At the 53rd Colloquium on African Languages and Linguistics in Leiden (August 26-28), Hilde Gunnink and Nina van der Vlugt (BantUGent) presented their collaborative research in the joint talk titled “The development of lateral obstruents in Southern Bantu: A comparative diachronic study“.
The 10th International Conference on Bantu Languages (Bantu10) was held at the Dar es Salaam University College of Education (DUCE), Tanzania on August 12-14, 2024. Among many others, the program included eleven talks involving BantUGent people (bolded), including a keynote talk opening the conference.
The 11th World Congress of African Linguistics (WOCAL11) was held at the University of Nairobi, Kenya on August 5-9, 2024. The program included, among many others, several talks involving BantUGent people (bolded):
On Monday June 24, 2024, the UGent Special Research Fund (BOF) published the list of the 35 selectees for a three-year postdoctoral grant. One of them is Lorenzo Maselli (BantUGent) for “Labial-velars, implosives and other sound rarities between Congo and Ubangi: A pioneering phonetic, aerodynamic, and articulatory approach” under the supervision of Prof. Sara Pacchiarotti, who currently leads the ERC-funded CongUbangi project. Congratulations, Lorenzo!
On 6-8 June 2024, Leiden University organizes a conference on the Linguistic History of East Africa with also contributions by Nina van der Vlugt and Aron Zahran from our research group. Tuning in online is possible! The program is available here and more info here.
From April 17 to May 8, 2024, the CongUbangi team and associated researchers carried out a first joint fieldwork mission in Gemena and Libenge, in the province of Sud-Ubangi in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). The linguistic team consisted of Sara Pacchiarotti, Jean-Pierre Donzo Bunza, Paulin Baraka Bose, and Chrisnah Renaudot Mfouhou. The archaeological team consisted of Peter Coutros, Igor Matonda, Holy Ondel Ilo (Institut des Musées Nationaux du Congo), Lucien Pierre Nguerede and Henri Zana. The team collected new linguistic, archaeological and genetic data and worked in close collaboration with local partners. More info is available here.
The CongUbangi project funded by an ERC Starting Grant awarded to Prof. Sara Pacchiarotti, which started at the beginning of 2024, has launched a new website.
On May 16 2024, Elisabeth (Lis) Kerr , who is currently finishing her PhD research at Leiden University (Netherlands), obtained a 3-year postdoctoral fellowship from the Research Foundation – Flanders (FWO) for research on a project titled “Modelling Bantu Analytic Morphosyntax (MBAM): The Mbam languages as a case study in morphosyntactic change“. The abstract can be found below. Her research will be co-hosted by BantUGent (under the supervision of Prof. Koen Bostoen) and ΔiaLing (under the co-supervision of Prof. Anne Breitbarth and Prof. Alexandra Simonenko). Welcome to BantUGent, Lis!
Abstract
Over time and space, languages can change fundamentally in their structure (morphosyntax). A key example of such variation is the change between analytic and synthetic morphosyntax. Such variation is clearly visible within Niger-Congo, the world’s largest language phylum. On the synthetic side, the Bantu family is particularly well-known in theoretical linguistics for its complex verb forms. Bantu’s closest relatives within Niger-Congo’s Benue-Congo branch, on the other hand, show much more analytic morphosyntax, expressing in multiple words what many Bantu languages typically express using a single verb form. While it is clear that morphosyntactic change has taken place within the Niger-Congo phylum, it is still debated in what direction(s) this change occurred and how such change can be captured in formal models. This debate within Niger-Congo studies reflects a more general question about variation and directionality of morphosyntactic change crosslinguistically. This project will contribute to this theoretical debate about the mechanisms of analytic ↔ synthetic morphosyntactic change by using a case study of the Mbam languages of Cameroon, a group of closely-related Bantu languages with an intermediary morphosyntactic profile. By developing a model to capture the synchronic and diachronic variation in the degree of analyticity of the Mbam languages, the results will contribute to the fields of historical linguistics, theoretical syntax, and African languages.
On May 15 2024, Arnaud Bizongwako (University of Burundi) obtained a 24-month PhD scholarship from the UGent Special Research Fund (BOF) for his joint PhD project titled “Is it syntax and/or discourse? A combined corpus and historical-comparative linguistic approach to the conjoint/disjoint alternation in East-African West Highlands Bantu“. West Highlands Bantu is a group of closely related languages from the Great Lakes region of Eastern Africa including Kirundi and Kinyarwanda. The in-depth study of this grammatical phenomenon involves building a new Kinyarwanda corpus and collecting new fieldwork data in four poorly known languages from Tanzania. At the University of Burundi in Bujumbura, Arnaud will be supervised by Prof. Ferdinand Mberamihigo, who obtained himself in 2014 a joint PhD degree at Ghent University (UGent) and Brussels University (ULB) and is a BantUGent associate. Within BantUGent, Arnaud will be co-supervised by Prof. Koen Bostoen and Prof. Gilles-Maurice de Schryver, whom also co-supervised Ferdinand Mberamihigo earlier on. Welcome to BantUGent, Arnaud!
