Francqui chair holder Bruce Connell visits BantUGent

Francqui chair holder 2021-2022 Bruce CONNELL (York University, Glendon College – Toronto, Canada), who was nominated by Antwerp University (Prof. Jo Verhoeven) and Ghent University (BantUGent) for his research on language endangerment and language documentation, phonetic descriptions of certain African languages, and articulatory phonetics, visited BantUGent last Monday (February 21, 2022) to discuss joint research.

 

Gilles-Maurice de Schryver participates in a webinar on the future of Kaaps (Afrikaans)

****CANCELLED****

 

At the occasion of the publication of the Trilingual Dictionary of Kaaps, the Ghent Center for Afrikaans and the Study of South Africa (GAZ) organizes on February 25, 2022 (1pm-2.30pm) a webinar on “Kaaps, language variation and the future of Afrikaans” in which also Gilles-Maurice de Schryver (BantUGent) participates.

More info: https://www.africaplatform.ugent.be/event/tweede-gaz-webinar-kaaps-taalvariatie-en-de-toekomst-van-het-afrikaans

Stemmen van Afrika has a new post on interdisciplinary BantUGent research

Following the short documentary film which Peter Coutros (BantuGent) produced on the archaeological BantuFirst fieldwork he did in the Congo last summer together with Prof. Igor Matonda (UNIKIN), the editorial board of the Dutch web magazine Stemmen van Afrika invited Koen Bostoen (BantuGent) to write up a short article in Dutch to provide some scientific background information to explain the goals of that linguistically inspired archaeological research in layman’s terms. The post is available here.

Sara Pacchiarotti presents new research on applicatives at the Linguistic Society of Paris

On Saturday January 22, 2022, Sara Pacchiarotti (BantUGent) presented a talk titled “Comportement syntaxique peu connu et fonctions non syntaxiques de la morphologie applicative : quelques nouvelles perspectives comparatives” at the Société Linguistique de Paris  as part of their annual meeting, which was dedicated this year to applicatives across the world’s languages, i.e. “L’applicatif dans les langues : Regard typologique“.

Ernest Nshemezimana and Ferdinand Mberamihigo publish new corpus-based research on Kirundi

Ernest Nshemezimana and Ferdinand Mberamihigo, both BantUGent associates from the University of Burundi, have a new article out in the Brazilian journal Odisseia. It is titled “Typology and morphosyntactic functions of the verbal prefixes ha- and -ha- in Kirundi (JD62)“/”Typologie et fonctions morphosyntaxiques des préfixes verbaux ha- et -ha- en kirundi (JD62)“. It is based on the corpus-based PhD research which Ernest carried out at BantUGent.

Jessamy Doman joins BantUGent

On January 1, 2022, Jessamy Doman has joined the BantuFirst team as a post-doctoral researcher in African environmental archaeology. Her research will focus on reconstructing the diets and environments of the first Bantu-speakers south of the equatorial rainforest. She obtained her PhD from the Department of Anthropology, Yale University, in 2017. She led several expeditions in Kenya with the Baringo Palaeontological Research Project (BPRP), resulting in a new understanding of the environmental context of early human evolution and developing novel methods in palaeoecological reconstruction, including analysis of a late Miocene fossilized forest, as well as isotopic and skeletal indicators of dietary preference within the associated faunal communities. Her past research projects include Miocene-Pliocene faunal and human evolution in Africa and its climatic backdrop; extinction and replacement across the Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary; social and environmental transitions in Holocene West Africa as evidenced by archaeological faunal assemblages; repatriation of Native American artifacts and remains under the Native American Graves and Repatriation Act; and the use of natural history collections in the study of climate change patterns.