In a new article based on fieldwork data collected in 2019 in Idiofa (DRC) as part of the BantuFirst project, Sara Pacchiarotti, Lorenzo Maselli & Koen Bostoen offer in a new article published in the open access journal Papers in Historical Phonology a phonetic and phonological documentation of two phonemic ‘interior’ vowels and heterosyllabic vowel sequences as well as a historical account of their development in the West-Coastal Bantu language Ngwi. The article is available here.
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New BantUGent research on Final Vowel Loss in Lower Kasai Bantu in the Journal of Language Contact
Sara Pacchiarotti and Koen Bostoen have a new article titled “Final Vowel Loss in Lower Kasai Bantu (drc) as a Contact-Induced Change” out in the open access Journal of Language Contact as part of the BantuFirst project. They present a qualitative and quantitative comparative account of this diachronic sound shift and argue that it rose relatively late in Bantu language history as a contact-induced change and affected adjacent West-Coastal and Central-Western Bantu languages belonging to different phylogenetic clusters.
BantUGent researchers contribute to new multilingual piece of art
The new piece of art Laborinth of the German artist Vera Röhm (with a selection of 251 languages amongst which several African languages) will be displayed at the Topographies de la lumière exhibition in Paris from Saturday 20 November onwards. BantuGent and several of its Congolese associate researchers also contributed to the translation of the German phrase „Die Nacht ist der Schatten der Erde“ (Night is the shadow of the earth) (Shadow as the side facing away from light, earth as planet earth) into as many languages of the world as possible.
Bantu9 – Malawi University Of Science and Technology – Call for Papers open
Language in Africa publishes new research on the understudied West-Coastal Bantu language Ngwi
Based on fieldwork they carried out in 2019 around Idiofa (DRC) as part of the BantuFirst project, Sara Pacchiarotti & Koen Bostoen (BantUGent) have a new article out on the understudied West-Coastal Bantu language Ngwi. The article is titled “The evolution of the noun class system of Ngwi (West-Coastal Bantu, B861, DRC)” and has been published in open access in the third number of the second volume of the Russian journal Language in Africa.
The same journal issue unfortunately also contains an in memoriam for the regretted Russian linguist and Africanist Alexandra (Sasha) Vydrina who tragically died on September 16, 2021 at the age of 33. BantUGent expresses its deepest regrets and sincere condolences to the family, friends and colleagues.
Koen Bostoen (re)presents BantuGent at a research meeting on Gabon at Brussels University (ULB)
Le nouveau Commissaire Général du Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique et Technologique (CENAREST) du Gabon, le Pr. Alfred Ngomanda, sera en visite à Bruxelles les 25 et 26 octobre prochain, notamment pour participer au jury de thèse de Nicolas Texier à l’ULB (26/10, 16h).
La visite du Commissaire Général du CENAREST est exceptionnelle et constitue une excellente occasion de le rencontrer et de lui exposer nos thématiques de recherche, ainsi que de rencontrer des acteurs scientifiques belges travaillant dans cette région. Nous profiterons ainsi de sa venue pour organiser une demi-journée scientifique à l’ULB le 25/10 à partir de 14h, consacrée à la recherche au Gabon et dans la sous-région. Ce sera, d’une part, l’occasion au Commissaire Général de présenter le CENAREST et la politique de la recherche au Gabon aux participants, et d’autre part, de présenter au Commissaire Général les recherches effectuées au Gabon par des équipes belges. Le caractère inter-disciplinaire de cette réunion scientifique permettra en outre aux chercheurs belges de différentes disciplines de découvrir une diversité de thèmes de recherches effectués dans la sous-région.
Jean-Pierre Donzo in Ghent for a two-month research visit at BantUGent
From October 24 until December 24 2021, BantUGent associate Jean-Pierre Donzo (ISP Gombe, Kinshasa) will be in Ghent for a research visit at BantUGent. He has been invited as a research fellow of the BantuFirst project to work on the velar merger in Central-Western Bantu with Sara Pacchiarotti and Koen Bostoen and on the phonological and phonetic landscape of the Bantu languages of the Mai Ndombe Province (DRC) with Lorenzo Maselli.
Jean-Pierre Donzo presents research on NW Congolese languages at the Westermann workshop in Berlin
To commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Berlin professorship for African languages whose first holder was D. Westermann, its current holder Prof. Tom Güldemann is organizing a three-day workshop (November 4-6, 2021) titled “West-central African linguistic history between Macro-Sudan Belt and Niger-Congo: commemorating Diedrich Westermann’s legacy and the 100th anniversary of the Berlin professorship for African languages”. BantUGent associate Jean-Pierre Donzo (ISP-Gombe, Kinshasa) will also present a talk titled “Les implosives dans les langues du nord-ouest de la RD Congo: héritage diachronique ou diffusion”.
The full program can be found below. All non-presenters who are interested are required to register beforehand via email. Please send such an email to Gianna Marks at gianna.marks@yahoo.com, preferably with something like “Westermann workshop” in the subject matter line of the email.
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“West-central African linguistic history between Macro-Sudan Belt and Niger-Congo: commemorating Diedrich Westermann’s legacy and the 100th anniversary of the Berlin professorship for African languages”
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Italic = digital presentation
| Time | Thursday, 4th November | Friday, 5th November | Saturday, 6th November |
| 09:00 | Welcome and introduction | ||
| 09:30-10:15 | 1 Johanna Nichols and Frederik Hartmann “The greater Sahara in the historical linguistic geography of Africa” | 1 Henning Schreiber “Areality and borrowability: pronouns in the Macro-Sudan Belt” | 1 Tom Güldemann and Ines Fiedler “Gender-number suffixes across Niger-Congo” |
| 10:15-11:00 | 2 Dmitry Idiatov, Guillaume Segerer and Mark Van de Velde “Areal patterns of noun/verb ratios in Sub-Saharan Africa” | 2 Tom Güldemann “Animacy-based noun classification as an areal trait of the eastern Macro-Sudan Belt” | 2 Ulrich Kleinewillinghöfer “Upper Benue-Volta: the morphological evidence” |
| 11:00-11:30 | Coffee break | Coffee break | Coffee break |
| 11:30-12:15 | 3 Florian Lionnet and Nicholas R. Rolle “Phonological profile changes in the Macro-Sudan Belt: the antagonism between ATR and interior vowels” | 3 Jean-Pierre Donzo “Les implosives dans les langues bantu et non-bantu du nord-ouest de la RD Congo: héritage diachronique ou diffusion” | 3 Harald Hammarström and Guillaume Segerer “Computational experiments in Adamawa sub-classification” |
| 12:15-13:00 | 4 Valentin Vydrin “Tonal density index in Mande and beyond” | 4 André Motingea Mangulu “Epenthetic l on vocalic affixes in some Inner Congo Basin languages: common innovation or contact-induced feature?” | 4 Jack Merrill “Atlantic groups as primary Niger-Congo branches” |
| 13:00-14:30 | Lunch break | Lunch break | Lunch break |
| 14:30-15:15 | 5 Florian Lionnet “Areal alignment and the diversification of Bua languages (Chad)” | 5 Didier Demolin “The languages of the Ituri forest Pygmies: contact and historical perspectives” | 5 Final discussion |
| 15:15-16:00 | 6 Jakob Lesage “Plural words in the Macro-Sudan Belt” | 6 Felix K. Ameka “Semantic convergence in the Lower Volta Basin (West Africa): a micro-area within the Macro-Sudanic Belt?” | |
| 16:00-16:30 | Coffee break | Coffee break | |
| 16:30-17:15 | 7 Karee Garvin, Katherine Russell and Hannah Sande “A typology of STAMP morphs in the Macro-Sudan Belt” | 7 Roland Kießling “Looking for micro-areal features within the Macro-Sudan Belt” | |
| 17:15-18:00 | 8 Gregory Anderson “Towards a typology of auxiliary verb constructions, STAMP morphs and morphologically complex verb forms in Chadic languages” | 8 Jeff Good “Individual-level lexical variation in the Bantu homeland and its implications for the development of Benue-Congo” |
Koen Bostoen, Peter Coutros & Carina Schlebusch at MPI-Jena workshop on “Archaeology and Language”
Martine Robbeets, Mark Hudson and the Archaeolinguistic Research Group of the Max Planck Institute of the Science of Human History in Jena (Germany) organize a three-day online workshop (November 16-18, 2021) on “Archaeology and Language” involving all the contributors to the forthcoming Oxford Handbook of Archaeology and Language, which they co-edit.
On November 18 (11.30-11.55 am CET), Koen Bostoen (BantUGent), Peter Coutros (BantUGent) & Carina Schlebusch (Department of Evolutionary Biology, Uppsala University) will present a concept paper on the interdisciplinary “Niger-Congo including Bantu” chapter, which they were invited to write for the handbook.
New language-based BantUGent research on early banana cultivation in Central Africa
Sifra Van Acker, Sara Pacchiarotti and Koen Bostoen (BantUGent) have, together with the world-renowned banana expert Edmond De Langhe (KU Leuven), a new article out in the journal Studies in African Linguistics. It is titled “Reconstructing West-Coastal Bantu Vocabulary as Evidence for Early Banana Cultivation in Central Africa” and part of the first author’s PhD project within the wider BantuFirst project.