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.
#######################################################
“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”
I
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” |