BantUGent welcomes Lis Kerr for postdoctoral research on Mbam Bantu

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.

BantUGent welcomes Arnaud Bizongwako (UBurundi) for joint PhD research on West Highlands Bantu

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!

Arnaud Bizongwako

“Disentangling Zambezi Valley population history” workshop at LLACAN (Paris)

On May 13-14, the OriKunda project (ANR-22-CE54-0009) led by Rozenn Guérois (LLACAN CNRS) is having a two-day workshop at LLACAN CNRS, 7 rue Guy Môquet, 94800 Villejuif (Paris). The workshop is titled “Disentangling Zambezi Valley population history: Why historians need linguists (and vice versa)” and can also be atttended online through Zoom (password: 1nda03). The full program is available here. It includes presentations by BantUGent people: Koen Bostoen, Maud Devos, Hilde Gunnink, Edward Ntonda, Nina van der Vlugt, and Aron Zahran.

 

 

Start-up meeting “Modality in Swahili” project in Gothenburg

On Tuesday May 7, 2024, the start-up meeting for the RJ-funded project “Modality in Swahili – Variation, Change and Transfer” (P23-0101) took place at Gothenburg University. It was organized by Rasmus Bernander (Gothenburg University), together with Gilles-Maurice de Schryver (BantUGent), Maud Devos (BantUGent), and Ponsiano Kanijo (University of Dar es Salaam). The program is available here.

 

From the project abstract:

Despite being a large, vibrant and socio-politically dominant language across the whole of East Africa, with a longstanding history of written records, several aspects of the Bantu language Swahili and its varieties have still not been coherently researched. One such under-explored area of the Swahili language is that of modality, viz. linguistic expressions such as can, must and perhaps that refer to the non-factual status of a proposition. This is surprising, not least since the Swahili modal system may offer important insights into contact-induced change, as many of its modals were originally borrowed and then spread to many other East African languages.

The aim of this project is to offer the first detailed and comprehensive account of expressions of modality in Swahili, focusing on the role of contact-induced variation and change through time and space. This will be accomplished through both corpus-driven research – to which end the world’s largest diachronic Swahili corpus will be developed – and comparative-typological work (including fieldwork) targeting East African languages that show Swahili influence in their modal systems.

Operationalizing the growing research interests in both Bantu modality and Swahili-related linguistic variation and change we address the broader questions on the socio-historical causes and cognitive constraints underpinning the trajectories of development within the domain of modality in Swahili and in the East African region.

 

BantUGent at “The Language of Extreme Events” Conference in Jena

Koen Bostoen (BantUGent), Peter Coutros (BantUGent), Jessamy Doman (BantUGent), Cesar Fortes-Lima (Johns Hopkins University), Sara Pacchiarotti (BantUGent) and Carina Schlebusch (Uppsala University) presented online on “Climate change, population collapse and early settlement of Bantu speakers south of the Congo Forest” at the “The Language of Extreme Events” conference at the Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology in Jena  (April 22-23, 2024). The entire program is available here. The book of abstracts can be consulted here.

Conference: The language of Extreme Events

International workshop at Osaka University in honor of Prof. Nobuko Yoneda

On March 21 and 22, 2024, an international workshop on  “Dialogues in Swahili and Bantu linguistics” took place at Osaka University to celebarate the career and retirement of Prof. Nobuko Yoneda, who used to be a partner in the ILCAA-BantUGent Joint Research Project “The Past and Present of Bantu Languages: Integrating Micro-Typology, Historical-Comparative Linguistics and Lexicography”.

The full program is available here. Koen Bostoen (BantUGent) was invited to present a talk titled “Bantu Language divergence and convergence and deep-time population history in the Lower Kasai area (DR Congo)”.

At the occasion of this celebration, a special issue of the Journal of Swahili and African Studies (n°35, 2024) was published including an article titled “Noncausal/Causal Alternations and the Rise of Lability in Ngwi (West-Coastal Bantu, B861)” by Koen Bostoen and Sara Pacchiarotti (BantUGent).

Koen Bostoen talks at Kyoto University

On Wednesday March 20, Koen Bostoen (BantUGent) was invited to give talk on “Substrate Interference in Bantu languages of Central Africa: Insights from Diachronic Phonology” at the Linguistics Department of Kyoto University (Japan).

 

 

BantuGent contributes to geography, inventory, and description of Teke languages in DRC and Congo

As the outcome of fieldwork done as part of the BantuFirst project, Guy Kouarata, Sara Pacchiarotti and Koen Bostoen have a new French paper out on the geography, inventory and description of the Teke languages in DRC and Congo. It includes new lexical data collected during survey missions in “Teke-speaking” areas from April 8 to June 15, 2021 and from June 29 to August 15, 2022. These surveys aimed at a better mapping of the geographical distribution of Teke varieties, especially in the DRC. The new lexical data, one list containing 650 lexical correspondences in 11 Teke varieties that are little or not at all described (https://osf.io/​gn6ka), and another of about 370 correspondences in 12 other varieties (https://osf.io/​vdfxt) are available in open access on the Open Science Framework. The article has just been published in the journal Linguistique et langues africaines: https://journals.openedition.org/lla/12921.

 

BantUGent-onderzoek in Knack

Op 7 februari 2024 rapporteert het Nederlandstalig Belgisch tijdschrift Knack in zijn rubriek “Planeet Draulans” over de recente Nature paper met betrekking tot de verspreiding van de Bantoetalen waaraan het BantuFirst-project (BantUGent) bijdroeg.

EOS Wetenschap rapporteert over de verspreiding van de Bantoetalen

Het Nederlandstalig populariserend wetenschappelijk tijdschrift EOS Wetenschap rapporteert online over BantUGent-onderzoek met betrekking tot de verspreiding van de Bantoetalen.

 

De taal kruipt waar ze niet gaan kan, toont de verspreiding van Bantoe in Afrika

Genetisch onderzoek toont voor het eerst welke migratieroutes West-Afrikaanse Bantoesprekers duizenden jaren geleden namen. De reizigers lieten zich allerminst afschrikken door hoogvlaktes, regenwouden of woestijnen. De bevindingen kunnen ook onderzoek naar gezondheidsproblemen in Congo bevorderen.

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Met zo’n vijfhonderd talen en meer dan 350 miljoen sprekers is Bantoe de grootste taalfamilie van Afrika. De verspreiding begon zes- tot vierduizend jaar geleden vanuit West-Afrika, en geldt als een van de belangrijkste demografische gebeurtenissen op het hele continent. Het culturele en biologische landschap is sindsdien drastisch veranderd.

In een nieuwe paper, die zopas verschenen is in het wetenschappelijke tijdschrift Nature, lichten onderzoekers toe hoe die verspreiding precies is gebeurd. Het team van wetenschappers – een interdisciplinaire groep van taalkundigen, genetici en biologen – achterhaalde dat de Bantoesprekers naar het oosten maar ook naar het zuiden van het continent trokken.

Regenwouden en savannes

Vooral die zuidwaartse trek is vrij uitzonderlijk. Meestal vestigen migrerende gemeenschappen zich in regio’s met een vergelijkbaar klimaat en milieu. Meerdere groepen Bantoesprekers uit West-Afrika deden dat niet: ze doorkruisten hoogland in Kameroen, regenwouden in Centraal-Afrika en savannes in het zuidwesten van het continent.

De onderzoekers stelden ook vast dat de Bantoegemeenschappen zich niet in één keer massaal verspreidden, maar dat de migratie veeleer in golven verliep. Het huidige Zambia en de Democratische Republiek Congo waren daarbij cruciaal: verschillende migratieroutes kwamen daar samen.

Het onderzoeksteam baseerde zich voor zijn bevindingen op genetische data van 1.763 individuen, waaronder 1.526 Bantoesprekers uit 147 verschillende talengemeenschappen in veertien Afrikaanse landen. Het analyseerde ook oud-DNA van twaalf individuen uit de late IJzertijd. Die gegevens werden verzameld door een groep van Gentse en Congolese onderzoekers.

Intensieve contacten

De onderzoekers ontdekten daarbij ook dat de migranten uit West-Afrika intensieve contacten aangingen met anderstalige bevolkingsgroepen die al in die regio’s leefden, zoals jagers-verzamelaars in het regenwoud van Congo en de Kalahariwoestijn. Tot die bevindingen waren de onderzoekers niet gekomen als ze uitsluitend naar taalgegevens hadden gekeken, stellen ze. 

De genetische dataset waarop de studie is gebaseerd, kan in de toekomst een ander doel dienen, zegt klinisch bioloog Joris Delanghe (UGent), die meewerkte aan de studie. ‘Ze zal ook een voorname rol spelen in onderzoek naar gezondheidsproblemen waarmee verschillende regio’s in Congo geconfronteerd worden.’

Tot de Bantoetalen behoren onder meer het Lingala, Kiswahili en Kikongo. Die worden vandaag ook in België en elders in Europa veel gesproken.

Bron: Koen Bostoen, Universiteit Gent

Beeld: Peter Coutros, Universiteit Gent