGent) presented at the 3rd Conference on Bantoid Languages (Banto3d) and the 57th Annual Conference on African Linguistics (ACAL57), co-hosted by the University at Buffalo, University of Rochester, and Syracuse University from May 20th – 23rd in Buffalo, upstate New York.

 

 

Edward Ntonda and Aron Zahran host Chikunda language and culture workshop in Luangwa (Zambia)

In the first two weeks of May 2026, BantUGent PhD students Edward Ntonda and Aron Zahran hosted a workshop in Luangwa (Zambia) for the promotion and preservation of the Chikunda language and culture.

The workshop was funded by the UGent Global Minds Fund and was organised in collaboration with local partners BiLTA, Lusaka National Museum, and Chikunda community members and language activists from Mozambique, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.

The goal of the workshop has been to:
1. Document Chikunda history and cultural heritage
2. Produce Chikunda literary materials including booklets about tangible and intangible culture heritage such as historical sites, artifacts, stories, riddles, proverbs, and dances.
3. Produce Chikunda literary materials for children about topics related to sustainability, such as health and environmental issues.
4. Promoting cross-border unity and collaborations between Chikunda communities in Mozambique, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.

Various invitees attended the workshop to give speeches and presentations, including
– Lawrence Shawa, Mayor of Luangwa Town Council
– Joseph Feremenga, President of Luangwa Establishment (association for the promotion of Chikunda and Nsenga cultural heritage)
– Reverend Dr. Gervazious Tizola Tembo, Team administrator of BiLTA Luangwa
– Precious Chisanga, Senior curator at Lusaka National Museum
– Traditional doctors, spirit mediums, and community elders.

The Chikunda language is unrecognised in the constitutions of the three countries where it is spoken. Hopefully this initiative will be a stepping stone towards recognition and increasing cultural pride of the Chikunda.

BantUGent at international ILCAA symposition on Bantu in Tokyo

Several BantUGent people gave talks at the international symposium Diachronic Perspectives on Language Description and Typology in Bantu, which took place at the Research Institute for Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa (ILCAA, Tokyo University of Foreign Studies) from March 24 till March 26, 2026.

 

  • Maud Devos (RMCA-UGent): Multiverb constructions in Swahili and the expression of epistemic possibility
  • Chrisnah R. Mfouhou (UGent) & Sara Pacchiarotti (UGent): Origins and outcomes of vowel length and vowel sequences in Teke Tyee (Bantu B73d, Republic of Congo)
  • Sara Pacchiarotti (UGent): Sound change versus lexical change for subgrouping: Word-final lenition of Proto-Bantu *ŋg in West-Coastal Bantu by
  • Nina van der Vlugt (UGent): How rare sounds come into existence: the case of whistled fricatives in Shona languages by
  • Aron Zahran (CNRS-LLACAN, INALCO, UGent): Epistemic adverbs, complementizers and verbs of ‘not knowing’: Diachronic Pathways in South-Eastern Bantu

 

BantUGent thanks the organizers and their financial support: ILCAA, DDDLing, KAKENHI (24K16047), KAKENHI (23H00622).

 

 

 

BantUGent members contribute to a special issue on Bantu auxiliary verb constructions

BantUGent members contribute to a special issue of the Nordic Journal of African Studies, dedicated to the study of auxiliary verb constructions in Bantu languages. The issue, consisting of nine papers and an introduction, studies the syntax, semantics and diachronic development in Bantu languages spoken in different areas from different angles. Elisabeth Kerr’s paper investigates the status of pre-stem inflectional morphemes in Northwestern Bantu languages, and whether they should be considered as separate words, and therefore auxiliaries, or phonologically dependent, suggesting a more synthetic structure. Aron Zahran, Maud Devos and Rozenn Guérois’ paper focuses on the grammaticalization of negative auxiliaries in zone M, N and S languages spoken on the Middle and Lower Zambezi. The special issue was edited by Rasmus Bernander, Eva-Marie Bloom Ström, Thera Marie Crane, Ponsiano Kanijo, and BantUGent member Hilde Gunnink. The special issue is available open access.

Lis Kerr and Paulin Baraka Bose conduct research stays at CNRS-LLACAN

BantUGent members Lis Kerr and Paulin Baraka Bose conducted research stays at the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) research unit Langage, langues et cultures d’Afrique (Languages and cultures of Africa; LLACAN), in Paris/Villejuif.
Lis Kerr spent November 2025 – February 2026 as an invited researcher at LLACAN under a research mobility grant from the FWO, working on variation in Cameroonian Bantoid verb forms as part of her ongoing FWO-MBAM postdoctoral project. While in Paris she gave the following talks at CNRS:
Paulin Baraka Bose visited LLACAN from 31 January to 15 February 2026 as part of his PhD research within the CongUbangi project. The main objective of his stay was to further develop his research on the morphosyntax of Fulu, a Sara-Bongo-Bagirmi (SBB) language spoken in the Democratic Republic of the Congo(DRC), with particular attention to the structure of the verbal system.
During his stay, he collaborated with Pascal Boyeldieu, a leading specialist of Sara-Bongo-Bagirmi languages and author of the reference monograph on Bagiro spoken in the Central African Republic (CAR). This collaboration allowed him to place his analysis of Fulu in a broader comparative perspective, especially through comparison with closely related Bagiro varieties spoken in both the CAR and the DRC.
This research visit further strengthened the collaboration between BantUGent and LLACAN and contributed to ongoing efforts to better document and understand the linguistic diversity of the Central Sudanic language family.
From left to right: Aron Zahran, Edward Ntonda, Paulin Baraka Bose and Lis Kerr, all affiliated to BantUGent, meet at LLACAN, Villejuif, Paris, february 2026

Sara Pacchiarotti keynote speaker at the Applicative Alternations Across Languages workshop in Cologne

Sara Pacchiarotti was invited as a keynote speaker at the second workshop of the DFG-funded project Applicative Alternations Across Languages which took place at the university of Cologne on February 19-20. She gave a talk titled “X, P ~X applicatives and their interaction with information structure in Eastern Bantu“. This talk showcased novel research by Bantu Gent members Ernest Nshemezina, Manoah Joel Misago (departed), and Koen Bostoen on the Bantu language Rundi.

Lorenzo Maselli returns to Bangui for a second field trip

Team member Lorenzo Maselli is currently back in Central African Republic, continuing the fieldwork started last year as part of a broader postdoctoral research programme on phonetic and phonological microvariation in the Ubangi region. This new field mission builds directly on the 2025 campaign, during which Lorenzo collected a rich body of electroglottographic (EGG) and other articulatory data. The present stay focuses on extending and consolidating these recordings, with particular attention to tone in the Bantu language Mpiemo. A first set of results from this year’s EGG recordings will be presented later this year at the 11th International Conference on Bantu Languages (Bantu11). Together, these field campaigns aim to establish a robust empirical foundation for integrating phonetic evidence into historical and typological research on Central African languages.