Author: Koen Bostoen

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.

• Banto3d: The Bantoid diminutive suffix from a comparative and typological perspective (with Maarten Mous, Leiden University)
• ACAL57: Testing for phonetic correlates of stem-initial prominence in Mbam Bantu

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.

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 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.

• CNRS-LLACAN seminar series: Verb stem variation in Cameroonian Bantoid
• CNRS-LLF LingLunch: Modelling disharmonic clausal word order in languages of West and Central Africa

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.

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.

We are delighted to share that Dr. Lorenzo Maselli has been awarded a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) Global Fellowship, one of the most competitive individual fellowships funded by the European Union. Lorenzo’s project, “NGBU – Non-explosion and Glottalisation in the Basin of the Ubangi”, was selected with an exceptional evaluation score of 97.4%, placing it among the very top-ranked proposals in this year’s call.

MSCA Global Fellowships support outstanding postdoctoral researchers and allow fellows to undertake advanced research and training through an international mobility scheme, involving an outgoing phase outside Europe and a return phase at a European host institution.

NGBU investigates the phonetic, phonological, and historical dynamics of glottalisation and non-explosion in speech, focusing on the languages of the Ubangi River Basin in Central Africa. The project combines: instrumental phonetics (acoustics, electroglottography, aerodynamics, static palatography),
phonological modelling, microvariationist typology, and historical-comparative reconstruction, integrated with insights from archaeology and population genetics.

During the outgoing phase, Lorenzo will be hosted at The Research Institute for Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa at Tokyo University of Foreign Studies, working under the supervision of Prof. Daisuke Shinagawa, a leading specialist in African linguistics and typological microvariation and long-standing friend of BantUGent.

The return phase will take place at Ghent University, within the BantUGent, under the supervision of Prof. Sara Pacchiarotti, whose ERC-funded “CongUbangi” project on the Congo-Ubangi region provides a strong interdisciplinary framework for the project’s diachronic component.

Congratulations to all parties involved in the project!

From January 15 to 31, Sara Pacchiarotti, PI of the ERC-funded CongUbangi project, visited the Central African Republic to meet with several authorities at Bangui University and the Ministery of Higher Education, Scientific Research and Technological Innovation. During her stay, Sara was interviewed about the CongUbangi project by Radio Ndeke Luka.  The interview was broadcasted locally and online on Sunday February 1 as part of the “Magazine de Culture”, broadcast “100% Culture”. For more info, check here.